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There really are no reruns in theater.

No matter how many dozens or thousands of times a play has been produced, it is always the creature of whoever is directing it now, subject to the director's perspective, his or her sense of drama, history and humor.

Two plays opening in Albuquerque today — "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf" at Desert Rose Playhouse and "The Taming of the Shrew" at Sol Arts Performance Space — are good cases in point.

Ntozake Shange's "Colored Girls," first performed in 1975, consists of a series of 20 poems acted out by seven female characters named Lady in Red, Lady in Yellow, Lady in Blue, etc.

But Shange is a black playwright, and all the characters in the play, as she wrote it, are definitely black women.

The stories Shange tells through her poems are about black women suffering physical and emotional abuse at the hands of black men and also about the ability of black women to survive loneliness, rejection, abandonment, beatings, rape and more.

However, the story director Alisia Downing tells in the Desert Rose production is not tied so firmly to race.

Part of that is a fact of casting. Downing was casting on the basis of ability, not race, and in any case not enough black actors auditioned to permit an all-black cast.

But part of it is also Downing's view of the play.

"This show does deal with race, but it also deals with issues that anyone of any race can relate to," said Downing, who is 23 and biracial. "If you can look past the color of it, it's just people going through lost love and dealing with rape and abortion. It's a journey through life, how you take that journey and get to the end of your own rainbow."

William Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew" was probably first performed in 1594. It is about Petruchio, who marries Katherine, also known as Kate, a sharp-tongued, bad-tempered woman, and how Petruchio turns Kate into a pleasant and dutiful wife by treating her like dirt.

There are those who would say old Will's story line could stand a little tampering, and Bradd Howard, who is directing the play at Sol Arts, has been happy to oblige.

Howard has updated the setting of the play to the 1980s, cast most of the male roles with female actors and both female roles with male actors. Bianca, Katherine's sweet and lovely sister, is played by a 6-foot-3-inch man.

"I was trying to think of something fun for the summer," said Howard, 30. "Traditional Shakespeare can sometimes seem stiff and difficult to connect with."

The loud colors, hula hoop resurgence, Cyndi Lauper music and Boy George image of the '80s definitely puts a new stamp on "Shrew."

"We tried to play up every '80s stereotype we could think of in this show," he said.

But Howard's changes go beyond elaborate window dressing.

He retains Shakespeare's text, but he alters the motivation for Kate's evolution from distressing damsel to devoted spouse.

"The way I wanted to play it is that instead of being tamed, Kate pretends to be tamed in order to really have the power in the relationship," he said.

Downing got acquainted with "Colored Girls" about a dozen years ago when, as a little girl, she watched from the wings as her father, Thomas, directed a production of the show in Riverside, Calif.

"I fell in love with it then," she said of the play. "I was young, but I got the gist of it, and I was able to witness the process (of bringing it to the stage)."

She said she gleaned some of her father's ideas, but she definitely had a different outlook than he has on how the show should be presented.

"There are things, obviously, that a female clings to and relates to differently than a man does," she said.

Downing herself plays one of the roles, Lady in Red. The remainder of the cast, she said, is made up of women, who, like her, are of mixed heritage.

"There are parts of this play that specifically talk about color," she said. "But I think it is really about coming to terms with who you are, which is a universal message."

In Sol Arts' "Shrew," Katherine Mocho, who has portrayed Kate in a previous production of Shakespeare's play, portrays Petruchio this time out.

And Garrick Garcia is Kate in the Sol Arts production.

Howard said one reason he chose to mix genders in his casting is to mollify the nastiness of Shakespeare's "Shrew."

"Petruchio is so cruel in the way he goes about getting Kate to do his bidding," Howard said. "He starves her, plays with her mind, tells her things are different than the way they really are.

"By putting the characters in drag, we are making them overlarge parodies of themselves so instead of seeming cruel, the play is funny. It is supposed to be a comedy."

Besides, Howard points out, in Shakespeare's day, plays had all-male casts. Boys played the roles of young, female characters such as Bianca.

But probably not 6-foot-3-inch boys.

"No," Howard conceded. "Probably not."