The Color Purple

Act One

The curtain opens on a Sunday in rural Georgia, 1909. Two young African-American sisters, Celie and Nettie, start to play a game and sing their special song (“Huckleberry Pie”). Meanwhile, the residents of the town are in church singing and enjoying their Sunday mass. Celie (who is 14 years old and pregnant by her stepfather), Nettie, and their stepfather, Pa, are the last ones to enter. While the churchgoers pray, they gossip about who they believe could be the father of Celie’s child (“Mysterious Ways”). Suddenly, Celie feels that the baby is on its way, and her family goes off. After her child, a boy named Adam, is born, Celie sings to him, proclaiming that she will always love him, no matter what (“Somebody Gonna Love You”). Pa enters and forcibly takes Adam from Celie, who wonders if he kills her children and tries to appeal to God for something good to happen to her.

In Pa’s store, Celie and Nettie speculate whether one of them is going to be given off to the strange and