"The Color Purple" to be made into a musical

ATLANTA - A musical version of "The Color Purple," Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, will have its world premiere in September at Atlanta's Alliance Theatre before what is expected to be a Broadway run.

The book has been adapted for the stage by playwright Marsha Norman, who wrote "`night, Mother" as well as the book for the musical version of "The Secret Garden." The score for "The Color Purple" is by Brenda Russell, Allee Willis and Stephen Bray.

The musical, a joint venture with New York-based Creative Battery and Scott Sanders Productions, will open the Alliance's 2004-2005 season for a five-week run, Sept. 9-Oct. 17. Opening night has tentatively been set for Sept. 17, according to Sanders.

The show is directed by Gary Griffin. No casting has been announced.

"The Color Purple" is told through the eyes of Celie, a timid young Southern woman, who is raped by her father, gives birth to two children and suffers years of cruelty married to an abusive man. Whoopi Goldberg (news) played Celie in Steven Spielberg (news)'s 1985 screen version which also featured Oprah Winfrey (news) and Danny Glover (news).

"This is a developmental production for our creative team to put the show on a stage in front of an audience for the first time and to learn what's working and what's not — and to prepare it for coming to Broadway," Sanders said in an interview.

"The Color Purple" had a reading in New York in February, featuring Jesse L. Martin (news), Anika Noni Rose and La Chanze as Celie. A workshop production is planned for June in New York, Sanders said.

"The story is set in rural Georgia and as Alice and I talked about where we wanted to put this in front of an audience for the first time, we really felt that bringing this project back to the South was an important thing to do," Sanders said.

Walker grew up in Eatonton, Ga., and attended Spelman College in Atlanta. Norman is a graduate of Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Ga.

Sanders said another factor in his decision to produce the musical in Atlanta was the reputation of the Alliance, which has staged premieres of works by such playwrights as Pearl Cleage, Sandra Deer and Alfred Uhry. In 1998, the theater staged "Elaborate Lives: The Legend of Aida," which eventually became the long-running Broadway hit "Aida."