THE COLOR PURPLE
Jeannette in the role of Celie
The Cadillac Theartre, Chicago, IL
www.colorpurple.com

Thu, June 28 1pm
JP Morgan Chase Luncheon celebrating Black music

Fri, June 29 8:20 Tom Joyner Sky Show - live from the Chicago Theatre (Jeannette and Michelle Williams perform "What About Love")

Mon, July 2 at 6pm
Taste of Chicago Concert.
Will air on Fox, My Network and WPVR TV on July 3 & 4

Sun Oct 14 12pm
Sing National Anthem at Chicago Bears game

The intense Jeannette Bayardelle of 'The Color Purple' gives as luminous a portrayal as any seen on Chicago stages in years.
By Sid Smith, Chicago Tribune arts critic
Published May 27, 2007

Throughout "The Color Purple," Celie, the long-suffering, abused, womanly echo of Job, gazes upward and petitions God for guidance. Jeannette Bayardelle, the 29-year-old dynamo who plays Celie at the Cadillac Palace Theatre here, is no stranger to divine interrogation in real life. Some years ago, determined to escape her corporate job, she auditioned for a USO tour and was rejected because she can't dance. "I went into the bathroom, looked in the mirror and said, 'Oh, Lord, I thought this was what you wanted for me.' " she remembers, a moment that foreshadowed ones she enacts as Celie. "A few minutes later, a girl came up to me and said, 'Don't you sing? They're auditioning for Royal Caribbean cruises right down the street.' "

She went and won a job that paid more than the one she had at the time at Unilever, a giant concern whose products, as Bayardelle puts it, range from Dove soap to canned ravioli. "It was the break I needed," she says. These days, a lot of us are thanking whichever deity we worship for Bayardelle's presence in our midst. (The musical is set to run here through Sept. 2.) There are great performances that send you from the theater excited and chatty. And there are miracles, performances that send you out speechless. Bayardelle's Celie is such a wonder. Luminous is one word that comes to mind, a glow never fading despite her role's unimaginable physical demands. Celie is onstage much of the three hours, she ages from 14 to 60, and her emotional states incorporate girlish joy, sadness, sexual tension, gut-stabbing grief, ironic bemusement and a profound, spiritual peace.

After hours of singing, in the very final moments of the show, she's asked to deliver her most soaring, penetrating notes. Surely, thanks to Bayardelle's delivery, there are new holes up in the roof of the Cadillac, blasted through by the laser beam of her voice. For openers, it's tough. "It's funny, the hardest part of the show for me isn't the end, but the first 30 minutes," she says. "Because a lot happens. I'm a young girl who has a baby, and Celie sings, 'Got nothing to give you but a prayer,' " she croons in the interview and croons quite beautifully. "That's harder than 'I'm Here' (her solo near show's end) because it's calm, it takes more control. And then right after, Celie is separated from her sister, Nettie, and I'm on the verge of crying. It takes so much energy out of me."

"I've got great [vocal] cords, but not like Jeannette's," admits co-star Felicia P. Fields, the veteran Chicago musical actress reprising her Broadway debut role as Sofia. "Hers may be the strongest I've ever heard. I stand in the wings, near the end of the show, waiting to go on, and I listen, and I just shake my head." "Her work ethic is amazing; her focus is amazing," says Michelle Williams, the former Destiny's Child member who plays Shug in the show. "When she's ready to work, she's ready to work." Bayardelle shares some of Celie's granite determination and cautious realism. "She is hard to sway," Williams says. "If you offer her a cookie, she'll look at it, turn it over, dissect it first. You have to sell Jeannette on things. But that just means she's not going to fall for anything easily. And once she's in your corner, she's one of the best friends you'll ever have. She tells you the truth. Whether you want to hear it or not." Some of that grit stems from her upbringing in a tough neighborhood -- the Bronx -- in a family with Haitian roots and a heritage steeped in religion, science and care-giving. Jeannette's father is a physician, her mother managed a day-care center, an older sister is a pediatrician and another is a nurse. "I thank God for church," Bayardelle says in explaining how she survived the Bronx. "I learned to sing in church; my two older sisters sang there as well, and we even had a group, the Bayardelle Sisters, for a while. I started singing in church at age 3, and church activities kept me out of trouble."

Building a foundation
She successfully auditioned for the High School of the Performing Arts and graduated in 1995. Sony Music was interested in her while a student, inviting her to be part of a girl group, though not much came of the venture. Still, her high school experience solidified her interest in singing as a profession. "Surrounded by all these other singers just pushes you to be better," she says. She also had a strong interest in rap, dating from much earlier. "I rapped in the cafeteria, with my friends," she says, bursting into the hearty laugh that's part of her natural warmth. "Rapping was just cool." She attended Hunter College and majored in medical laboratory science, which got her the job with Unilever. But hers was a talent not meant to review chemical specifications for food products. After Royal Caribbean, she toured in "Rent," and performed with a deaf theater company's revival of "Big River." Her time in New York also included playing the lead in what she calls an "off-off-off" Broadway gospel musical called "Another Chance." She was first cast in "The Color Purple" as an offstage swing, on hand to step in as Nettie and Celie, as well as other roles. Despite the humbling nature of the job, on opening night, "I was so happy just to be on Broadway," she says. "I was home. I was among them."

The right direction
But, many months later, she remembers confiding to a friend in the show that she thought it was time to move on. "I told her, 'My shoes are too tight here.' A week later, I got the call to audition for the tour." Last November, she took over the role on Broadway prior to the tour, which begins here with this engagement. Fields says she watched Bayardelle grow in the part from tentative outings as understudy to star power. "Gary [Griffin, the show's director] has this way of really pushing you, if you can take it," Fields says. "It's almost as if he puts his foot on your neck. Once she started working directly with him in rehearsal, she blossomed." The story's spiritual ether hovers thickly around the production itself. Bayardelle, Fields, Williams and LaToya London, the "American Idol" alumna who plays Nettie, all learned to sing in church. On opening night, they and other cast members joined for a prayer circle before curtain. Bayardelle, her eyes on a gospel recording career as well, refers to singing as her ministry. She says, "My relationship to God is very important. There are private things I'm waiting for from God the way Celie waits, for her sister, for love. I think about them when I do the scene where her sister finally, after many, many years, comes back, and they reunite. And I think, just like I finally got this part, wow, if you wait, he'll answer those prayers."