COLOR MY WINGS Dazzles Warrenville Fab Females Realize Reality Trumps Fairytales
Cinderella, her Fairy Godmother, her Stepsisters, and Prince Charming are shocked to find themselves locked up at the Illinois Youth Center in Warrenville (IYC-W)! The characters are even more startled to realize they are part of a bigger musical story. Color My Wings is the new original musical written and produced by the Fabulous Females Ensemble at the IYC,W. The cast is in rehearsals, preparing for public presentations on November 19, 20, 22 and 23, 2008. COLOR MY WINGS tells the stories of Tati, Jessie Anne and a whole group of self-titled ‘Heartless Girls’ who conjure up Fairy Godmother in order to fix their lives.
Hopeful that Fairy Godmother will free them – or at least send Prince Charming on his magic horse to fly them over the wall -- the girls soon realize that Godmother’s bridge to the future starts with a trip to the past, no matter how painful it may be. Through this journey, the girls re-live their anger at the abuse and traumas they have suffered. In the retelling, however, the girls realize the connection between their past anger, their resulting negative choices and their incarceration. They discover that friendship and forgiveness will help them to say, “I can”, and finally open the brilliantly colored wings once crushed by self-loathing and doubt.
“All of the stories and songs are based on personal stories the girls wrote over the past year beginning in January.” relates Artistic Director Meade Palidofsky, “Two stories in particular, Tati’s story of rape and Jessie Anne’s of the tornado, stood out. While very different kinds of trauma, the girls’ reactions to them were the same: depression, despair, substance abuse, truancy from school and activities, then seeking out other ‘angry’ girls like them and eventually committing crimes. These stories were dramatically vivid and served as an easy structure for encompassing the feelings, relationships, and detail of the other girls’ stories. It was exciting to see our Fabulous Females understand the connections between events they could not control and their subsequent actions.”