'The Color Purple' becomes a musical

ATLANTA -- After seven years of acquiring rights, finding backers and putting together a creative team, Scott Sanders is ready to present his musical version of "The Color Purple" to an audience, hoping it's the last step before Broadway.\nAnd Sanders' partner is Atlanta's Alliance Theatre, where a tryout engagement begins Sept. 9 for a five-week run.\nThe producer didn't have to persuade the Alliance Theatre's artistic director, Susan Booth, to take on the musical, which is based on Alice Walker's 1982 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.\n"I couldn't imagine this show happening in another theater. … This story grew in this region," she said. "I didn't allow myself to consider that it could go somewhere else."\nSanders and his company, Creative Battery, co-produced "Elaine Stritch at Liberty" on Broadway in 2002. "The Color Purple," set in rural Georgia over several decades in the first half of the 20th century, is his first book musical.\nThe producer said he chose the Alliance over other regional theaters partly because of the staff's reputation. Besides, Atlanta is ethnically diverse and only 30-odd miles from where Alice Walker set the story. "It just felt right," he said.\nBooth considers the musical, which has a cast of 24, the perfect way for the 750-seat Alliance to open its main stage season. The theater has another incentive to host "The Color Purple:" It will receive a small percentage of the gross if the show makes it to Broadway.\nAmong those expected to see the musical are landlords of Broadway theaters. Sanders hopes he will strike a deal for a fall 2005 New York opening.\nAn out-of-town tryout can shape the success of a play or musical geared toward Broadway, said Margo Lion, Sanders' partner for the Elaine Stritch show. She produced "Hairspray" and took it to the 5th Avenue Theatre in Seattle.\n"It's $1 million to have that extra step, but it's a lot less costly than doing it in front of a New York audience where you don't have the freedom," Lion said.\n"The Color Purple," directed by Gary Griffin, has a book version by Marsha Norman, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama "'night, Mother." Music and lyrics are by Brenda Russell, Stephen Bray and Allee Willis, and choreography is by Ken Roberson, whose credits include "Avenue Q."\nSanders describes the show as "the story of a community over a 40-year period as seen through the eyes of one character." That character, Celie, endures years of mistreatment and separation from her sister and children. Eventually she achieves independence with the help of her husband's longtime lover.\nThe film starred Whoopi Goldberg as Celie and Danny Glover as Albert. Oprah Winfrey was featured as Sofia, the hot-tempered wife of Celie's stepson.\nLa Chanze, seen on Broadway in "Once on This Island" and "Ragtime," plays Celie in the musical.\n"We're getting to a point where we need an audience and what it can teach us," said Griffin, who has built a reputation in Chicago directing small versions of such musicals as "My Fair Lady" and "Pacific Overtures."\nSanders should have an easier time evaluating his show than Thomas Schumacher, president of Disney Theatrical Productions, did with "Elaborate Lives: The Legend of Aida," which Disney midwived at the Alliance in the fall of 1998.\n"Elaborate Lives" was hampered by a malfunctioning high-tech pyramid designed to morph into other objects as the set changed. The pyramid broke down during some performances, reducing the show, at times, to a concert musical. "The concept was way too sophisticated for the technology," Schumacher said.\n"We went back to the drawing board and came to Broadway (nearly two years later) with 'Aida,'" he said. "The set was a lovely concept. It enabled us to learn a great deal about the show."\nAs for Atlanta audiences, "They gave us standing ovations. They cheered wildly. We had to go beyond that," Schumacher said. "You can't just watch the curtain call. You have to watch the show over and over again."\n"Aida," with a new director, a new set and some cast changes, had a tryout in Chicago before arriving on Broadway in March 2000 for a four-year run. But, Schumacher said, "The production you see would not have happened if we had not come to Atlanta."\nMembers of "The Color Purple" creative team are eager to put their work before an audience.\n"We're telling a story of triumph and personal empowerment. The audience will be a test of how well we're doing that," Willis said.\nAbout 35 songs have been written, and Roberson has created dances he considers iconic for each time period in the musical. He said he thought theatergoers would have little trouble being drawn into the show.\n"'The Color Purple' is about a character who is learning to express herself," he said. "The last dance number is just freedom.