The Yard Theatre has released production images for for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf, the revival that reopens the rebuilt Hackney Wick venue and runs to 17 October 2026.
The Yard Theatre has released production images for its revival of Ntozake Shange's for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf, directed by Diane Page. It runs at The Yard until 17 October 2026, and press night is tonight, Tuesday 8 September 2026.
Two things make this more than a revival. It is fifty years since Shange's choreopoem was first performed, before a two-year Broadway run, and it has been conspicuously absent from London stages since. And it is the show reopening The Yard itself, after a rebuild that has left the Hackney Wick theatre with a 220-seat curved auditorium, more than twice the size of the warehouse that artistic director Jay Miller and fifty volunteers converted on a six-month lease in 2011. The new building is by RIBA award-winning Takero Shimazaki Architects, put up with brick reused from the old Yard.
The audience found it early. The run was extended by two weeks before the first performance, and 70% of all tickets had gone before opening night.
The cast is Tatenda Naomi Matsvai (cow | deer at the Royal Court), Nadine Higgin (Mother Courage and Her Children at Shakespeare's Globe, Ballet Shoes at the National Theatre), Cherrelle Skeete (The Authenticator and Alterations, both National Theatre), Alex Thomas-Smith (What It Feels Like For a Girl) and Ibilola Rossi (I May Destroy You).
Original music is by Jammz. Costume design is by Cat Fuller, with associate costume designer and supervisor Mio Jue, choreography by Ingrid Mackinnon with associate Rudzani Moleya, sound by Esther Kehinde Ajayi, lighting by Ali Hunter, voice and dialect by Aundrea Fudge and casting by Heather Basten.
The Yard has built a programme of late nights around the run: a Writer's Night on Thursday 10 September; 'nuff, a club night curated by Jammz with an all-femme grime line-up, on Friday 11 September; a Black Out Night for an audience of Black femmes on Thursday 17 September; Diane Page in conversation with Bernardine Evaristo on Thursday 24 September; and a Film Club on Friday 25 September. The talks come with a ticket to that evening's performance; the club night and Film Club are ticketed separately.
for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf runs at The Yard Theatre, Queen's Yard, Hackney Wick, to Saturday 17 October 2026. Tickets are £10 and up, with concessions for over-65s, under-27s, the unwaged, those in education and people with access needs, and £5 on the door for under-27s through the theatre's No Empty Seats scheme. The images are by Camilla Greenwell.
