Tonya Pinkins' Open Letter to Jesse Green

Well damn. I've never seen such a thoroughly educational and well-researched evisceration of a theatre critic in my life.

I haven't seen the production, but this actually makes me want to revisit the text.

I only read half of it and have it bookmarked to check out, but damn. Very interesting and wish I could see this production now!

I have a few questions,

1) What is the beef between Kushner and Brantley? Can someone spill the beans plz? :)

2) "But history and data have shown that capitalists will even forego profit if it involves uplifting the global majority and particularly Black people." I would love to see the data and "history" that support the argument.

Dancingthrulife2 said: "I have a few questions,

1) What is the beef between Kushner and Brantley? Can someone spill the beans plz? :)

2) "But history and data have shown that capitalists will even forego profit if it involves uplifting the global majority and particularly Black people." I would love to see the data and "history" that support the argument.

"

youll be waiting quite some time before you get any such data. its a hysterical comment. the whole piece is, really. Jesse Green, who championed Caroline or Change last year, hates shows about Black women, and the proof is that his predecessor didnt like Caroline or Change 15 years ago? Are we taking seriously a piece whose thesis turns solely on whether the NYT liked shows that Tonya Pinkins herself was in?

Hogan as usual succinctly cuts to the point on this. I’m not a big fan of Green as a critic, as his mixture of blind spots and peculiar prudish or even snobby inclinations have lead to a rather odd spectrum of reviews. But Pinkins’ essay is a hard read- hard in the sense that it’s meandering, poorly structured, full of leaps of logic, and often seems to be linking personal grievances to the issue of racism in the industry.


And the “Brantley hates Kushner” bit is certainly news to me, and a distracting anecdote to throw in.

PipingHotPiccolo said: "she has come up very short there."

She has and it is thus a wasted opportunity. At first blush, a lengthy article in Medium (with footnotes, no less) appears as a work of scholarship. But it isn't. It reads like a stream of consciousness rant with a lot of non-sequiturs. The Brantley thing, I believe, originated with a weak-on-causation claim based on the 2004 Pulitzer neglect of Caroline. (Brantley chaired the drama committee that year.) Regardless of the merits of the Brantley/Kushner question, it's a great example of a sidebar that does not appear to have a developed nexus to any thesis in the article. There remains a very profound article on this subject that would actually make some searing points.

^ I was speaking for myself and not referencing anyone else's comments here, something I thought was pretty clear given my use of "I" twice. It was about my own internal reaction and thinking.

Updated On: 11/14/22 at 12:24 AM

I went back to finish reading it.

Your review says, “O’Hara concentrates his prodigious theatrical imagination on Walter Lee.” [...] You saw us as Walter Lee sees us. You focus on Black male brokenness rather than all the Black women’s strength.

I do think it's fair for her to critique him if his bias led him to focus on the male character regardless of how the production presented the script. And she makes interesting points about trying to accept a revival as a new interpretation of the text rather than comparing it to canonically accepted story of past productions.

An important lesson for all theater goers, critics, actors, directors, teachers: the stage directions in a script are just what the stage manager of the first production remembered to write down. They may not be what the playwright wrote. Good actors block them out at the start of rehearsal.

Interesting...

Walter Lee has seen the mask of whiteness in white restaurants and limousines and he aspires to it; yachts and pearls. Lena, Ruth and Beneatha have seen the underbelly of whiteness. They wash white peoples ‘drawers’ and they have no aspirations to any part of that. If Walter Lee suffers any “distress” it is foolishness, immaturity, and the aspiration to too low a standard for a family with so much pride and integrity. [...] It is understandable that the play, which is a critique of male mysogyny was sold as the story of a tragic black man’s dreams.

This does sound like a compelling reading of the play.

For the New York Times to uplift Black story it must pay tribute to white story, value and imagination. [...] Few get to tell authentic African diaspora stories in the commercial theater if the story doesn’t center whiteness or fit the limited white imagination of Blackness. [...] I have witnessed this at almost every institution I’ve taught in, white teachers training black artists out of their authenticity and into something they the teachers can manage and feel comfortable with.

Outside of this, the letter goes off into tangents of ego and personal grievance. They don't hold up as evidence. I agree that she makes worthwhile points but you have to dig for them.

JasonC3 said: "PipingHotPiccolo said: "but you used the word "torn" as if there was a conflict between the two, which i don't follow. thats all."

There is inherently a conflict between letting people speak as they wish and wishing they would speak differently. That's all I was trying to say about me feeling torn between the two."

I don't think many people had difficulty following what you were saying. (I didn't.)