The Color Purple is a musical which is based on the acclaimed 1982 epistolary novel titled The Color Purple, by American author Alice Walker. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1983 and was made into a film with the same title in 1985 starring Whoopi Goldberg, Danny Glover and Oprah Winfrey. The Color Purple on Broadway opened at The Broadway Theatre on 1st December 2005 directed by Gary Griffin and produced by Scott Sanders, Quincy Jones and Oprah Winfrey. It is choreographed by Donald Byrd and music and lyrics by Allee Willis, Brenda Russell and Stephen Bray. The book is by Marsha Norman.

The Color Purple the musical touches upon subjects that were considered to be very sensitive issues then, like black female life and her low position in American society. It also dealt with many explicit topics like lesbianism, house violence and wife beating and the story of The Color Purple is one of the most challenged stories in American literature and is the constant target of censorships.

The story of The Color Purple revolves around a 14 year old black girl named Cecile. She is poor and uneducated and is abused and impregnated twice by a man who she thinks is the father of the children. Both times, her babies face infanticide at the hands of that man, who takes them away “to be with God”. Afterwards, she is married off forcefully to another abusive man, Albert, a widower who already has many children of his own. Her younger sister Nettie also joins her in her new home. Albert had originally wanted to marry Nettie and tries to seduce her, but failing to do so, he kicks her out of the house. Nettie promises to write, but Cecile gets no letters from Nettie and thinks she might be dead. Will Cecile find a way out of this hellish life? Is Nettie still alive, and in what condition? You will just have to buy tickets to The Color Purple to find out what happens next!

Tickets to The Color Purple on Broadway began selling in 2005 before its opening in December. The US tour of The Color Purple the musical began in April 2007 in Chicago, Illinois. It did extremely well. People buy tickets to see The Color Purple in great numbers and ticket sales to The Color Purple Broadway and The Color Purple US tour were high. Fantasia Barrino played the lead character Cecile from April 2007 to January 2008 for which The Color Purple won the 2007 award at the Theatre Worlds Awards. The hit Broadway musical The Color Purple has made more than $100 million to date.