Tony Award-nominated choreographer Camille A. Brown will make her Broadway directing debut with a 2022 production of Ntozake Shange’s 1976 classic for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf, becoming what producers say is the first Black woman to serve as both director and choreographer on a Broadway production in more than 65 years.

Brown previously choreographed director Leah C. Gardiner’s 2019 Off Broadway production of the play at The Public Theater. Her upcoming directing debut was announced today by producers Nelle Nugent, Ron Simons and Kenneth Teaton.

“I’m extremely thrilled and honored to helm this new production of for colored girls…,” Brown said in a statement. “It’s an amazing feeling to bring this seminal show back to Broadway 45 years after it opened at the Booth Theatre on September 15, 1976. I look forward to diving into the divine Ntozake Shange’s choreopoem and celebrating her legacy.”

Brown received a Tony Award nomination in 2019 for her choreography of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s Choir Boy. Other credits include Broadway’s Once On This Island, NBC’s Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert and the Oscar nominated Netflix film Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. She is the founder and artistic director of dance company Camille A. Brown and Dancers.

“It is an honor to help usher the return of Ntozake Shange’s groundbreaking work to Broadway under the direction and choreography of Camille A. Brown, who is herself blazing a new path on Broadway as the first Black woman in more than 65 years taking on this dual role,” said producer Simons. “I am quite confident that the ancestors and Ntozake’s spirit are lifted.”

For colored girls… pioneered the choreopoem form – combining poetry, song and movement – to tell the stories of seven Black women, each voicing a survival story of having to exist in a world shaped by sexism and racism.

Performance dates and casting will be announced later.