By Les Spindle
Back Stage West Nov. 11-17,2004

For Tonya Pinkins, personal growth and career success coincide.

If art mirrors life, and vice versa, Tonya Pinkins, the actor, appears to be in her prime while Tonya Pinkins, the human being, is finding new levels of contentment and inner peace in her life. It's hard to fathom, but this graceful and bubbly lady-a Tony winner (For Jelly's Last Jam) and an acclaimed singer/actor of stage and TV for two decades-has periodically struggled with devastating personal problems that invariably seemed to coincide with slumps in her illustrious career.

She now teaches actors what she calls the Actorpreneur Attitude, encouraging them to take responsibility for their success, moving beyond issues of low self-esteem and self-imposed barriers. She strongly believes that actors have the capacity to make their dreams come true and that they need to learn how to allow this to happen. She practices the principles that she espouses and says this has pulled her out of the doldrums and set her career back on its current fast track. Foremost among the good things now coming her way is the opportunity she was given to work with a dream team of renowned theatre artists: playwright/lyricist Tony Kushner angels m America), composer Jeanine Tesori, and director George C. Wolfe. The fruit of their labor is the highly praised. Tony-winning Broadway musical Caroline, or Change, which makes its Los Angeles debut Nov. 14 at the Ahmanson Theatre.
Caroline, set in 1963 Louisiana at the height of the Civil Rights movement and just prior to the John F. Kennedy assassination, centers on downtrodden and stoic African-American maid Caroline Thibodeaux (Pinkins), who's trying to raise four children on her own while earning only $30 a week. She's employed by a morose Jewish family: the recently widowed patriarch, his new wife, and the man's precocious 9-year-old son. The key relationship is between Caroline and the boy, the title of the play reflecting both the growth of the characters during the course of the story and a catalyst in their conflict: coins that he leaves in his pants pocket. This relatively simple matter sets in motion a domestic crisis that evokes echoes of the social changes sweeping the American South at the time. The book, inspired by Kushner's memories of his years growing up in Louisiana, is intermingled with Tesori's songs, in what is reportedly close to a sung-through style.
Pinkins recently shared some thoughts with Back Stage West on her experience with this production, as well as highlights in her career and her journey to personal and professional satisfaction. Happiness is evident in her voice as she begins describing this role and the current positive direction of her career and personal good fortune. "All the way around, it's a good, good thing," she asserts. "In August of last year I was living on welfare and struggling to raise my children. I have two homes now, and a book deal and a movie. This is how powerful what I've learned is, and why I have felt so called to teach, but not everybody wants that. Most people are more interested in why things didn't happen-rather than the fact it is really easy for them to happen when you take responsibility for your life."
For years, between her career triumphs-a Broadway debut at age 19, a Tony nomination in Sheldon Epps' Play On!, a regular role on CBS' As the World Turns-Pinkins suffered psychological damage inflicted by an abusive husband, whom she eventually divorced. She spent years trying to regain custody of her children while paying astronomical child support fees and having her wages garnished. She has written very openly about her travails in the book Trial of Faith. She admits to being near homeless at times, and she gave up acting altogether for a while, living in Mexico and working as a pre-kindergarten teacher. There have been career ups and downs in recent years. In 2000 she starred in the Michael John LaChuisa musical The Wild Party on Broadway, and she created the role of bon-vivant heiress Muzzy in the 2000 pre-Broadway version of Thoroughly Modem Millie in La Jolla. More personal problems surfaced after that.
She says the reason for her recent turn of fortune, including a return to her role in the ABC daytime drama All My Children - which she first played in from 1991 to 1996-is "I absolutely practice what I teach." She continues, "I went to a therapist and said, 'I'm stuck. Can you help me think differently?' [The therapist] said, 'I can't help you; your problems are in the real world.' That was even more devastating, and then I started finding some of the greatest trainers in the world and studying with them, and I learned that no, it really was in my head. That's when I changed my way of thinking, the way I spoke, and what I allowed to come into my consciousness. As soon as I changed that-whether I believed it or not-is when I began practicing, speaking, and thinking more positively, and my life transformed instantly." Pinkins, whose parents were civil servants, recalls the early years of her career. "I was born and raised in Chicago," she says. 'I began studying at the Nicholas Theatre when I was 15 years old, which was a company formed by David Mamet and Steven Schachter. I was the only adolescent to ever study there. John Mahoney, who plays Frasier's father, a wonderful actor, was in my class. My first big break was getting Merrily We Roll Along from open call out of Chicago-getting to do a Broadway show at 19.1 played the bitchy reporter, Gwen Wilson. I did As the World Rims for about five years, and did a movie, Beat Street, before that, which was a very big underground cult film, the first hip-hop break-dance movie; the producers were Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier. In theatre, my next big break was Jelly's Last Jam, in which I won a Tony in 2002. These are the things that really got me started." In subsequent years, Pinkins appeared in many Off-Broadway plays (The Vagina Monologues, The Caucasian Chalk Circle), concerts, cabarets, films, and TV shows (Law and Order, The Cosby Show, and the daytime dramas).
She refers to her current role in Caroline as her favorite to date. "I love this character," she says. "She's the epitome of the soul of everyone, a woman at one of those points in her life when she doesn't know how she's going to go on. I think everybody, no matter how poor or wealthy or successful or unsuccessful, reaches those points where you ask yourself: 'How can I do another day of my life?' She makes very specific choices that I think touch everyone who sees this show. And this is one role that I can absolutely relate to, as I've been on welfare. I have four kids I'm supporting. I've also experienced my own sorts of betrayal in love. These are all things that Caroline goes through things that I didn't have to do any research on to get to the truth of the character."
She continues, "Caroline is a very unique leading character for a musical. You could compare her to Ethel Merman as Rose in Gypsy in that she's archetypal; she's one of those great figures. Caroline is hugely strong, and George has said in another time she'd probably be running a South American country, but because of the time period she lives in, she's marginalized into a small entity that is much smaller than the energy and power within her. At the same time, the beauty of Tony's writing is that there are no good people and no bad people. There are humans. In this play you understand exactly who they are and why they do what they do, and you can't take sides. The play touches on those deeply intimate, painful, and funny relationships that we share with our loved ones. It's about change, and how difficult it is to change, and how change will happen with or without you. It's about how everyone has a response to that fact, positive or negative, but can't deny it" Pinkins also views the role as her most challenging. "I think the most unique part of this role is it requires a certain kind of stamina, yet it depicts a sort of emptiness at the same time-it's all there. Jeanine and Tony's writing is wonderful, and the challenge has always been to keep my ego or my thoughts out of the way, to serve some of the most extraordinary material ever written-and to tell the story. You get completely caught up in it"
Pinkins feels that her life has been forever changed by working with this creative team. "This is my first time working with Tony, and my second with Jeanine [following Thoroughly Modem Millie, which Tesori composed], and George and I have been collaborating for over 20 years on different show; We did Jelly's Last Jam, Caucasian Chalk Circle, and he wrote my first nightclub act. We also did The Wild Party together. Tony is like the mouthpiece of God to me. He is so profound and so prolific. He does things so beautifully and hints at truths that are so deep, and he's such a funny guy, and then when he begins to speak, you're, like, 'This can only be God speaking through him.' He's amazing. And the music? It's so beautiful. No one has ever done what Jeanine does here, which was to write a musical that is so dedicated to speaking for the characters and the story. It has the music, not just of the period but of the generations of people in the period. Say, for example, you go to a Sondheim musical, it doesn't matter what year it's in, it's going to be recognized as Sondheim music. When you come to this, every single character has a rhythm, a style, and a voice. This is reflected in the kind of music that they sing. The music encompasses a great variety of styles. Jeanine's soul is in this music; it's the most fulfilling thing she has done."
Tesori, a fast-rising composer of show music, who has worked with different lyricists, has received widespread acclaim for her scores for the Off-Broadway Violet and the Tony-Award-winning Millie (Best Musical), for which she was initially hired more or less as an arranger. Like the 1967 film on which it is based, the show was originally primarily to use existing music from its 1920s era, but, as the project progressed, Tesori ending up writing nine original songs. She's now expanding into the film arena, scoring made-for-video animated musicals for Disney (Mulan II) as well as the studio's upcoming major theatrical feature, Rapumel. But nothing she has tackled to date was as ambitious as her work on Caroline. She shares Pinkins' enthusiasm for the project. She speaks of its history: "Kushner originally wrote the piece as an opera for San Francisco, in collaboration with Bobby McFerrin, but Bobby decided not to do it. Tony asked me to look at it. The libretto is astonishing, but I didn't understand at first what someone could do with it. It's daunting work. It really is. He writes in a certain way in play form; it wasn't as a lyricist would write. I literally couldn't find my way in. I love Tony; he's an incredible man and writer. We had never met prior to working together."
Tesori speaks of the methodical way in which the music and text were integrated. "You know that Chinese proverb: The biggest journey starts with a footstep? We just got started, tackling it a little at a time. As it turned out, this was a great creative team. They opened me up to a completely different way of working. I loved doing Millie, but it was mostly about craft and puzzle fitting. My voice in Caroline is tied more closely to who I am. I incorporated different musical styles because these lives all smash against each other in 1963. They bring their own melodies and harmonies from their own world. What I experimented with is, how they fit together, how one affects the other, or throws one off balance. We were trying with recitative to not make it move freely in time, to hook it though the rhythm of the characters." An intriguing aspect of Caroline's journey-and of a musical motif reportedly used in the show is that, in certain scenes, inanimate objects sing to Caroline. This conjures up visions of Beauty and the Beast, but, according to Tesori, something quite different is at work. She explains, "Caroline works alone in the basement. When the appliances sing, for instance, it can be interpreted as if they're the ancestors or ghosts of the slaves of the land. Or as she works alone in the hot basement, in a way this represents parts of herself coming back to her: her benevolence, her lost youth, all of the connections of the outside world."
Despite the strong critical response on Broadway and the Tony recognition (a leading performer nomination for Pinkins, Best Musical nom, and a featured performer win for Anika Noni Rose), the Broadway run of this unconventional tuner lasted only a few months. The production at the Ahmanson, which will proceed on to a San Francisco run, isn't a typical touring production. It is said to be much closer to a replica of the Broadway production than what we normally see here. Tesori says it will be "the real thing." Pinkins looks forward to these two engagements, and then she will turn her attention to subsequent projects. "I'm enjoying doing the same character I used to do on All My Children again. She's a very forthright lawyer, a little plastic, and cocky. I'm one of the ensemble contract people. I've been commissioned to do a Centennial Harold Arlen concert at Lincoln Center in February. I did a concert at Joe's Pub, which we recorded for an album that will be coming out very soon. I will be teaching some special classes at Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, N.Y. I don't teach privately. I certainly could, but I kind of enjoy the experience of taking a bunch of people in a room and the energy that comes out of that. I've been teaching four or five years, and it is beginning to expand. I have a book coming out next June by Hyperion, which is about the process I teach, which is really about changing your thinking to change your life. And I hope that will turn it into a talk show. Caroline has been such a fabulous experience and exciting opportunity it's the type of show in which you tell yourself that you can't settle for just anything after this."