Even earlier than she started writing the musical “Suffs,” Shaina Taub wished to create a venture that might stand as a testomony to ladies’s empowerment.
The New York actor and composer was at work on a gender-swapped adaptation of the Robin Hood legend in 2014 when she acquired a duplicate of Doris Stevens’ “Jailed for Freedom.” Revealed in 1920, the guide is a first-person account of the ladies’s suffrage motion and the ratification of the nineteenth Modification to the U.S. Structure, which acknowledged ladies’s proper to vote.
It was then, Taub mentioned, that the seed for “Suffs” was planted.
“I’d been searching for a story about a group of girls working together, taking on a system,” she instructed HuffPost in an interview. “This was exactly what I’d been looking for.”
“Suffs,” now enjoying at New York’s Music Field Theatre, makes Taub the second lady in historical past and the primary in over 50 years to jot down the guide, music and lyrics for a Broadway musical wherein she additionally stars. (The primary was Micki Grant, who in 1972 starred in her musical “Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope.”)
Taub portrays suffragist Alice Paul, who finds herself at odds with an institution activist, Carrie Chapman Catt (Jenn Colella), regardless of their shared mission of convincing the U.S. authorities to grant ladies the vote.
Paul recruits a ragtag group of younger suffragists, together with Lucy Burns (Ally Bonino), Inez Milholland (Hannah Cruz) and Ruza Wenclawska (Kim Blanck), to stage a march on Washington amid Woodrow Wilson’s presidential inauguration with the purpose of pressuring him to assist a federal modification for suffrage.
After an off-Broadway run in 2022, “Suffs” opened on Broadway in April to largely optimistic critiques. By then, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Nobel Peace Prize-winning activist Malala Yousafzai had signed on as producers.
Later this month, many members of the musical’s forged — composed solely of feminine and nonbinary actors — are set to carry out at the 2024 Tony Awards, the place the present is nominated for six awards, together with Greatest Musical and Greatest Unique Rating. On Thursday, the “Suffs” forged recording was launched digitally on Atlantic Information and captures all 36 of the musical’s songs ― together with the comedic “Ladies,” carried out by actor Grace McLean as Wilson, and the rousing “Keep Marching” ― in pristine high quality.
So far as musicalized depictions of U.S. historical past go, “Suffs” has been in contrast by some critics to “Hamilton.” Each musicals premiered off-Broadway at New York’s Public Theater, and like “Suffs,” “Hamilton” additionally starred its composer and guide author, Lin-Manuel Miranda, in a principal function.
“My hope was to model being a full multihyphenate for girls, which I feel is an unquestioned avenue for male creatives,” Taub mentioned, concerning the Miranda comparisons. “It was exciting for me to do what I love, which is perform in something I’ve created, and show to the many girls and kids in the audience that, yeah, you can do this, too.”
Bruce Glikas through Getty Pictures
As for a way “Suffs” will likely be acquired over the long run in America’s divisive political local weather, she added, “It’s rough to think about the foreboding nature of the next five months, but I hope that hearing about the history of activism, and its victories and failures, in this country can give people some energy in this moment.”
Taub’s subsequent venture additionally grapples with ladies’s empowerment, albeit in a much less political approach. She collaborated with Elton John on a musical adaptation of “The Devil Wears Prada,” which is ready to open this fall in London with Vanessa Williams starring as mercurial trend editor Miranda Priestly.
“It’s been interesting working with such a beloved piece of pop culture, because you want to give people what they love and also something new,” Taub mentioned. “What’s great in a musical is that you can really go into the life of a character. In a movie, it’s more about a close-up on their face.”
Working with John, she added, has been a “surreal” expertise.
“[At first] I was like, ‘How am I ever going to walk into a studio with a rock legend, a childhood hero of mine, and not lose my mind or faint?’” she recalled. “But he gave me a big hug and just treated me like a colleague, despite our differences in age, experience and celebrity. He has such a love for songwriting and making music, so we had a kinship.”
