NEW YORK (AP) – Bertolt Brecht’s epic play “Mother Courage and Her Children” may be about the horrors of war, but a new off-Broadway production is revealing real conflict offstage, too.
Tony Award-winning actress Tonya Pinkins said she will abruptly leave the Classic Stage Company’s revival early next month, claiming the part has been “neutered,” ”subordinate” and created through “the filter of the white gaze.”
“Why, in 2015, in the arts, is there a need to control the creative expression of a black woman?” she wrote in a statement. “Am I a dog or a slave to be misled so as to be controlled in my artistic expression?”
The play is about a woman who runs a canteen-on-wheels during the Thirty Years’ War, which spanned 1618-1648. She is dependent on the bloodshed around her in order to keep her business flush and support her family.
In the Classic Stage Company revival, directed by Brian Kulick, who is the artistic director of the company, the play’s setting was changed to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the script was cut.