Tonya Pinkins quits NYC play, saying her role 'neutered'

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.

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.

[...] Pinkins complained the shift to Africa was "a decorative motif" and it was not clear to her until technical rehearsals that the revival's view of the heroine "was of a delusional woman trying to do the impossible."

The theater company said it has postponed the show's official press opening, which had been scheduled for Jan. 7 and that "the company will continue the production with replacement casting to be announced."