When a woman is fed up, she’s fed up. That was the case for Tony-award-winning actress Tonya Pinkins, who is terminating her run as the lead role in a the Classic Stage Company’s production of Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children before it even opens. The abrupt ending is due to racism and sexism by white creatives.

In a statement entitled “Who Loses, Who Thrives When White Creatives Tell Black Stories?” (see entire statement below) Pinkins said her objections to the way her character, a Black woman, was portrayed in the play, were ignored.

Sounds familiar right?

I always feel a type of way when white writers write for Black characters, and even in some situations having a white director directing a Black actor on what choices to make. I completely understand the roles of the writer and director, and in no way discredit them. Nor is this to say a white director CAN’T direct Black actors. I do, however, have a problem when the actor expresses his/her ideas and offers input and it’s completely ignored. That was the case for Pinkins.

When I think of a show that did this well, I think immediately of Invisible Thread. When I attended a talkback with Griffin Matthews and Matt Gould, they discussed working with director Diane Paulus. She did an amazing job directing because she was willing to listen. Directors aren’t running a dictatorship, they are working in collaboration with everyone, including actors. From the looks of what Pinkins wrote, that wasn’t the case.

She wrote, “twice this year (but too many times in my career) my perspective as a Black woman was dismissed in favor of portraying the Black woman through the filter of the White gaze.”

Is that so surprising? For me, it’s not.

It’s no surprise that Black women are forced to play into respectability politics in order for white people to feel more comfortable or to appeal to them. I went to a talk for How To Get Away With Murder where Tony-award-winning actress Viola Davis talked about her time on The Help. She said there was a scene where she and Octavia Spencer added a bit of dialogue that was shot down by the director. During a dinner-serving scene they added something along the lines of “the crackers want crackers” and the director told them they didn’t think that was a “good choice.” Viola told the audience she didn’t understand how. Especially when the white actors were throwing around the N word, was it not believable that the Black women who were “the help” for white folks were talking smack about them behind their back? Of course it is. They just would rather that we look like the compliant obedient servants than have any will to fight back.  Because God forbid Black women stand up for themselves. Let’s just make them powerless!

Pinkins echoes the same sentiments in her statement, saying the changes made to Brecht’s play left the character originally— a canteen woman who is determined to make her living by following armies into war — “speechless, powerless, history-less and even cart-less.”

Pinkins challenges the theatre world to consider other perspectives that aren’t just white. The world we live in is diverse; the stage should reflect that. I, for one, stand by her statement openly and completely.

“As we begin the new year, I wish for White theater creatives to have the humility to recognize that their perspectives alone are insufficient when portraying Black women and all “others;” that their manufactured fears put false Black images on the stage. I believe this allows real Black people to be destroyed, in the world.”

This statement resonates most with me. I went to a talk where the amazing Harry Belafonte once said, “Art is the gatekeeper of truth.” Is that not why so many people love the theatre? Beyond the spectacle of Broadway and the elaborate sets and flashy costumes, to its core isn’t art supposed to reflect real life? Aren’t theatregoers supposed to relate to these charactersin some way and leave with a message? Well, how is one to receive the message or relate to the character when there is no one up there to relate to? I, too, encourage white theatre creatives to think about what Pinkins is saying. She isn’t complaining, and she should not be dismissed as such. She is making valid points that will only make the theatre community stronger if they are willing to give it a chance. Allow “others” in the room and see how far it will get you. Black stories deserve to be told correctly and unapologetically, by Black people, for Black people.

I stand with Tonya Pinkins. #BlackPerspectivesMatter

Full Statement by Tonya Pinkins:

WHO LOSES, WHO THRIVES WHEN WHITE CREATIVES TELL BLACK STORIES?

The year 2015, saw the rise of #BlackLivesMatter and #BlackGirlsMatter, both movements helmed by powerful, fearless Black women. In 2016 I’m starting #BlackPerspectivesMatter.

Twice this year (but too many times in my career) my perspective as a Black woman was dismissed in favor of portraying the Black woman,through the filter of the White gaze. Regrettably, I must exit Classic Stage Company’s MOTHER COURAGE.

When Black bodies are on the stage, Black perspectives must be reflected. This is not simply a matter of “artistic interpretation”; race and sex play a pivotal role in determining who holds the power to shape representation. A Black female should have a say in presentation a Black female on stage.

CSC’s truncated version (an hour has been cut) eliminates Mother Courage and her children’s backstory, the use of her cart, and much of Brecht’s brilliant commentary on war. Mother Courage is the KING LEAR in the classical cannon of female roles. Not since CAROLINE OR CHANGE, ten years ago, have I had a role of this caliber. How do I walk away from what could be one of the greatest roles in my career? I couldn’t, until all my research, arguing and pleading for my character’s full realization fell on deaf ears. And then I had to.

Brecht’s drama follows Mother Courage, a women who supports herself and her children by selling goods to warring armies from a cart she drags through the battle zones. Along the way, all three of her children are killed because of the war. Mother Courage is the epitome of every poor, undocumented, battered, trafficked and immigrant women hustling to provide for her family however she must.

It’s been a decade since my talent has matched the material – I thought. However, it was not relayed to me until final tech rehearsal that the vision for this Mother Courage (the Black Mother Courage in an African war) was of a delusional woman trying to do the impossible. She would not be an icon of feminine tenacity and strength, nor of a Black female’s fearless capabilities.

Why must the Black Mother Courage be delusional?

The #CSCMotherCourage poster shows my face plastered on an image of the African Continent, the Democratic Republic of the Congo highlighted. The inspiration: Lynn Nottage’s impulse to create a Black Mother Courage, which culminated in her Pulitzer Prize-winning play, RUINED.

What an opportunity to connect Brecht’s anti-World War II play to the war in modern day Congo, Africa’s first World war. My art meeting my activism. The chance to highlight the Chaplain’s line, “If you want to sup with the devil you need a long spoon,” as analogous to America’s participation in the War in the Congo through our appetites for electronic devices which require the resources of Coltan, which is raped and pillaged along with the bodies of Black women and children.

This production does not include a single vestige of the specific war in the Congo. For me, the cultural misappropriation is unconscionable. Why must Africa, why must blackness itself, be singularly nonspecific, a decorative motif, instead of being as specific and infinitely diverse as its reality?

This spring, in RASHEEDA SPEAKING, I was the only Black American woman in the room. Does this matter when portraying a Black perspective? Absolutely! The play purported to be about a Black woman’s struggles working in a White medical office. But for the joy of performing nightly with Dianne Wiest, Patricia Connolly and Darren Goldstein, and the talk-backs I orchestrated with Michael Eric Dyson, Dr Kimberly Crenshaw, Professor James Peterson and many others, it was a soul-murdering experience. It is debilitating, explaining to non-Black people, day in and out, that their conceptions of Black people are not only inaccurate but dehumanizing and offensive.

I won an award for playing Jaclyn in RASHEEDA SPEAKING. Yet months later, people still call out “Rasheeda” when complimenting me on my performance. What they innocently forget, but I am reminded of with each acknowledgement, is that “Rasheeda” was elucidated, in Jaclyn’s climactic monologue in the play, as the new word for “Nigger.” So who is speaking?

Despite Brecht’s title, Mother Courage’s was not the star of this production. My subordinate position was most clearly communicated to me when I attempted to perform a task Brecht specifically wrote for Mother Courage: snatching a fur coat off an armed soldier’s back. The actor playing the soldier argued, “I’m a man. This is a war. She gotta RESPECT that; I’d have to kill her!” I fired back, “Brecht wrote it. Mother Courage CAN snatch the fur coat and not get killed. Brecht is illustrating of her as an ‘Hyena of the war.'” I told the actor I was going to snatch the fur coat, and if he “had to kill me,” the play would have to end seven scenes earlier than Brecht had intended.

I snatched the fur coat at the performance. The actor found a way to continue the play. However, the director said that in future, I couldn’t do it, because, “the actor said he would kill you.” WHAT?!

Mother Courage coddled and reprimanded into submission to patriarchy?

Brecht did not write a delusional woman. He wrote a woman who seizes power at every turn, who forces her way through Hell, and who continues in spite of every opposing force. My Mother Courage was left speechless, powerless, history-less and even cart-less. Why must images of Black women be held hostage in cages of White and/or patriarchal consciousness?

I and many other artists of color have benefitted from having honorary white status bestowed upon us for our work. This status allows us to work alongside the best in the business and to be treated as equals. It is a daily struggle to partake of this status while straining to maintain integrity and authenticity to our own culture. Yet this status is often stripped when we are asked to portray our own people.

I am grateful to Olympia Dukakis, who has played the role seven times, for attending an early preview and giving me the permission to put my ferocity back into the role. I had not realized that the shame I was feeling was the result of having my “creative cock” chopped off every day. The backlash from my appropriate creative turn was immediate. One crew member complained “I just cant control her.”

Am I a dog or a slave to be misled so as to be controlled in my artistic expression?

I was even told that the cuts related to Brecht estate rights and permissions associated with our transposition to the Congo. So I contacted the attorney to the Brecht estate to fight for the integrity of the text that Brecht wrote. The attorney assured me that changing the Thirty Years War references to Congo War references was acceptable to the estate, and that all such matters were artistic decisions between artist and director. Well, not this artist.

My Mother Courage was neutered, leaving the unbridled Mother Courage wasting away inside me. My Mother Courage is too big for CSC’s definition. So it is best that they find someone to “fit in,” because I cannot.

I recall reading, Tony Kushner’s translation of Mother Courage, which was sent to entice me to accept the role. The pinnacle of my career has been CAROLINE OR CHANGE. Caroline’s power reigned on every page. So I know what that power feels like, and this is not it. CSC’s “Mcdraft” was not even from the Kushner translation.

Why, in 2015, in the arts, is there a need to control the creative expression of a Black woman?

As we begin the new year, I wish for White theater creatives to have the humility to recognize that their perspectives alone are insufficient when portraying Black women and all “others”; that their manufactured fears put false Black images on the stage. I believe this allows real Black people to be destroyed, in the world.

As we enter 2016, the collective White creative community has a responsibility to bring as many “others” into the room, both onstage and offstage, before, during and after decisions are made. Only then will the beauty of global humanity be heard, seen, and finally understood, so that the truth wipes away the misconceptions and misappropriations that cause the fear which foments violence around the globe.

The world can no longer afford to have artistic visions of all White worlds because they simply do not exist. I want the theater to look like the city streets I walk on. That is the theater I aspire to participate in, one where #OtherPerspectivesMatter and are respected and reflected.

I am contractually obligated to perform in #CSCMotherCourage through January 3, 2016.

The post Black Perspectives Matter: Why Black Voices Deserve To Be Heard appeared first on Broadway Black.

I came across a piece of commentary written to mimic the style of Pinkins’ recent releases, but reflecting the way some outsiders perceive Pinkins’ point of view.

“It is not enough that I am the title character. It is not enough that I am given liberty to change the staging, and effectively co-direct the play. If I cannot control everything from the set, to the lighting, to the costumes, to the score, to the goddamn script, I’m going to throw a temper tantrum and quit your stupid play. And even if you do give me complete control of the entire production, including what everybody gets paid, you had all better properly kiss my butt on command or I will still quit! And I will then play the race card and the gender card”

This is exactly what Pinkins is speaking out against.

You can have an entire website dedicated to hate speech and slander, and title it with that person’s name, because, as previously stated, the Internet is the best place to come to share our opinions, right?

I’m glad we’re on the same page, but let’s make sure we are on the same paragraph.

While it’s empowering to share your experiences and stand your ground, what you won’t do is blatantly discredit the experience of another. Disagree with decisions, sure. But discredit their experience? Never.

Emphasis on THEIR. THEIR, meaning, something YOU or OTHERS may not have experienced, but, an instance, feeling, idea, or circumstance that a person and/or group can speak to because it is part of their life and has been woven into their everyday truth.

Hear me and hear me loud and clear.

There are no cards.

You will not tell me that my experience as a Black woman in America does not have validity. You won’t belittle my cognizance and consciousness around the daily sexism, racism, and prejudice I face.

My life experiences are not cards.

They are issues.

To open up your vocal cords, or take to a computer to draft a message despite living in a world that continuously shows us our lives and PERSPECTIVES don’t matter, is an act of resilience. Time and time again, we may not speak out in fear that our experiences will be ripped apart and discarded and we will be deemed whiney, angry, weak, or lazy.

In her latest statement, Pinkins proclaims no man will speak for her in 2016, largely in response to the he said she said that’s been going on in response to her first statement. She highlights the importance of the intersectionality between race and gender, which results in an experience that many in the production have not experienced.

She says:

“My departure from CSC’s Mother Courage was not bourne of one episode but of a lifetime of experiences of inequality, patriarchy and misogyny. CSC’s Mother Courage was simply the straw to break my silence.”

Tonya’s experiences aren’t cards. They are issues that have built up her courage to not only share her experience, but act on how these experiences made her feel. She broke her silence, and because SHE broke it, all we need to do is listen to her voice.

Read her entire statement in response to those who have spoken out about her initial statement

No Man Speaks For Me in 2016

There is a plethora of “He said, She said surrounding my departure from Classic Stage Company’s Mother Courage. Tonya said this and Brian Kulick said that and Michael Potts says this… “

Now I say, Michael Potts is not equipped to speak for me. Michael Potts was a postscript to the production after John Jelks, withdrew for personal reasons. If, as Potts says, “I was running it,” the Chaplain would have been played by Frances Jue.

Potts states that I, “…insisted on being called ‘Momma…” which he spells like the disrespectful ‘Yo Momma.’ I asked to be respectfully called ‘Mama’ as in Mama Nadi in RUINED. A term of respect for women of a certain age in the Congo. Potts’ ignorance of this appellation is emblematic of his myopia throughout this production.

It was at my suggestion that CSC endeavored to negotiate a new translation by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. When that proved impossible, Eve Ensler of V-day: City of Joy in the Congo was the next and best choice. Eve and I would be following in the footsteps of Ntozake Shange who translated and transported Mother Courage the Reconstruction South forThe Public Theater and Rose Mbowa. who translated and performed as Mother Courage in the first authorized African production in Luganda the language of Uganda. But, a couple of weeks before rehearsals began, I was told that the death of Brecht’s heir stalled the approval of an Ensler translation in time for the start of our production. In hindsight, I question if that was even true. This left me with Kulick’s Frankenstein “McDraft.” based loosely on John Willet’s edited translation of the Brecht.

Potts appears in a little less than half of the play and has donned himself narrator of a my experience? HE didn’t hear me say this when HE thought I should. Why isn’t Potts more versed in the job he was elected to; Equity Deputy? As deputy, Michael Potts failed the black women in Mother Courage by failing to attend to their beseechings.

Mirrirai Sitole and Zenzi Williams asked Michael Potts to call an equity meeting to address the testosterone overdosed environment. I asked Potts about the meeting and he replied “The meeting occurred and you were late” The meeting he referenced was a meeting of Kulick, cast and crew. Only Equity members may attend Equity meetings. Potts never called the “equity meeting” the women requested.

Zenzi Williams said ,”I have never been spoken to the way he [Brian Kulick] spoke to me.” Mirirai Sithole was traumatized and said “It was not a safe space.” Both women were brought to tears in rehearsal. On this Potts is as mute as dumb Katrin. Ladies forgive me for telling stories that are not mine to tell but Michael Potts is white washing history to defend the master, to protect the way it is and the way it is must change.

I told Kulick that as Artistic Director of Classic Stage Company and as the director of the play, he was responsible for the squelching mysogyny. I said it to his face with company members present. He said, “I’m sorry,” He did nothing.

When Kevin Mambo ceased playing the scenes with me in performance and instead circled me on stage like I was prey. Kulick did not stop him. Instead, he told me I “…was driving the actors [male] insane.” Well, Mother Courage is supposed to drive the men insane because they can’t have her, they can’t control her and they can’t stop her. That was Brecht’s intent.

Kulick spoke for himself regarding his trans[-]plantation of Brecht to the general Congo. Does Kulick need Potts, to be his armor the way we three Black women needed him to be ours during this ordeal? Potts failed us then and continues to fail us now. Kulick empowered the male actors to behave like men in war, to bully and undermine us because women are always the first casualties of war.

Dr. Robin D. G. Kelly, author and Gary B. Nash Professor of American History at UCLA states that “Black women are in fact more vulnerable because of the exclusions of race and gender and Black men often play a role in perpetuating inequality/vulnerability/oppression,”

Potts and Kulick have worked together five times. I surmise Potts’ is safeguarding his next job by sacrificing me, the Black woman who spoke truths that he would rather remained unspoken. Black women show up in support of Black male movements everyday. Why Potts are you coming for me when White men are at the apex of a pyramid built upon Black vaginas?

Dr Kimberle Crenshaw, co-founder of The African American Policy Forum and law professor at UCLA and Columbia University School of Law says, “We have failed Black [women] when their experiences are not centered at the core of our vision of racial justice. We have failed them when we resist empowering women as core leaders of our organizations. We have failed them when we subject them to catcalling and other forms of sexual harassment on the front lines of protests against racialized violence. We have failed them when we applaud their work in these settings, while marginalizing them in the corridors of power behind closed doors.”

“We have also failed them when we encourage or force them to choose between their gender and their race; and when we question their loyalty to the race when they raise feminist issues rather than working with them to erase the roadblocks those concerns represent.”

My experience at CSC reflects inequality at the intersection of race and gender. Were I differently abled, transgendered, muslim or a combination of them, I would experience inequality distinctly differently for each and every way in which I was not a part of the healthy, White, male, Christian normative of American society, where privilege and power reside.

Just as there is uniqueness within that “norm”, there is infinite and overlapping uniqueness outside of it. Intersectionality addresses overlapping social identities and related systems of oppression, domination or discrimination. Potts would deny me my unique experience and voice.

My departure from CSC’s Mother Courage was not bourne of one episode but of a lifetime of experiences of inequality, patriarchy and misogyny. CSC’s Mother Courage was simply the straw to break my silence.

-Tonya Pinkins

The post Tonya Pinkins Pt 2. : It’s Not A Card, It’s An Issue appeared first on Broadway Black.

Brecht’s play follows trader “Anna Fierling” as she pulls her canteen wagon and her children through the carnage of Europe’s religious wars. According to the Classic Stage Company’s web site, “She’ll do anything to hold onto her money-making wagon, even if it means the loss of her children. Experience a timeless tale of war updated to the modern-day conflagration in the Congo, with a new and vibrant score by Tony Award-winning composer Duncan Sheik.”

Pinkins, who was last seen in Joel Drake Johnson’s Rasheeda Speaking, has enjoyed a long and successful career on the stage. She has been nominated for three Tony Awards, winning one for her performance as “Sweet Anita” in Jelly’s Last Jam. She also has won the Obie, the Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards among many others. Pinkins has appeared on Broadway in Merrily We Roll Along, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, The Wild Party, House of Flowers, Radio Golf, A Time To Kill, and Holler If Ya Hear Me, the musical inspired by the work of Tupac Shakur.

Although Broadway has become a second home for Pinkins, Mother Courage isn’t her first appearance in an Off-Broadway production. She’s also performed in the role of “Mopsa, the Shepherdess,” in The Winter’s Tale in 1983. And, in 2012, Pinkins starred in the Off-Broadway production of Katori Hall’s Hurt Village, the gritty drama about life and change in a Memphis housing project.

Joining Pinkins on stage in Mother Courage will be Joshua Boone, Curtiss Cook, Jr., Kevin Mambo, Jacob Ming-Trent, Geoffrey Owens, Michael Potts, Deandre Sevon, Mirirai Sithole, and Zenzi Williams.

Mother Courage opens on December 9. For tickets, visit here.

The post Tonya Pinkins Stars in Great Anti-war Drama, Mother Courage appeared first on Broadway Black.

Continuing their exploration of Bertolt Brecht, Classic Stage Company and Brian Kulick tackle one of Brecht’s most famous plays. 

From the Classic Stage Company’s website:

The indomitable Mother Courage follows one luckless army after another across a war-torn world in her canteen wagon. She’ll do anything to hold onto her money-making wagon, even if it means the loss of her children. Experience a timeless tale of war updated to the modern-day conflagration in the Congo, with a new and vibrant score by Tony Award-winning composer Duncan Sheik (Spring Awakening, American Psycho).

Performances are currently scheduled for Dec. 7 through Jan. 24, 2016.

The post Tonya Pinkins to Star in Classic Stage Company’s Mother Courage appeared first on Broadway Black.