Columbia College Chicago Alum Tonya Pinkins Stars in Off-Broadway ‘Mother Courage’ Musical

Mother Courage

 

Tonya Pinkins

Tonya Pinkins

Tony Award-winning actress Tonya Pinkins (BA ’96), a graduate of Columbia College Chicago (and a native of Chicago, where she attended Whitney Young Magnet High School before going to Columbia), will star Off-Broadway in Mother Courage and Her Children, a new musical adaptation of Bertolt Brecht‘s antiwar drama. The show is presented by the Classic Stage Company, 136 E. 13th St., in New York City. Performances begin December 9.

Brecht’s 1939 play, written in response to Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland (the event that launched World War II), is set during the Thirty Years’ War of 1618-1648. It focuses on a woman who is determined not only to survive the war but to profit from it as she travels with the Swedish army, providing goods and services to the soldiers. It is considered by some scholars to be the greatest antiwar play ever written.

Classic Stage Company’s production, with Pinkins playing Mother Courage, updates the story to the modern-day conflagration in Congo and features a new score by rock composer Duncan Sheik, co-author of the musicals Spring Awakening and American Psycho.

Pinkins’s previous stage credits include the Broadway shows Merrily We Roll Along, Jelly’s Last Jam (for which she won the 1992 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical), Play On!, The Wild Party, Radio Golf, and Caroline, or Change, as well as the Off-Broadway productions The Vagina Monologues and Rasheeda Speaking (for which she won the 2015 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Play). Her TV credits include recurring roles in Law & Order, 24, and All My Children.

For tickets to CSC’s Mother Courage and Her Children, call 866-811-4111 or click here.