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The Color Purple - A New Musical

The Color Purple

Shows · The Color Purple

The Color Purple is a musical with music and lyrics by Brenda Russell, Allee Willis, and Stephen Bray, and book by Marsha Norman. Based on the 1982 novel The Color Purple by Alice Walker and its 1985 film adaptation, the musical follows the journey of Celie, an African American woman in the American South from the early to mid-20th century.

Opened
2005
Performances
910
Type
Musical
Era
Modern
Music: Brenda Russell, Allee Willis, Stephen BrayLyrics: Brenda Russell, Allee Willis, Stephen BrayBook: Marsha Norman, based on the novel by Alice Walker

Productions3 on Broadway

2005 Broadway Theatre Original. December 1, 2005 · Gary Griffin 910 performances
2013 Transfer Theatre not recorded. July 17, 2013
2015 Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre Revival. · John Doyle 493 performances

Every Broadway staging held in broadway-data, sourced to IBDB. West End runs are not yet held.

Licensing 1 entry

US Theatrical Rights Worldwide not stated by this source

Read from the licensor's own pages and catalogues. Rights move, and an empty row means we have not confirmed a publisher, not that the show cannot be licensed.

In the literature28 passages

The Color Purple takes its cue from Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about a poor black woman in rural Georgia, Celie (LaChanze), who overcomes a past of abuse and unendurable hardships to find her own identity and love. book:showtime-a-history-of-the-broadway-musical-theatre-larry-stempel#p709

Baum's classic The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: See Cote. The musical Wicked actually draws directly on Gregory Maguire's 1995 novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. Alice Walker's novel The Color Purple and Frank Wedekind's drama Frühlings Erwachen (Spring Awakening) provide the bases for the mus… book:showtime-a-history-of-the-broadway-musical-theatre-larry-stempel#p783

Doyle staged a revival of The Color Purple at London’s Menier Chocolate Factory in 2013; he also served as scenic designer. He received his third Tony Award nomination when the non-actor-musician production, starring Cynthia Erivo, Danielle Brooks, and Jennifer Hudson, transferred to Broadway in November 2015. book:the-stephen-sondheim-encyclopedia-rick-pender-rowman-littlefield-publishing-lanh#p198

Best Visiting Production: The Color Purple (National Tour at Citi PAC) Small Theatre book:theatre-world-2009-2010-season-v-66-willis#p443

The Color Purple 910 performances Opened December 1, 2005 Closed February 24, 2008 book:theatre-world-2009-2010-season-v-66-willis#p457

Color Purple, The 439, 453 book:theatre-world-2009-2010-season-v-66-willis#p499

Passages naming this show, found by keyword across 178 books. Where this show turns up in the literature, not curated trivia about it.

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