Lead in 'The Color Purple' is a career landmark, actress says

Dayna Jarae Dantzler doesn't have one of those jobs you just snooze through. The twentysomething actress portrays Celie, the lead character in "The Color Purple," the gospel-, pop- and blues-inflected Broadway musical that arrives in Richmond for a tantalizingly brief run at the Landmark Theater on Jan. 28-30. The role's swooping, spiraling emotional trajectory could make a Kings Dominion thrill ride blanch.

Each performance is an emotional roller coaster, Dantzler said in a phone interview from Fresno, Calif., where the touring production had alighted for a few days before heading to Albuquerque, N.M.

Introduced in Alice Walker's 1982 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, and reinvented for the stage by book writer Marsha Norman; composer-lyricists Brenda Russell, Allee Willis and Stephen Bray; and director Gary Griffin; Celie is an African-American who grows to womanhood in rural Georgia in the first half of the 20th century, experiencing poverty, brutality and betrayal, but ultimately finding a joyous autonomy and inner peace.

"Celie has been through a series of circumstances that is unfathomable," Dantzler stresses. "The lows are really low, and the highs are really high." Indeed, "having to go through that every single night is probably the hardest thing" about the assignment, the actress says. (Whoopi Goldberg depicted Celie in the 1985 movie "The Color Purple"; actress LaChanze played the character on Broadway.)

"It's also very vocally taxing," Dantzler says, describing her daily backstage ritual of prayer and "a very intense warm-up, because the role is written for [Celie] to sing in so many registers."

A Michigan native, Dantzler graduated from Western Michigan University with a degree in theater and went on to pay her dues working with New York City's Negro Ensemble Company and the Barter Theatre in Abingdon, Va. Landing the part of Celie so early in her professional life (like many actresses, she declines to give her exact age) was a coup.

"This one is a landmark in my career," she says, "probably my biggest steppingstone."

She has been touring with the show for almost a year, using her free time to explore the towns in which she finds herself.

"What's wonderful about touring is that you get to find little gems in America that you never really go see, given any other circumstance," she says.

"Color Purple" composer/lyricist Willis — a pop-music legend whose credits include selling 50 million records; writing hits for The Pointer Sisters and Earth, Wind & Fire, and earning an Emmy nomination for the theme from "Friends" — has seen the actress perform.

"She does an incredible job," Willis says, noting that Celie is an "unbelievably hard role to play" not only because of the emotional ups and downs, but because the character ages over three decades during the course of the story.

Willis praised Dantzler's interpretation of the soaring Act II anthem "I'm Here," Celie's pull-out-the-stops assertion of self-reliance and resilience.

"You cannot be an average singer and pull off that song," Willis says.

"I'm Here" is a celebratory and life-affirming moment, but the musical — which premiered at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta in 2004 before leaping to Broadway, where it ran for more than two years — also contains grimmer material, including physical and sexual abuse.

Dantzler says "there are some dark moments and some touchy subject matter," but says the show is anything but depressing.

She calls it "feel-good." First of all, she says, Willis and the other members of the creative team have supplied ample comic relief to balance the darker elements.

"There's laughter probably in every scene," the actress points out, adding "that's how life is" — a mix of bitter and sweet.

The triumphant ending to Celie's story, and an emphasis on themes "like love and forgiveness and redemption," infuses the musical with spiritual uplift, Dantzler says.

"You'll leave the theater affected in a way that makes you want to go out and share love."