This is not your mother’s for colored girls, and it’s not Tyler Perry’s either. For colored girls is a “choreopoem,” a series of 20 poems depicting the struggles and obstacles recognizable to any African-American woman. Performed by a cast of seven women, each of whom is known only a color (“Lady in Brown,” “Lady in Green,” etc.), the poems deal with love, fulfillment, abandonment, and abuse, frequently set to music and expressed in dance. Moments of joy are darkened by tales of tragedy, including the Lady in Blue’s visceral account of an abortion and the Lady in Red’s chilling tale of domestic violence. The end of the play brings together all of the women for “a laying on of hands,” in which Shange evokes the power of female unity beginning with the mantra, “I found God in myself/and I loved her/I loved her fiercely.”