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The Color Purple
Kai Geraghty-Sari
The Color Purple was first a book written by Alice Walker then soon after became a Broadway musical and an academy award winning movie, which it rightfully deserves. The Color Purple won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1983, making Alice Walker the first black woman to win the prize. Alice also won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1983. Alice Walker, whose full name is Alice Malsenior Walker was born on February 9th, 1944 in Eatonton, Georgia, U.S. She’s an inspirational American writer whose novels, short stories, and poems are noted for their insightful treatment of African American culture and mean a lot to me plus many more. Her novels, most notably The Color Purple made in 1982, focuses particularly on women and how they are treated as well.
The Color Purple is an outstanding musical based off of a black young woman named Celie and how she’s treated in general. The musical starts out with Celie being put through sexual assualt from her own abusive and compulsive step-father which she writes about in her many desperate letters to god. Since Celie was so passive and quiet growing up she was only able to express herself through letters to god. At some point Celie became pregnant with two children, Olivia and Adam, who were both given away by her dad to be raised by a missionary couple somewhere pretty mentionably distant. Later on we'll see her being married off instead of her little sister Nettie to Mr.___ whose actual first name is later discovered to be Albert because her dad claimed Nettie was too young to be a wife so soon. As Celie faces misfortune while being with Albert like beatings and troublesome house work, she also eventually protects Nettie from Albert and their step father when both of them had attempted to assault her on two different occasions. I honestly treasure the moment she did this to protect her sister because growing up with abuse from all angles is something someone so young should not have to be put through. Celie attempts to get free of the men in her life (justifiably so), to discover her sexuality and to learn to love, to gain both her social and emotional independence, to find spiritual satisfaction and connection to God, and to reunite with Nettie based off the letters Nettie had sent all the years they had been apart that Albert had tried so desperately to hide from Celie. Even with the unfortunate gain of all the traumatic experiences throughout Celie's life, will she eventually be able to set herself free from the life she lives at the moment?
The Color Purple has got to be one of my absolute favorite musicals, the music, the meaning, the emotional connection and how it’s displayed is all astonishing. A detail I loved about this Musical is that the meaning of “The Color Purple” is a symbol of beauty and hope in this story. The title indicates that finding this beauty and hope is a key aspect of Celie 's journey to self actualization. In addition to her deep admiration for Hurston, Walker's literary influences include Harlem Renaissance writer Jean Toomer, Black Chicago poet Gwendolyn Brooks, South African novelist Bessie Head, and white Georgia writer Flannery O'Connor. Alice stated "If you deny people their own voice, you'll have no idea of who they were." This feeling ultimately compelled her to write "The Color Purple," which sold 5 million copies. The plot she came up with is extraordinary in so many ways, I adore everything about this play and what it represents. This Musical was a huge inspiration for Women everywhere, The Color Purple implies that females empower each other when they are made to seem inferior to others. The Color Purple implies that when women are oppressed, other oppressed women will stand up for them. Give people the option to protect ones they relate to, they will take the opportunity.
I spoke about the author of the book that inspired this Musical, the musical itself and gave a summary on it as well but one thing that should be recognized more is that even if we've made progress over the years of fighting for rights of multiple minorities we still haven't done all we can, representative works like these are meaningful examples of why we should still face the issues thrown at us just because of the senseless reasoning that we are too different to be considered human. If you're interested in the plot or storyline mentioned I urge you to consider looking into The Color Purple. It’s a great example of representation for Women, Black people and minorities in all. This Musical is truly an inspiration and deserves all the love it receives plus more! I give a huge thanks to the cast of the musical and the movie, the musicians who created the songs and track for the musical and especially to the original author,
Alice Walker.
SIX The Musical
Kai Geraghty-Sari
An extraordinary and modernized musical representing the six wives of Henry the 8th, Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard and Catherine Parr. Each individual ex-wife displays the painful parts of their life that were connected to Henry in such an emotional way, whether that emotion is meant to make you laugh or cry. Put your faith in me when I say this was an experience I would do 100 times over. The songs were absolutely amazing, I can't wait to go again next year. It is by far my favorite musical, so even if you can't actually go I swear the music alone is beyond enough.
The Musical was written by Toby Marlow who is a Jewish-English writer, composer, lyricist, and actor. He composed and co-wrote Six the Musical with Lucy Moss who is an English writer and director. She is also the co-director of most of the productions of the show. The idea of writing SIX came from Moss and Marlow’s sense that there simply aren't enough substantive roles for women. “We had loads of women and non-binary friends who never got the good parts,” Moss had explained. “Women have emotional ballads, the guys have big character songs,” Marlow added. Which is showing that people only ever seem to listen when a man is the one to tell the story. As I've already mentioned they based the idea of SIX the musical from Henry and his six wives, ahem, ex-wives. Thing is, the actual meaning behind this mind-shattering musical is that they weren't just the six wives of Henry the 8th. They were actual people who had and should have lived beyond him. There truthfully were too many years lost in his story.
Now let me explain more of the factors in the musical itself and the plot so you can grasp the idea of what it was like. While it is kind of considered a shorter musical it was unbelievably beautiful; it started out introducing the characters in a more up-beat and lovely song labeled Ex-Wives. It shows the crowd who each person is and what they're mainly known for when it comes to their lives on the throne. The musical then continued onto explaining a type of contest in order to compare each of their traumatic, or saddened, backgrounds involving the king. Divorced, Beheaded, Died. Divorced, Beheaded, Survived. Each of them sings a song explaining how they met Henry, and what they had to sacrifice or go through. The queens all have individually justified perspectives of what happened when they ruled, which they express through their performances. There are some mentions of inappropriate language; so if you're planning on going, the musical is 12+ for anyone wondering. This competition goes on until the final wife, Catherine Parr, decided that the idea of showing off miserable experiences they each had in order to prove who was the best queen, or who had it harder, is a waste of time, and that by doing that they are forcing themselves to base their entire lives off of the one thing they had in common, the king. After they’ve realized she’s right, they take control of themselves and create an alternate version of what they would have wanted to happen in their lifetime, if they could have a do-over.
Interacting with the crowd, as if they were actually explaining their story like a book, made the impact far more impressive. I’m glad that they executed this story so perfectly, and in a way that people can also smile and laugh at it. In the beginning I described this musical as modernized; it truly is. They added in phrases and terms that made it a lot more down to earth and enjoyable; yet, also emotional. I would LOVE to see SIX for the first time again. I was so intrigued and interested from start to end.
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