Mother Courage at CSC — Page 10

^Bingo.

Has everything that can possibly be said about this been said about this?

Has everything that can possibly be said about this been said about this?

Not if BWW can help it.

@Paljoey Nothing is ever one person's fault in the theatre but no question you are right that the fail falls squarely on the director's shoulders. As I wrote elsewhere, the first duty of a director is clarity, and that starts from the first time a project is discussed with an actor. Much here that we don't know, but it is obvious from what we do know that clarity (and consistency) were lacking here.

The contract CSC uses allows for an actor to give two weeks notice to leave the production, which is what Tonya Pinkins did. She gave notice on December 20th, and they all managed to keep it quiet at first while they started to seek a replacement. So it's not that she was only contracted to do the show through January 3rd, but that she exercised the notice clause in the Equity agreement.

Hard during all this to not to think of some of the lyrics from Lot's Wife that she gave such wonderful voice to in Caroline or Change.

broadwayboy223 said: "So this is a musical Mother Courage? Everyone keeps mentioning Ducan Sheik "

Brecht's plays are always sort-of musicals, operettas or "plays with music". If Kurt Weill wrote the score, we usually keep it. If someone else was the composer, like in the case of Mother Courage and Paul Dessau, we like to revise the score every time it's produced. So this time around, the duties were given to Duncan Sheik.

I wish David Mamet's OLEANNA were half as interesting as the exchanges between Pinkins and Kulick, and the resulting conversations here and on FB.

*****

pal joey is right that it is the director's responsibility to ensure that everybody is working on the same show, so to speak, but we have firsthand reports of Ms. Pinkins insisting on certain stage business and then discarding it a few performances later. That may speak to the director's failure to communicate, but it also could indicate an erratic actress, however talented. Directors aren't magicians; some actors just aren't directable (something Larry Kramer considers a virtue).

Updated On: 1/3/16 at 05:44 PM

I'm going to take these emails and turn them into a play set in Vietnam that centers around the forbidden love of a white man and a whiter woman.

Hogan - The following is from Michael Potts, a cast member, in Mother Courage and Her Children.

AND ANOTHER (January 1, 2016): Michael Potts has published a more lengthy update on his Facebook feed. In it he strongly supports Tonya Pinkins’s declaration on race and gender in theatre, but offers a differing perspective on the rehearsal and preview-performance process behind CSC’s Mother Courage:

“I’ve tried to avoid this, but I see things spiraling out of control. Two issues are being conflated. The first, ?#‎BlackPerspectivesMatter?, in which she is completely correct and I wholeheartedly support. The polemic she sets forth in her incredibly well composed statement on race and sex in the theater, is spot on. The second, the Mother Courage rehearsal process is pure hyperbole.

“The question of Mother Courage being delusional (inelegantly put by the director, for certain) was brought up during our very first week of table work. The director was referring to Brecht’s own writing about the character. As he put it in more elegant fashion and repeatedly stated during the entire rehearsal process, Mother Courage is a tragic character because she never learns. War teaches her nothing.

“Actors know very well that there is nothing incongruous about a director holding one view of the character and the actor holding a different view. Directors normally defer to the actor in nearly all cases. Hopefully, out of this creative tussle, something transcendent appears. Such was the attempt in our production.

“Make no mistake, Tonya ran our production from the start. She was Momma Courage, yes ‘momma’, her request and everyone complied including the Brecht estate. Throughout the rehearsal period, when she wanted to make a change, any change, it was allowed.

“Also, actors are aware that even during technical rehearsal and previews, performances are still evolving and subject to change. However, we also hope by that time, after weeks of rehearsal (4 weeks in this case), certain things are beginning to set up. Though, it’s still possible, wholesale changes in blocking and script are normally less frequent at this stage. Therefore, it is also expected that when an actor decides to make a major change in dialogue and/or blocking that involves fellow actors, that there’s a little friendly heads up if not rehearsal given to those actors. Unfortunately, Tonya didn’t get around to doing that. Still, every actor rolled with it. The director wishing to protect the whole has the job of addressing the situation for the sake of everyone involved in telling the story.

“Allow me to address the ‘fur incident’. This was in the script from day one of rehearsal. There were no problems or questions about this part of the scene through 4 weeks of rehearsal. None. We move to the theater. Costumes are added to the technical process of mounting the play. The scene proceeds and only then is there a conflict about a fur. Tonya states her intention to take the fur and explains it’s what Brecht wrote. This is true…in another translation,-not the one we’d been rehearsing for 4 weeks. The actor wearing the fur defends his position grounded in the text we’re working from. Tonya again asserts it’s what Brecht wants and that she intends to take it. The actor defers to the director. Compromises are immediately offered to resolve the issue. None were suitable to Tonya. The debate is tabled and both Tonya and the other actor confer with the director privately. The decision is reached to do the scene as written. During that evenings performance, Tonya takes the fur. The actor has no choice but to let it stand. She is Mother Courage, after all. Too long a story, shortened, both director and actor acquiesce to Tonya’s choice. Tonya takes the fur for two additional performances then announces that she won’t do it anymore. No explanation. Why was it so essential that a week and a half debate was required? Why after 2 performances, was it now ‘suddenly’ not essential? Was it really about Brecht’s intention? What was this conflict/demand really about? Such was the process of this Mother Courage. I witnessed time and again our director bend over backwards, to the point of spinelessness to try to appease Tonya.

Anyone who has worked with Tonya knows that no one silences her. ‘No one puts baby in the corner!’ Tonya is a force. Her brilliance is clear, her intelligence evident by her release referenced in this post.

“Of course, there were honest creative differences as in any other creative endeavor. However, no one was ever muzzled, rebuked, rebuffed, made voiceless or enslaved.

“Put simply, Tonya wanted to move in an entirely different direction once the show was already rehearsed and set. It was too late in the game to re-rehearse a concept.

“Unfortunately, these statements have led people to conclude that the play is a complete mess, that those of us still involved are left with something lesser and by extension we are lesser actors and a director and theater company’s reputation are being unfairly trashed. I’ve read people already conclude that the director is a racist and sexist. You would be mistaken on all counts. Though, there are justifiable critiques of this production, none of them rise to the level of what’s being insinuated.”

@A Director-thanks. I actually found that a little earlier tonight, after I made the earlier post.

@FindingNamo-not amusing. not clever. but thanks for playing. Oh and if the thread is too long for your ADD, you can move on to the next one. In fact, the gnomes at BWW have created this neat feature that actually letsyou see how many replies there are in a thread without opening it so it's really easy to find one that doesn't tax your attention span.

PalJoey said: " It's like everyone was working independently on their own version/interpretation of the material.

Exactly. And that lack of communication is the fault of one person only: the DIRECTOR."

Exactly this.

My favorite part of this thread has been everyone finally (to my knowledge) seeing that FindingNamo isn't as funny as he thinks himself to be and offers pretty much nothing to this board. A red letter day.