This week, justArts spoke with Ra Malika Imhotep ’15, the director for the Brandeis Ensemble Theater and Brandeis Players’ production of for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf, about the companies’ shows this weekend.

justArts: What motivated you to join the production of for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf?

Ra Malika Imhotep: I pitched [the play] to the Brandeis Ensemble Theater Collective and [to Brandeis] Players—it was a group proposals meeting. Basically, [joining the play] was an idea I had my sophomore year. I read for colored girls, and I was talking about it with friends. We had just done The Vagina Monologues, and we wanted to create a similar space, like that level of community and that level of feel-good art time, for women of color [and] for black women. … Basically, what inspired me to do it was just wanting to create that space on campus—I just knew there was so much talent on this campus because the campus has grown so much from what it was like my freshman year. I just wanted to be able to give a voice to that and let people engage with it.

JA: Did you have any challenges as director?

RI: Most definitely. I think the vision is the easy part. As things started to get more solid, and as casting started, the vision changed a little bit. I think initially I had this really grand idea—I was going to double all the characters and just have a massive ensemble cast, and that was really unrealistic. But I was sitting in the casting room and just not knowing what to do [because] there were so many people that I wanted in the production. But me and my stage manager were able to kind of settle, and we split two of the larger roles … That was one of the frustrations on my side.

Then there was also joining or entering into or intervening on the theater community at Brandeis, which is very used to doing things a certain way. Coming [in] with a production that’s not only different—because it’s categorized as a straight play, because it’s not a musical. But technically, it’s a choreopoem; it’s a collection of poetry that’s woven together with dance, with song, and it’s experimental in its nature.

I think to bring that to a group of people who are used to running things—like, you have the musical switch, you have the ‘straight play switch, and I’m trying to flip the straight play switch, but [the production’s] not fitting in this box … That level of anxiety kind of created a hostile environment a little bit. But I think ultimately we were able to push through it and create a beautiful production.

JA: What was your favorite scene to direct?

RI: My favorite scene [was] the transition from “somebody almost walked off wid alla my stuff,” which is Lady in [Green’s scene, played by Jessica Hood ’15] and when other cast members came on [stage for] “no apologies.” … All the characters just kind of poured in and sat on the stage, and then one of the two Lady in Blues—in this case, it was Queen [White ’16]—delivered a passionate monologue, probably my favourite text of the play, “no apologies.”

To be able to direct them and have [White] come to the center; and for the cast to affirm her onstage and for her to look back at them; and just to really show community and show the type of things we do in the green room when we’re all hanging out after rehearsal talking. To be able to put that on stage was so beautiful.

JA: Was there one thing you wanted the audience to take away from the show?

RI: One of the many things that I wanted the audience to take away was that blackness is not something in the background. Blackness is not a problem or something we have to find out how to place. Blackness is a living thing that encompasses all the emotions that humans live. That there’s nothing scary or off-putting or alienating about singing a black girl song, as the playwright says. That a space that is safe for black women is a space that is ultimately safe for everyone.