For Colored Girls
CLIENT
Situation Interactive
TECHNOLOGIES
WordPress, PHP, JavaScript, SASS, Gravity Forms
YEAR
2022
EXTERNAL URL
The first Broadway revival of Ntozake Shange’s choreopoem in over forty years — a production where Camille A. Brown became the first Black woman to direct and choreograph on Broadway in over six decades. Custom WordPress theme with a color system drawn from the work’s rainbow identity, structured profiles for a seven-woman ensemble, and a ticketing calendar for the Booth Theatre run.
I led development on this project at Situation Interactive.
Background
A historic revival with a historic creative team — arriving in the same spring 2022 surge as American Buffalo and The Minutes.
Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf first reached Broadway in 1976. This revival at the Booth Theatre, directed and choreographed by Camille A. Brown, carried weight beyond the stage: Brown became the first Black woman to hold both roles on Broadway in over 65 years, following Katherine Dunham. The seven-woman cast — Kenita R. Miller, Okwui Okpokwasili, Alexandria Wailes, Amara Granderson, Tendayi Kuumba, Stacey Sargeant, and D. Woods — included Wailes performing entirely in American Sign Language, making accessibility a structural element of the production rather than an add-on. Previews began April 1, 2022, placing this launch in the same compressed two-week window as American Buffalo and The Minutes — three simultaneous builds with very different identities and demands.
The cultural momentum around Brown’s directorial debut and the press attention on the ensemble meant the site had to be converting before the first audience walked in.
Implementation
A custom WordPress build with a ticketing calendar, seven structured cast profiles, and a design language drawn from the production’s rainbow palette.
What set this build apart was the visual system. Shange’s work assigns each of seven women a color — the rainbow is the work’s organizing metaphor. The frontend translated that directly: a color palette drawn from the spectrum, with each performer’s profile section reflecting her assigned color. Typography and layout honored the intimacy of a choreopoem staged without intermission. Where American Buffalo’s site could be spare and direct with three actors, this build required seven distinct biographical treatments that carried equal visual weight.
The ticketing calendar followed the same pattern I had refined across prior builds — date-driven performance browsing at the Booth Theatre with matinee and evening slots, availability indicators, and direct purchase links pre-selecting the correct performance. The cast and creative section gave structured profiles to all seven performers alongside the full creative team: Brown, scenic designer Myung Hee Cho, costume designer Sarafina Bush, lighting designer Jiyoun Chang, sound designer Justin Ellington, and composers Martha Redbone and Aaron Whitby. Schema.org markup supported discovery, and social integrations connected the production’s key platforms.
Seven colors, seven women, seven profiles that needed to feel individual — the design challenge here was more demanding than any other cast section I had built to that point.
Results
Seven Tony nominations, over $2 million at the box office, and a platform that carried the production from first preview through closing night.
The site launched ahead of the April 1 preview and supported the production through its full Booth Theatre run — 23 previews and 51 performances, grossing $2,067,206 at an average ticket price of $59.99. for colored girls earned seven Tony nominations: Best Revival of a Play, dual nods for Camille A. Brown as both Best Director and Best Choreographer (the first Black woman to receive both in the same year), Best Featured Actress for Kenita R. Miller, plus recognition for Sarafina Bush’s costume design and Jiyoun Chang’s lighting design. The seven-color cast profile system held up throughout the run, and the content layer gave the production team full editorial control from first preview through closing night.
The ensemble profile architecture from this build directly informed Topdog/Underdog later that season — a very different two-person production, but one that benefited from the structured content patterns refined here.
