The Color Purple
The Color Purple
When producer Scott Sanders first hatched the notion of turning The
Color Purple into a Broadway show, naysayers had a field day. Sure, the
material was rich: Alice Walker’s novel was without question ensconced
in the American literary canon – it’s a Pulitzer Prize and National
Book Award winner, has sold more than five million copies, and is to
this day among the top five most reread books in America...
But some skeptics wondered how musical theater would treat a story
arc that spanned four decades and dealt with issues of infanticide,
domestic violence, racial oppression, and spiritual crisis. Others felt
that Steven Spielberg’s 1985 cinematic adaptation – with memorable
performances by Whoopi Goldberg, Danny Glover and Oprah Winfrey – would
overshadow any other attempts at dramatization.
What Scott Sanders knew – and what kept him going through the eight
years it took to secure permissions, backing, and a creative team that
could produce a show that honored the material – was that music is a
way to express emotions that transcend words, and that the message, the
heartbeat of Walker’s story (much of it rooted in her own family
history), sang.