Mother Courage at CSC — Page 4

This director's hubris was in thinking he is the intellectual equal of Bertolt Brecht. 

He is NOT.

He should have written his own play about the Congo and left Brecht's play to directors who are up to the task. His own words demonstrate his pretension and intellectual feebleness. He says:

Tonya has articulated her point, let me try to articulate mine:

I had a basic question that I started this process with: Can you treat a Brecht play like we now treat a Shakespeare play? In other words, is a Brecht play as open as a Shakespeare text where you can set it in another time and place and see how the play speaks through the lens of that new setting? It seemed like the most direct analogy for a play like Mother Courage would be to set it in Central Africa in this century. The next question became could you keep the Brecht text as it is and make a transplantation without too much interference with the adaptation? What would it tell us? This added another layer of experience to watching Mother Courage. The result, for me, is that the play becomes haunted by three powerful ghosts: the ghost of the Thirty Years War (where the original version is set), the ghost of the Second World War (that prompted Brecht to write the play) and the ghost of what is still happening in the Congo today. These cumulative hauntings began to say something about war with a capital "W." It also allowed us to use the production as a way of reminding audiences that even though the plight of the Congo does not occupy the front pages of our newspapers, it is an on-going conflict that is still far from over and can use our attention and support.

PalJoey says: What a maroon.

After reading her full statement I'm not sure she will ever work again. Her comments regarding RASHEEDA SPEAKING were rather acerbic.

Now I'm curious: What did she say about RASHEEDA SPEAKING?

(EDIT: Thanks, Clyde, for pointing me toward the quote.)

Updated On: 1/1/16 at 11:00 PM

"On the other end of the experience spectrum was Geoffrey Owens who has been in many Broadway and Off-Broadway productions yet could not stop laughing the entire time."

I thought that was a choice? (A bad one.)

After reading this US News article, I do feel like my initial opinion of this production was validated. The conflict between the "delusional" and "survivor" interpretations were felt on stage as was the complete pointlessness of setting it in the Congo.

As a director, let me say directors may have a final say but an actor can walk. Directors are not infallible and a lead actress around whom a production is being constructed should very much have a deep say in how she sees the story and why it's being told. So, pulling the final say may win the battle but lose the war.

What makes this case of artistic differences so acute is indeed race, simply put.

I agree BC. It is too far in the game to take one's ball and go home. There was plenty of time during rehearsals and opening night to opt out. Everyone in theatre, has at one time or another, worked on turkeys. You know it yet you carry on, doing the best you can, for your castmates, for your creative team, because you are a professional.

I'm not familiar with Mother Courage, so I can't really comment on changes to the script. But I wouldn't characterize Tonya Pinkins' response as some sort of diva outburst. This isn't walking out of rehearsal because some production assistant bought you the wrong coffee- read what she's saying in that statement. Agree or disagree, it seems very clear to me that this is a very important issue for her, and I don't think she came to her decision lightly. It seems unfair to characterize this decision, which seems like it was arrived at after a considerable amount of soul-searching, as something akin to hissy fit. And while no one here was in the room and can say for sure, my impulse is that, as a black woman, Tonya Pinkins is a better authority on the racial politics of this scenario then most of the (presumably) white posters here, and maybe her point should not be dismissed so easily, uncomfortable though it might be to reckon with it. 

HogansHero said: "this point has been made several times in this thread, in several different ways (once by me), but ultimately the responsibility always falls on the director, especially where, as here, he is also in essence the producer. Setting the merits aside, the obligation of a producer and director in relation to a star (especially one who is clearly the raison d'être of a production, is to articulate the "vision" and flesh out any concerns rather than assuming they'll work out in the wash. And as to "professionalism," I see it quite the opposite: a professional is someone with integrity, who doesn't do work that they can't represent.Would that there were more such professionals. Oh, and by the way, the theatre is not a plantation..."

Hear hear!

followspot said: "Now I'm curious: What did she say about RASHEEDA SPEAKING?"

I'm guessing you didn't read her full statement because it was written out there. 

"This spring, in RASHEEDA SPEAKING, I was the only Black American woman in the room. Does this matter when asserting a Black perspective? Absolutely YES!

"The play purported to be about a Black woman's struggles inside a White medical office. Other than the joy of performing nightly with Dianne Wiest, Patricia Connelley and Darren Goldstein, it was a soul-murdering experience. It is exhausting explaining to non-Black people, day after day, that their vision of you as a Black person is not only inaccurate but dehumanizing and offensive.

"I won an award for playing Jaclyn in RASHEEDA SPEAKING. People still call me "Rasheeda" when complimenting me on my performance, months later. What they innocently forget, but I am reminded of with each acknowledgment, is that the name "Rasheeda" is explained in the play as being the new word for "n*" in Jaclyn's pivotal climactic monologue.

"So who is speaking?"

Rasheeda Speaking was, indeed, an insulting and bird-brained exploration of race. I'm glad Ms. Pinkins said what she said (although I'm not sure why she accepted the role in the first place -- all the insulting material is right there in the text). 

Plays are mysterious blueprints. Material on the page may play very differently once actors are on their feet, the roles fully embodied.  "The play" is something David Hare says "takes place in the space between actor and audience..." When Pinkins took that role, she may have seen a compelling ambivalence, a tension or a dynamic between the insults and the possibility of shining a light on them.  An audience experience of character and story can only be guessed at with a brand new play.  That's part of the thrill, part of the risk.  It's not hard to imagine any actor trying to find underlying humanity in a role that raises more questions than answers. If in the rehearsal process the exploration revealed less opportunity for nuance, and something more ham-fisted and insulting, well, it happens.  

https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/Read-Tonya-Pinkins-Full-Statement-on-MOTHER-COURAGE-Exit-BlackPerspectivesMatter-20151230

The above is a link to Ms. Pinkins' full statement. I must have missed it while reading through the thread.

WARNING: If you are worried about spoilers of Brecht, you are probably at the wrong play, but out of respect for internet conventions, let me say there are SPOILERS AHEAD.

The problem with discussing this controversy--other than the fact that most of us weren't there and either haven't seen the production or don't understand what the playwright tried to achieve--is that there is nothing in the play itself that makes either Ms. Pinkins or Mr. Kulick wrong.

"Mother Courage", the character, IS a scrappy survivor. "Mother Courage" IS deluded that she can conduct business as usual without losing what is most dear to her. Setting the play in the Congo doesn't strike me as a terribly good idea (American constructions of Africa--among blacks and whites--are unnecessary baggage), but I'm sure Kulick and Pinkins both know that Brecht never intended his plays to take place "in a galaxy far, far away and long, long ago". Brecht wants his audiences to feel -- with respect, not just "think" but also "feel" -- they have a vital stake in the on-stage affairs. Few of us see much urgency in the religious and dynastic squabbles of the 17th century.

Why Africa? I don't know, but it's a mistake to allege that Kulick is equating Shakespeare and Brecht (although Brecht himself spoke admiringly of the Elizabethans and one of his first plays was a provocative adaptation of Marlowe's EDWARD II). The director invokes Shakespeare because the "argument" over relocation of Shakespeare's plays has been won. Oh, sure, a few stodgy subscribers will grouse when MacBeth rides a Harley Davidson into Dunsinane, but for the most part, critics, artists and the literati accept even the most radical settings of the Bard. So Kulick's point, he tells us, was to see whether critics and audiences would accept the same treatment of Brecht.

One of the reasons Brecht chose the Thirty Years War was that with European life expectancy in the 1600s, millions of people must have been born, lived and died without ever knowing a day of peace during the three decades of that conflict. Central Africa since the 1950s may have seemed to offer Kulick a similar site of "constant and total" carnage. (Just as Afghanistan might, but that has a different set of baggage.)

But it seems that the choice of the Congo was just as problematic, since Tonkins' view has an obvious racial origin and I agree that none of us should dismiss her view out of hand. MOTHER COURAGE is not a play about race, however, and there is nothing in the text that should automatically propel an actress to the point where she feels she is being denied her "agency" as a woman of color. It seems to me we are still missing pieces of the puzzle; it may even be that Kulick has his own, contrary point of view on the matter.

Again with respect, the theme of MOTHER COURAGE is NOT the disproportionate effect of war on the poor. That is a fact, one that anyone with a TV (or radio in Brecht's day) or newspaper should know. And Courage is not the poor: she is an itinerant peddler, a more or less respectable enterprise up through the time of OKLAHOMA! If anything, Courage is something akin to what we Americans call "lower middle class" (it being admittedly difficult to find precise equations of American and European definitions of social class). Yes, she sees some hard times during the war, but she is sometimes flush.

The theme of Brecht's play is business: Business as usual, tending to business, and most of all, minding one's own business. If he has a thesis it could go something like: "mind your own business and you are sure to lose it".

How do we know this? Because Courage herself tells us in Scene 1. She explains that she and her family will have nothing to do with the war, except that they will sell goods to both sides, because, well, one must tend to business. Almost immediately, she loses her first son to two Army recruiters who catch the military-age but unattached young man. So, yes, she is deluded. But Mother Courage never learns. She just goes on. So, yes, she is resilient. She loses her next son not because she doesn't have enough money to pay his ransom, but because she "haggles too long" trying to get a bargain for him. She says it herself, "I've haggled too long." But she still doesn't learn. She just goes on. (Which is another reason not to tell your actress that MC is deluded. MC herself never knows that.) Of course her story has nothing to do with us, still pursuing our vocations in this, the 14th official year of the War on Terror.

I don't know either of these people. (I went to grad school with Kulick and mutual friends say we must have met, but I have no memory of him and I'm sure he has no memory of me.) I'm just speculating as to their reasoning based on what they tell us. But there is a hint in both accounts that while researching Central Africa, Kulick came to see Courage as a symbol of the millions of helpless refugees who are also mothers of murdered children. (This is one of the dangers of too much topicality.)


I can't say I blame Pinkins for not wanting to play victim. That isn't the Courage Brecht wrote.

Updated On: 12/31/15 at 11:13 AM

"The actor says he would have to kill you" is quite a line.

^^^^ I know! Why would a director cave to that sort of extortion from an actor? Particularly at the expense of his star?

Yes, I confused the name, neon. It's 8:30 a.m. here in Cali and I haven't been to bed yet. I'll try to fix my errors. I really appreciate you pointing them out.

Baritone, do read the play again someday. Just set aside your expectation that anybody is going to learn or grow or change. I used to have students write down the "point" of each of the 12 scenes and then compare them. The construction is quite fascinating, but instead of moving from A to L (as in aristotelian drama), one scene may be contradicted or ignored entirely by the next one (which forces us to ask "why?". But the emotional highlights are many and (despite Brecht's rep) deeply moving.)