Trump Won The Election… I Had Tickets To SUFFS 12 Hours Later
Earlier this afternoon, I revisited Shaina Taub’s Tony Award-winning musical Suffs at the Music Box Theatre on Broadway. Not only was it one of the toughest performances I have ever sat through, I think it might be one of the most important.
I arranged my tickets a few weeks back with the intention of writing a very different article today, and as the events of last night unfolded into the early morning hours, I began to question if I even had it in me to attend. The musical tells the story of Alice Paul and the suffragist movement through their triumphs and setbacks for the fight for women's voting rights and the passage of the 19th Amendment.
Suffs is a musical that I have been extremely fond of for years since I first caught it down at the Public Theater in 2022. Since starting previews on the main stem this past March, today was my fourth time seeing the show on Broadway. While standing in line to get into the theatre, a small group of friends were all reading articles on CNN about the latest updates to the election. I knew once we got inside, it was going to be a journey that we all were about to go on.
As we took our seats, it was a somber mood inside the Music Box as many, who dressed in purple to honor the suffs, got situated. As soon as the first downbeat hit, Jenn Colella stepped out and an uproarious standing ovation took place.
Late in Act I, Hannah Cruz’s character Inez Milholland goes on an anti-Wilson campaign across America pleading with folks to “vote him out” as Wilson refuses to support the suffragist movement. It’s a powerful moment in the show that was part catharsis and part terror for the audience.
During intermission, I spoke with a fellow theatergoer named Anne who happened to be sitting a few seats down from me. She told me she traveled in solo from New Jersey after having these tickets for two months. “I just knew I had to be here today. I wish this wasn’t our reality but we have to keep going no matter what,” she remarked.
During Act II, you would have thought we were across the street at The Notebook with the amount of whimpers and tears being shed, both from the audience and even some onstage. For many it was a release of all of the fear, frustration, anger, and more that we are all collectively feeling. As Alice Paul and the company sang the stirring “Keep Marching” finale, the audience stood and cheered for the entire song, an extremely rare occurrence on Broadway.
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The America we awoke to this morning, is not the America in which I had seen Suffs before. For the past two years that I have followed the development of this musical, every viewing I would have, one could feel the hope in the air. Hillary Clinton is a Co-Producer of the piece and used lyrics in her DNC speech a few months back. I remember in August when I visited during Kid’s Night on Broadway and a mother across the aisle from me was holding her young daughter’s hands so tight during the finale.
It has been tough for many folks I know over these last few hours, and during the musical, a time of escapism for so many, the magic of theatre reminded me of the panic that so many are feeling in this moment; it is terrifying.
It is a tragedy to think what the women on that stage who fought so hard a century ago would think if they saw where we were today. Alice says it best at the end of the show, “the path will be twisted and risky and slow, but keep marching.”
We need Art and Theatre at this moment to come together and exhale. Some may want to sit in bed and eat ice cream, others will feel impassioned to get out and do more than even in this moment. For the time being, I am so grateful that we have Suffs on Broadway to see how far we have come, and how much harder we must fight.
Taub, who has been out of the show recently as she is currently playing Emma Goldman in Ragtime at New York City Center returned to the Music Box to play Alice on election night and for the matinee today. Tonight she traveled up ten blocks to play a different impassioned activist fighting for America at the evening performance of the seminal Ahrens & Flaherty classic. An incredible feat given everything.
For now, you have until January 5, 2025 to catch the musical on Broadway and a National Tour is planned to begin next September. If I had it my way, the production would stay open for the foreseeable future so that we could return back when we need a reminder to keep going. Keep Marching On.