How to be a player

On the stage of the Royale Theatre, the company of “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” is rehearsing a scene in which a recording session is brought to a screeching halt by the demand for a nickel bottle of soda.

“I ain’t singing nothing without my Coca-Cola!” yells Whoopi Goldberg, storming away from a vintage mike and continuing her despotic diva’s slow torture of the two white men, a manager and record producer, who are ostensibly running this show in a 1927 recording studio in Chicago.

The temperamental lady in question is Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, the legendary blues singer who is by no means the lead character in August Wilson’s searing drama but who is the magnetic, larger-than-life incarnation of one of his main themes: how blacks had to play their cards in a game dominated, if not fixed, by a white establishment. Moments later, after sending her flunkies out to buy three bottles of Coke, Ma confides: “As soon as they get my voice down on them recording machines, then it’s just like if I’d be some whore, and they roll over and put their pants on.”

As the actors drift offstage to stand by for some technical light cues, Goldberg asks a production assistant to get her a Coke. The request is polite and undemanding. But while the 47-year-old actress treads softly where Ma once thundered, there is a symmetry between the two women. After all, Ma Rainey was for years the top recording artist of white-owned Paramount Records. And after years of touring the country in her own car and surrounded by a retinue, she ended up owning two theaters in her native Columbus, Ga.

Goldberg, who was raised in the projects and was once a welfare mom, became one of the highest-paid actresses in Hollywood in the ‘80s, earning a reported $7 million for “Sister Act 2.” Eight years ago, she went into producing for film and television and more recently has assayed theater. Last year, she received a Tony Award for best musical as one of the producers of “Thoroughly Modern Millie.” She followed with “Harlem Song” at the Apollo Theatre. And now comes this revival of “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” the 1984 drama that launched the careers of Wilson and actor Charles Dutton, who is reprising his Tony-nominated starring role as an ambitious trumpet player who dreams of riding a new sound to fame and fortune.

“It feels right, she’s got that motor that’s running,” Goldberg says of playing brassy Ma Rainey in her second foray onto Broadway since she broke big in her own one-woman show, “Whoopi Goldberg,” directed by Mike Nichols, in 1984. (In 1997, she was the gender-bending replacement for Nathan Lane in the musical “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.”)

“Whoopi has the right attitude to play Ma Rainey,” Dutton says of his co-star, adding that Aretha Franklin, Gladys Knight and Patti LaBelle all expressed interest in the role. “You have to have gone through some [hard times] in the business to say those lines -- exploitation, frustration, bitterness or whatever -- and Whoopi’s lived some of these aspects. She’s tough.”

The actress shows up in the downstairs lounge of the theater during a break in rehearsals, sans soda, but puffing on a cigarette, one of a couple she’ll smoke in the course of a conversation.

Without makeup and unpretentiously dressed in cotton tunic, pants and sensible flats -- a far cry from the flamboyant jeweled attire she’ll don as Ma Rainey -- Goldberg speaks, murmurs really, about the reasons for her career expansion. “There aren’t a lot of roles -- at least parts I like -- for women my age,” the actress says. That may be why the role, as subordinate as it is, is proving to be such a challenge.

“I’ve wanted to work with Charles Dutton and with August for a long time, and I knew that it was now or never. But it’s much harder now, just remembering the lines, than it was six years ago,” says Goldberg, grimacing at the thought of gearing up for eight performances a week. “And this was put together so fast, too hastily maybe. We’ve had a couple of bumps in the road.”

Indeed, lead producer Ben Mordecai and Wilson met with Goldberg in her Malibu home last March about producing and co-starring in “Ma Rainey,” a deal was in place by September, and rehearsals began last month. So far, three actors have been replaced, Goldberg’s billing above Dutton was redressed, and there have been mutterings about the lack of money and resources for, among other things, providing housing for some actors.

Mordecai says that only one actor was replaced because of artistic differences and the others asked to be released, one because of illness, the other to respond to a family emergency. As far as the billing dispute, the producer says that Goldberg’s representatives negotiated the first-position billing but the star herself later insisted on equal position. And as for the cast replacements, he says, Goldberg was consulted, but he, Wilson and director Marion McClinton made the decision. “You cannot work with her and not be aware of her integrity and complete dedication to the work,” he says.

Acknowledging that the last month and a half has been a difficult period for the production, Goldberg says, “The hardest thing is to get someone to understand that you’re replacing them not because they’re not good at what they do but that there must be a spark in the interaction between the characters. But now I’m thinking we’re in the right place. To tell you the truth, the biggest worry I have about this cast and this production is me. That muscle has not been exercised in a long time.”

As an actor who’s never been shy about asserting her prerogatives, Goldberg says she’s aware of -- and sensitive to -- what performers need to do their jobs. While some of the more amusing moments in Wilson’s drama stem from Ma Rainey’s perverse demands -- she insists that her nephew Sylvester record the lead-in for her songs, even though he has a severe stutter -- Goldberg passionately defends the character. “Ma’s biggest gripe is, ‘Why should I be held to a standard that other people aren’t being held to?’ She’s here, she’s ready. Her needs aren’t outrageous; all she wants is a Coca-Cola.”

Does Goldberg think that, like Rainey, she is talked about behind her back as demanding and temperamental? “I’m sure they must because I have been tough on the people that I’ve worked for,” she says. “People presume that you don’t read your contract and you don’t know what you’re entitled to, so when you question them, they try to quash you and that makes it worse for me.

“But to pretend like you didn’t know or to make me out to be [bad] for asking about it, that has made me, I’m sure, not welcome in certain circles -- and that’s OK with me.”

Coming full circle

Goldberg’s involvement with TV and film production stemmed partly from her desire “to get what all the guys get” (i.e., the back-end deal, the points, the G2 private jet), but her theatrical producing is closer to the heart because it is much closer to home -- literally.

Goldberg says she grew up watching stage plays on TV and acting, at 8, on nonprofit stages within the subsidized housing projects in the Chelsea district of Manhattan. It was during those years that she saw the movie “Thoroughly Modern Millie” and was touched by the story of a young flapper who comes to New York to reinvent herself.

Decades later, after winning an Oscar for 1990’s “Ghost,” Goldberg responded enthusiastically when her new agents at William Morris Agency told her that one of their clients, director Michael Mayer, was leading a team developing “Millie” into a stage musical. Goldberg signed on as a producer and immediately made two crucial calls: one to Fox Theatricals, the St. Louis-based musical-producing entity that would provide backing for the show, and another to Universal that expedited the acquisition of the musical rights.

“Whoopi was able to accomplish in two calls what dozens of calls over several months hadn’t,” says Dick Scanlan, who wrote the book to “Millie.” “And she was incredibly helpful in contributing to and supporting our creative decisions. But at no time did we ever get the feeling that her suggestions were edicts.”

Goldberg can appreciate the sweet irony of a black woman being a powerful agent on behalf of a relatively “white” project like “Millie” -- an inverse of sorts of Ma Rainey’s situation in Wilson’s drama. But, as she has done all her life and career, the actress refuses to view her role as producer -- on Broadway or in Hollywood -- in terms of color. Rather, she sees it in terms of reaching an audience.

“How do you make a product that talks to everybody? I think the stories have to be a little broader and not so homogenized -- whether you’re talking about a black or a predominantly white project -- in the way they’re written,” she says. “I mean, I look at ‘Sex and the City’ and I think, what would be the difference if two of those girls were black or Asian? What do you lose? People don’t usually ask, ‘What do you gain?’ But maybe you would gain access to stories that haven’t been told before. Or, maybe you’d tread into territory that makes people uncomfortable.”

In fact, Goldberg has been eclectic in her choices thus far, reflected humorously in the names of her two companies: Whoopi Inc., for family shows like “What Makes a Family?,” and One Ho, for more irreverent fare.

She acknowledges that “Millie” is “a piece of fluff,” though it does have fun upending stereotypes with its unexpected interracial romance and Asian heroes. She wanted to be involved with “Harlem Song,” she says, because of its joyous celebration of black history and culture at the Apollo Theatre. (The show closed in late December, but there are plans to make it an annual holiday engagement.) And while she at first worried that her participation in “Ma Rainey” as both producer and co-star would be construed as “a vanity project,” she describes it as one more stitch in “ ... a road I’m knitting so that I have a road to be on, and that I’m not stuck on some plateau.”

Taking a puff on a cigarette, Goldberg laughs as she recalls that her agents were “a little freaked out” that she took four years off to sit in the “middle square,” a reference to the “Hollywood Squares” game show that One Ho produces. “I did it because I thought it’d be fun and they offered me a [lot] of money to do it,” she says. “What career did I have if it was so easily ‘ruined’ by doing something else? The producing angle, that’s part of the Whoopi lore now as long as I can find things that are interesting and I can get people to give us money to get them made.”

Mike Isaacson, executive producer of Fox Theatricals, suggests that Goldberg will have an increasingly powerful impact on theater, drawing a parallel between her and producer Nichols, the man who discovered her. “Like Nichols, she has great instincts, a real theatrical flair, and intuitively seeks out new fresh talent,” he says.

Isaacson adds that when Goldberg became involved with the development of “Millie,” she told her agents at William Morris that she did not want to co-produce with established players on Broadway, that she wanted them to find new forces in the industry. That led to the alliance with Fox. Later, Goldberg suggested to the “Millie” creative team that they cast unknown talent in the lead roles if at all possible. And in fact, Sutton Foster, a relative unknown, opened on Broadway in the title role, winning positive reviews and last season’s Tony as best actress in a musical.

“I knew there were a lot of people out there and it’d be more interesting to see what we could find, rather than going for the known,” Goldberg says now. “Like in the old days, I wanted to open things up. I felt in my heart that there was more out there than had been tapped. And if I can help them get from there to here.... “ The president of Whoopi Inc. and One Ho pauses. “Well, then, that’s not a bad thing for me to do.”