In Rasheeda Speaking, Tony-winner Tonya Pinkins plays Jaclyn, an office worker pitted against her co-worker Ileen (played by Oscar winner Dianne Wiest) when claims of arrogance and incompetence against the former, force the latter to supervise her every move. Most of all their boss (Darren Goldstein) finds Jaclyn to be “unnerving”, but he assures Ileen that this has nothing to do with her being the only black person working in the office. Directed by Cynthia Nixon like a tense thriller, Joel Drake Johnson’s play comes alive through its clever use of dark comedy and farcical situations which allow audiences some room for nervous giggles and enough brain food to last for days.
Pinkins delivers a larger-than-life performance that goes from over the top comedy to subtle touches that combine horror and heartbreak. Ms. Pinkins has had a long career onstage having delivered memorable performances in Caroline, or Change, The Wild Party and Jelly’s Last Jam for which she won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. Rasheeda Speaking allowed her to bring to the table a topic that she finds is rarely discussed in the open and she was kind enough to talk to us about this, as well as looking back at the parts she’d love to play and even gave us a preview of her upcoming performance in Broadway by the Year.
You've said that part of what attracted you to Rasheeda Speaking was that it was unafraid to delve into often unspoken racial issues. Has than been a part of your process as an actor in choosing roles before?
I think Holler If Ya Hear Me was a show that really dealt with some things that people didn’t want to talk about, but generally I’m just taking a job because it’s a good job and I like the people in the room. I don’t think that Joel wrote the play aware that it would be what it turned out to be. So no, that’s not a criteria I use.
Not even in A Time to Kill?
Nope.
Fair enough. Is it easy for you to play these parts on a daily basis? Like what you did in Caroline, or Change for instance?
Caroline, or Change is an extraordinary piece and it’s so close to my heart. There’s a fullness and tridimensionality about Caroline because you see her with her work, you see her with her children, you see her at home, with her friends...the tridimensionality of this character is very whole and complete and that’s why it’s probably the finest role I’ve ever played. Besides the music, it’s a shining example of writing for an African American woman. The difference in Rasheeda is that you only get to see my character in one setting, in one context and the setup for that context is what some white people think about her. So she’s already hamstrung before she walks in through the door because you’ve been told who she is, so now you have a bias and you’re going to look at her based on what you got told she is. It’s a hard role, because she’s described in a harsh light and then she comes into the room and she’s responding to what she’s given to her. You get to see her only through a very small prism, not even that, just a lens, and you try to fill in other aspects of her life that you don’t get to see in the play.
Which sadly sums up the way in which people respond to others based on race specifically.
Right, we had a talk back after the show the other day with Michael Eric Dyson, and one of the things he said is “the only place where there truly is integration for most white people is their work”. You don’t go to church with black people, you don’t socialize with black people, so the only time you actually have to run into them is at your work. This is a very small area of interaction to have any sense of who people are.
Sounds like these parts can be exhausting or draining to play on some level.
As I said, Caroline, or Change was just a release, it had space. Rasheeda Speaking is a little bit more exhausting because it is such a narrow area of expression, my character doesn’t get the release of hanging out with her daughter and tell her about her day, or talk to her neighbors. If you only see her in the pressure cooker of the office where she is being judged and monitored at all times, so it is tense. I come home and I think the show has been more stressful than any show I’ve ever been in, perhaps because I’m getting older.
The audience reactions were so interesting, because you can feel people around you being tense and nervous. Do you play off against that?
I can’t see the audience but we can certainly feel the energy, we can feel when they’re scared, when they’re loving it, when it’s uncomfortable, so yeah, it’s a wonderful thing. One of the greatest things theater can do is be provocative and make people uncomfortable and make people go home and have to sit with something they have to think about, make them question their own lives. I think the biggest issue we have around race is that the dominant culture does not understand their privileges, even the ones who if you were to ask them they would say “I want equality, I want to make things better for black people”. I keep quoting Michael Eric Dyson, because he and his wife Marcia are brilliant, and said that the one thing that inside Caucasian culture is that they are always helping each other, they are giving each other opportunities and internships and so, that’s a huge privilege they aren’t giving to people outside of their culture. That alone gives this huge advantage, when an audience member asked Michael “what can we do to make it better?”, he replied “why are you asking me? You have the power, what can you do to make it better?”. He also said that black people would have it better if mediocre black people had as much a chance at success as mediocre white people have.
Thinking of theatre as a workplace, do you find the injustices and changes in your workplace equally daunting? Beyond race, women of certain ages get offered less parts for instance.
It’s not daunting, you just keep trying to do what you do and you try to be a voice in the space, you hope that young writers and composers see the world differently. I do believe that we are evolving towards the better, I was just talking about this wonderful TED Talk “How Not to Be Ignorant About the World” which I highly advise you seek out, that proves that everything is moving towards the better, and that’s such a wonderful thing to know.
There was this video going around with you performing "Somewhere That's Green" from Little Shop of Horrors with Alan Menken at an after party for The Shakespeare & Co fundraiser at The Berkshires. How did that happen?
His daughter was in the company and she was doing a show up there, I think she was doing Master Class, so Alan was there staying at a hotel. At the party for the event he sat down on the piano for a couple of hours, and I’d been doing that song in my nightclub act - which were all great songs I loved from characters I wouldn’t play because I’m an African American woman - but that one I’d been an understudy on, and Howard [Ashman] had always told me that the reason they didn’t cast me in the show was because the only role I was really right for was Audrey, so I said “let me do Audrey!”
Do you feel theatre is much more inclusive when it comes to color-blind casting?
Oh absolutely! The theatre is more integrated than Hollywood, even our voting body for our awards is a more integrated voting body, and there’s just a respect for talent in our industry. I mean sometimes money will win in our industry, but in Hollywood it’s only about money. Talent isn’t a prerequisite to be in a movie, however if you wanna be onstage and you wanna play a part eight shows a week, you’re gonna need the talent and the stamina or you just can’t do it.
Are there any traditionally white roles that you’d love to play?
I’d love to do Mrs. Lovett, Mama Rose in Gypsy which I’d talked to about to Arthur [Laurents] the last time he did it.
You made your Broadway debut in Sondheim's Merrily We Roll Along in 1983, do you have a go to Sondheim song?
I do “Like It Was”, I do “Not a Day Goes By”...I do a lot of Sondheim songs.
Can you give us a teaser of what you’ll be doing on Broadway by the Year? Or is it a surprise?
I don’t think it’s a surprise, I’ll be singing “The Thrill is Gone”.
Wonderful! The best thing about this series is that they allow people to experience music that otherwise they wouldn’t get to listen to live very often.
Yeah, and you get to work with people that in the actual theatre world you wouldn’t often get to work with. In the last Broadway by the Year I was doing love songs with Brian d’Arcy James, how often are you gonna see that? Then there was me and Carole J. Bufford and Elizabeth Stanley singing together, I mean, you don’t get that on Broadway or even off-Broadway.
You said once in an interview that looking back at the time when you won the Tony for Jelly’s Last Jam, you wish you would have been more confident. What advice would you give yourself if you could go back in time?
You know, I was singing last night at the Maury Yeston tribute at The Metropolitan Room, and as recently as two years ago I still was shy and not comfortable about getting up and singing as myself. I was only comfortable singing in the context of a show, and two years ago I realized I needed to work on this, so I went and did like twelve cabarets. I wrote twelve different cabarets and did them, just to break out of that, and now I’m like “it’s OK, I can get up and do a song”. That used to be impossible for me, I remember during Jelly’s Last Jam I was asked to sing for President Clinton and I was just afraid, I was just too afraid.
Rasheeda Speaking plays through March 22. For tickets and more click here. Broadway by the Year begins its new season on February 23, for tickets and more click here.
