Emily Mann — the artistic director of McCarter Theater from 1990 to 2020 and the writer of more than a dozen stage works — is the subject of “Emily Mann: Rebel Artist of the American Theater,” Alexis Greene’s newly released biography published by Hal Leonard.
The 408-page work spans Mann’s life from her Chicago upbringing to her retirement from McCarter for what she called her “third act” in a February, 2020, interview with U.S. 1 Newspaper.
Greene, an arts journalist whose work has appeared in American Theater and the New York Times, and Mann appear together in a hybrid event hosted by Labyrinth Books on Thursday, December 16, at 6 p.m. The event is free, with registration for the livestream available via Crowdcast.
Using the conceit of rebel, Greene traces Mann’s career from the 1970s when feminism and civil rights began transforming traditionally male-managed institutions and notes, “One of my goals in writing a biography of Emily Mann has been to show that resistance can reside in defying preconceived assumptions of what a woman of the theater can stage or write or, finally, achieve.”
That achievement included becoming a noted director whose work appeared on noted not-for-profit regional theater stages as well as Broadway and whose play “Still Life” brought her international attention “introduced a form of documentary theater that has become known as theater of testimony.”
Greene says in her introduction that other goals include writing “the life of a woman who has created unique art and along the way has wrestled with, learned from, and overcome personal trauma and illness” and “show how Mann’s art and career can contribute to the discourse in the public square, a role that has become essential for American theater as it aims to be part of the cultural changes enveloping the country.” All of which the writer achieves in this unauthorized account.
Since Mann has had a presence in the region for 30-plus years, she seems familiar to area readers. Yet, as Greene’s painstaking reporting demonstrates, pieces of her story and her work at McCarter have been missing.
That includes the story behind the production that launched her tenure at McCarter, the musical “Betsey Brown,” a work written by the innovative Trenton-born playwright and poet Ntozake Shange.
It’s a time worth revisiting through Greene’s account.
As Greene points out, Shange had gained international attention for her 1976 stage work “for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf.” The “choreopoem,” or mixture of poetry and movement, was produced by Joe Papp at the New York Shakespeare Festival Public Theater.
Three years later, with Papp’s support, Shange and pioneering jazz pianist Cecil Taylor began collaborating on an opera based on Shange’s books of stories “Carrie” — a semi-autobiographical account of her coming of age after her physician father moved the family to 1957 St. Louis and where Shange attended a newly integrated school in highly segregated city.
Several years into development Shange saw a production of Mann’s “Still Life” and involved Mann into the production that was now called “Betsey Brown: A Rhythm and Blues Opera.” As the title shows, the play’s focus had moved from Carrie, a dynamic catalyst in the stories, to the young and changed character based on Shange.
Mann became involved only to find, as Greene notes, “this wreck of a script with some of Zake’s best poetry in it, but really no structure . . . It was a mess. I had no idea of what it was really about . . . What works is brilliant and totally unique and what doesn’t should be fixable.”
Over the next several years, composers changed and “Mann and Shange, who became co-authors around 1985, birthed at least 13 drafts of the script, with Mann contributing lyrics as well as whole scenes. The women’s collaboration was by no means problem-free, for reasons ranging from teaching assignments outside of New York, to personal troubles, to frustration with a project that was taking years.
The situation caused Mann to say, “It wasn’t a pure process. It wasn’t totally mine and it wasn’t totally hers, and so that’s never good. It was very tough.”
Meanwhile, Shange wrote the 1985 novel “Betsey Brown.” Although it was based on the story developed for the opera and stage-work-in-process and appeared before the finished production, it is often cited as the source of the musical, something Mann says they did to appease Shange.
Eventually, despite tensions and delays, the Public Theater presented a 1987 workshop presentation that Mann says “blew people’s minds” and Papp aimed for a full production that was jettisoned by the problems related to Papp’s health and personal life, and the theater’s financial problems.
There were also artistic differences that caused a break between the Public Theatre and the creative team that eventually saw the play premiere as part of the 1989 American Music Theatre Festival in Philadelphia — although marred by technical problems and structural and thematic problems –
Then in 1990 Mann became artistic director of McCarter Theater and brought “Betsey Brown” to Princeton.
As Greene notes, “For Mann, putting “Betsey Brown” into her inaugural season was an event rife with both risks and possibilities. It was a form of resistance against the white male-authored repertory that had dominated McCarter’s seasons during its entire existence. The current generation of McCarter’s audience has seen only one play by an African American about African Americans on the McCarter stage (Lorraine Hansberry’s 1959 drama “A Raisin in the Sun”). ‘Betsey Brown,’ Mann believed, would challenge the willingness of McCarter’s subscribers to be engaged with an unfamiliar theater experience. Mann also hoped she could bring audiences of color to the McCarter for ‘Betsey Brown,’ and if she did that, conceivably she could encourage a broad-based audience for other productions.”
That Mann’s gambit worked was expressed by Princeton historian Shirley Satterfield, who is quoted as saying, “I finally saw a play at McCarter that felt ‘real,’ one where people looked like me.”
Critics had mixed reactions, including the one that reflected my own experience of seeing the production, “The eagerly awaited show has all the adolescent symptoms. It’s alternately sophisticated and childish. Purposeful and disorganized, brash and demure. Sometimes it springs into glorious handstands. Sometimes it just stands around, bashful and tongue-tied.”
Greene says that while the play’s box-office receipts “were among the highest in the theater’s history,” that “for audiences wondering what sort of productions the McCarter’s new artistic director would stage, ‘Betsey Brown’ either thrilled them with its vibrant score, vivacious charters, and political implications, or sent them scurrying up the aisle, vowing never to return.”
They could also know that they were part of an interesting and still vital part of theater and regional history.
Alexis Greene & Emily Mann, Labyrinth Books, 122 Nassau Street, Princeton. Thursday, December 16, 6 p.m. Free. Register to info@labyrinthbooks.com; masks and proof of vaccination required. Livestream also available. Register via Crowdcast. 609-497-1600 or www.labyrinthbooks.com.
Emily Mann: Rebel Artist of the American Theater, by Alexis Greene, published by Hal Leonard, 408 pages. $29.95.
