NEW YORK (1010 WINS) — Tony Award-winning director George C. Wolfe and Tony Award-nominated director and choreographer Camille A.
Brown joined Shelley Wade, afternoon host of 94.7 The Block, at The Sound Space @ Audacy New York for a conversation about Black excellence on Broadway.
Wolfe and Brown most recently collaborated on “Gypsy,” which is currently showing at the Majestic Theatre on 44th Street. Wolfe serves as the production’s director, while Brown choreographed the show.
The modern iteration of the famed and often-revitalized production follows Audra McDonald as Mama Rose, a show business mother focused on raising her two daughters to perform onstage. First released in 1959, the show is loosely based on the 1957 memoirs of striptease artist Gypsy Rose Lee.
Wolfe said that the idea to do a run of “Gypsy” was brought to him by McDonald, and that placing a Black woman at the center of the musical only added to the show’s historical defiance of what a female character could be. When the show first came out, Wolfe said that critics called Mama Rose a “monster.”
“It was very interesting to me: Did they call her a monster because she was a monster?,” Wolfe questioned. “Or did she call her a monster because she decided to break rules and she wasn’t going to exist inside of anybody else’s structure?”
The current production did not change a word in the script, with Wolfe joking that doing so would be equivalent to changing “Hamlet.” According to the director, when working with smart material and talented artists, “the combustion that comes from the discovery process of working on it is going to change it without changing a thing.”
One of these talented artists, Brown, choreographed both “Gypsy” and “Hell’s Kitchen,” which is also running on Broadway. She pursued these productions after receiving seven Tony Award nominations for her 2022 Broadway directorial debut of “for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf,” which she also choreographed.
Throughout Brown’s career she said that she has had to cope with people doubting her accomplishments or ability as a young Black woman. To overcome it, she has worked to stay true to herself and her talent.
“As my friend says, people get very confused with me. And I think because of what they see they assume things,” Brown said. “And my friend said ‘Well once you start talking, you remind them, or you let them know who you are.’”
Brown recently performed her dance production “I AM” in five sold out shows at the Joyce Theater with her company, Camille A. Brown & Dancers. Wolfe attended a matinee performance to support his colleague and overheard someone call it an “expression of joy.”
The lifetime achievement-award winner said that the onus of breaking down barriers is on those who have already done so with the help of those before them, continuing a collective effort of moving people into positions where they can be true to themselves in the arts.
“It’s one’s job to knock down walls. People knocked down walls so I could get into a room,” he said. “And so once you get into a room one of your jobs is to create interesting and dynamic work, but also to knock down walls so that … as expansive vision of the world that we live in can be seen.”