In 1977, when the young Tawnya Pettiford was preparing to audition for the touring production of the Broadway sensation, “for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf,” she realized she was terrified.

“It was very scary,” says the now all-grown-up Dr. Tawnya Pettiford-Wates, or Dr. T as she likes to be called. “I was a student of acting, a graduate from a prominent conservatory at Carnegie Mellon. I was a finely tuned technician but when I intersected with this play – I was like ‘What is this?’, ‘Where’s the scansion?’,  ‘Where’s the description of what’s going on in these scenes?’”

More than 45 years later, Dr. T is directing VCU’s upcoming production of “for colored girls…,” the second time she’s directed the show for the university. She still remembers how she was able to overcome her initial fear.

“One of my former professors said, ‘Treat it like Shakespeare,’” she says. “To tell a colored girl who’s trying out for a play about colored girls to think about Shakespeare, I mean, think about how messed up that is.

“But when she said that, I felt a sudden calm. As messed up as that is, it got me in. I was able to calm down enough to get cast.”

The experience ended up changing Dr. T’s life and setting her on the artistic path she’s pursued ever since. She’s both appeared in the play and directed it several times since.

“For colored girls…” was and still is a theater anomaly, so outside normal definitions that the author, Ntozake Shange, coined the word “choreopoem” to label it. Actors play women identified by a color – “The Lady in Red,” “The Lady in Blue,” etc. – and perform a series of interconnected poems that detail stories of love, violence, loss and empowerment.

First performed in bars and other alternative performance spaces in the early 1970s, the show gained such a buzz that it landed on Broadway in 1976. It ultimately ran for 742 performances there, was published as a book and adapted into both television and movie versions.

A 2022 Broadway revival received seven Tony Award nominations but closed after 51 performances, struggling to draw audiences after the pandemic.

As foundational as the play has become in the history of theater, Dr. T says her current students barely know about it.

“We’ve had to do extensive dramaturgy with them, teaching them about stuff they just don’t know,” says Dr. T. “For them, the play is history.”

Even so, she says the play has a similar effect on young people today as it did on her decades ago.

“The journey of a colored girl in the United States of America – the experience of alienation, recognizing injustices, trying to be recognized for who you are instead of who people want you to be – that’s a journey all young people go on,” she says.

After pushing for a remount of “for colored girls…” at VCU for years, Dr. T is now having the unique experience of mounting it at two different universities simultaneously. She is directing a production at University of Iowa that will open in November.

“Iowa chose to do the show first, so I told [VCU] I had to put my classes online so I could go out there for five weeks,” says Dr. T, who works at VCU as a professor of Graduate Pedagogy in Acting and Directing. “Then VCU decided they wanted to do it too.”

The “colored girls” in the Iowa production will be a mix of students of varying heritages – East Asian and Latina as well as African American – while the VCU cast is all Black actors. “It’s a reflection of who auditioned,” she says. “They’re going to be two completely different productions.”

Though young people today may already be familiar with struggles around identity, Dr. T. says that the depths the play explores still manages to take them to new places.

“They have embraced the battle of self-identification,” she says. “But during rehearsals, the tears roll just like they did when I was in it, just like they’ve rolled in every production I’ve ever been associated with.”

“For colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf” will run at VCU’s Singleton Center for the Performing Arts, 922 Park Ave., Oct. 3-6. Tickets and information available at https://arts.vcu.edu/event/for-colored-girls-who-have-considered-suicide-when-the-rainbow-is-enuf/