By Sonya Hollins, editor
editor@comvoicesonline.com
The Color Purple: The Musical
7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 21
Miller Auditorium, Western Michigan University
For more information call, 269-387-2300, or visit: www.millerauditorium.com or click the link on the Community Voices HOME page.
HOUSTON (Texas)-It was a proud day for Dayna Dantzler when she walked across the stage of Miller Auditorium in 2004. Her mother was there from Warren, MI, glowing in pride as Dayna’s name was called to receive her degree in Theatre from Western Michigan University.
Although Dantzler had been a student at WMU for years and active with the theater program, before graduation the closest she came to the stage of Miller Auditorium was the stage behind it in the Gilmore Theater Complex.
On Sept. 21 however, Dantzler will take center stage at Miller Auditorium as she plays Celie, the lead role in the Broadway musical, The Color Purple: A Musical About Love.
While Dantzler has taken the stage over the past six years in such productions in New York in Little Shop of Horrors and Frankenstein, it will be her performance at Miller Auditorium that she most anticipates.
“I am so excited for this show, and very excited for my former professors to see me in action,” said Dantzler during a phone interview. “The hard work has paid off and what they taught me has gone to good use. (Professors) gave us the tools we needed for this journey.”
She is most excited however to see Von Washington Sr., one of her former professors and supporters throughout the years. She also is excited to see Joan Harrington, the current WMU Theatre department chair. It was Harrington who took Dantzler and other students to Scotland during her senior year to perform Women of Troy, Women of War. Dantzler said that overseas experience continues to play a role in her performance today.
“During that performance in Scotland I learned so much about art and expression in the theatrical art form,” Dantzler recalls. “Being around all that passion was mindboggling. I was able to visit Paris and Barcelona and meet others who shared the same passion for theatre.”
It was that passion that led her to take a chance after graduation from WMU to move to New York. She had been performing at The Union downtown, performed at weddings, and worked as a waitress and knew she wanted more. Not knowing anyone in New York, she hit the road with a friend and U-Haul truck to see if she could make it in the Big Apple. During her ride, she listed to a musical CD of The Color Purple her mother gave her as a gift.
“Looking back on that now, it was like fate,” Dantzler said. “It was like a foreshadowing to my future, my life.”
While in New York Dantzler went on Playbill calls for role and would land many of them. When Dantzler learned about auditions for The Color Purple: The Musical, she had to take a chance. After all, she fell in love with The Color Purple as a movie and book.
Since landing the role of Celie, has learned more about the main character than ever before. She is contracted with the show through July 2011 and has traveled the country making people laugh and cry with Celie. They perform eight shows a week, and five-show weekends.
Through it all, she said she and the cast do their best to make the show fresh for audiences and continue to bring integrity to the story of the women of The Color Purple.
And while Dantzler is excited about coming to Kalamazoo, she wants people to see Celie through her acting.
“(Celie) doesn’t really have a family of her own,” Dantzler said. “She thought her sister was dead for most of her life and had to live in an abusive relationship. God is the only person she can talk to. It’s these moments, this connection she has with God that keeps her alive and allows her to love others despite her past.
