Tonya Pinkins Stars in 'MOTHER COURAGE', Beginning Tonight at Classic Stage

Classic Stage Company's production of Bertolt Brecht's MOTHER COURAGE AND HER CHILDREN, starring Tony Award winner Tonya Pinkins, begins performances tonight, December 9 for a limited engagement through January 24. MOTHER COURAGE AND HER CHILDREN will be directed by Brian Kulick and will feature original music by Tony Award winner Duncan Sheik. The official press opening is Thursday, January 7.

CSC continues its exploration of the works of Bertolt Brecht with a look at his most famous play. The indomitable Mother Courage follows one luckless army after another across a war-torn world in her canteen wagon. She'll do anything to hold onto her money-making wagon, even if it means the loss of her children, in this timeless tale of war and big business updated to the modern-day conflagration in the Congo.

The cast of MOTHER COURAGE AND HER CHILDREN will also include Joshua Boone, Curtiss Cook Jr., Kevin Mambo, Jacob Ming-Trent, Geoffrey Owens, Michael Potts, Deandre Sevon, Mirirai Sithole and Zenzi Williams. Set design is by Tony Straiges, costume design by Toni-Leslie James, lighting design by Justin Townsend and sound design by Matt Stine.

Tickets start at $60 and are available starting Thursday, November 5 at 12 pm at www.classicstage.org, by calling (212) 352-3101 / 866-811-4111 or at the box-office at 136 East 13th Street, New York City (between Third and Fourth Avenues). MOTHER COURAGE AND HER CHILDREN will perform Tuesdays through Thursdays at 7pm; Fridays at 8pm; Saturdays at 3pm and 8pm and Sundays at 3pm. There will be an additional 7pm performance on December 28 and 3pm matinees on December 23 and 31. There will be no performances December 24-26 and January 1. There will be no 3 pm matinee on December 12 and no 7pm performance on December 31.

TONYA PINKINS (Mother Courage). Tony winner and three-time nominee for performances including Caroline, or Change (winner Obie, AUDELCO, Lortel, Garland, NAACP Theatre, L.A. Drama Critics Awards; Olivier, Drama League, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle Awards noms.); Play On!; Jelly's Last Jam ( winner Tony Award, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, Monarch, Clarence Derwent). Other Broadway: Holler If Ya Here Me, A Time to Kill, The Wild Party, Radio Golf, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Merrily We Roll Along. Off-Broadway: Rasheeda Speaking (Lortel Award winner, Drama Desk nom.; The New Group), Milk Like Sugar (Lortel Award winner; Playwrights Horizons). Film/TV: "All My Children," "As the World Turns," "Army Wives," "24," "Criminal Minds," Enchanted, Fading Gigolo, Newlyweeds, Home, "Hostages."

DUNCAN SHEIK (Composer). Selected theater credits: Spring Awakening (2007; 8 Tony Awards and Grammy Award), American Psycho (slated for a 2016 Broadway debut), Because of Winn Dixie (Delaware Theatre Company, 2015), Whisper House (Old Globe Theater, 2011), Alice by Heart (National Theatre London, 2012). Works currently in development include: Noir, Nero, The Nightingale. Recorded works; Legerdemain (Fall 2015), Covers 80s (2011), Whisper House (2009), White Limousine (2006), Daylight (2002), Phantom Moon (2001), Humming (1998), Duncan Sheik (Grammy Nomination, 1996).

BRIAN KULICK (Director) is in his 13th year as Artistic Director at CSC. Recent productions he has directed include Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle with Christopher Lloyd, Galileo with F. Murray Abraham; Ostrovsky's The Forest with Dianne Weist; Shakespeare's The Tempest with Mandy Patinkin; and Hamlet, Richard II, and Richard III with Michael Cumpsty. He commissioned and co-directed poet Anne Carson's award-winning An Oresteia. From 1996-2001, Mr. Kulick was an Artistic Associate and then Associate Producer at The Public Theater, where he directed Twelfth Night, The Winter's Tale and Timon of Athens at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, and also A Dybbuk, Pericles and Kit Marlowe at The Public's downtown home. Prior to this, Mr. Kulick was the Associate Artistic Director of Trinity Repertory Company. He has directed the premieres of works by Nilo Cruz, Charles Mee, Tony Kushner, Han Ong and Kathleen Tolan. His work has also been seen at New York Theatre Workshop, Playwrights Horizons, The Mark Taper Forum, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, The Magic Theatre, ACT Theatre (Seattle) and The McCarter Theatre. He is currently on the faculty of Columbia's School of the Arts, where he teaches directing with Anne Bogart.

CSC is the award-winning Off-Broadway theatre committed to re-imagining the classical repertory for contemporary audiences. For more than 45 years, CSC has been a home for New York's finest established and emerging artists to grapple with the great works of the world's repertory that speak directly to the issues of today. CSC serves an average of 35,000 audience members annually, including more than 4,000 students through its nationally-recognized education programs. Recent productions include: Euripides' Iphigenia in Aulis, transadapted by Anne Washburn; Marlowe's Doctor Faustus adapted by David Bridel and Andrei Belgrader, starring Chris Noth; Shakespeare's Hamlet starring Peter Sarsgaard; Turgenev's A Month in the Country with Peter Dinklage and Taylor Schilling; Rodgers & Hammerstein's Allegro; Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle with Christopher Lloyd, and Galileo with F. Murray Abraham; Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's Passion with Melissa Errico, Judy Kuhn and Ryan Silverman; Chekhov's Ivanov with Ethan Hawke, The Cherry Orchard with Dianne Wiest and John Turturro, Three Sisters with Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jessica Hecht, Juliet Rylance and Peter Sarsgaard, Uncle Vanya with Maggie Gyllenhaal, Denis O'Hare and Peter Sarsgaard, and The Seagull with Dianne Wiest and Alan Cumming; David Ives' The Heir Apparent, Venus in Fur with Nina Arianda (Broadway transfer 2011/2012, Tony Award nom., Best Play), The School for Lies with Hamish Linklater, and New Jerusalem with Richard Easton; Unnatural Acts, conceived by Tony Speciale; Anne Carson's An Oresteia; and Shakespeare's The Tempest with Mandy Patinkin, A Midsummer Night's Dream with Bebe Neuwirth, and Richard III, Richard II and Hamlet with Michael Cumpsty. CSC productions have been cited repeatedly by all the major Off-Broadway theatre awards: Obie, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, Drama League, and the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Body of Work.

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