November 6, the day after the election, was a depressing, unproductive day for many. But it was a busy day for Tony winner Shaina Taub. She began the day by performing as suffragist Alice Paul in the matinee of her musical Suffs. She then walked up 10 blocks from the Music Box Theatre to New York City Center, where that evening, she played anarchist Emma Goldman in the concert production of Ragtime. Yes, she did two shows back-to-back about marginalized groups fighting for their rights, on the day the country elected a president who is promising to deport millions of immigrants. Not to mention, as a proud progressive, Taub had participated in multiple events for presidential candidate Kamala Harris.

So how did Taub get through that tough day, while feeling "despairing and angry"? Well, something amazing happened: As soon as the curtain rose on the Suffs matinee, the audience erupted in a standing ovation. "It really felt like this amazing exchange of energy—the gratitude people felt to be in a theatre on that day was huge," recalls Taub. And it is that love from the audience, and the "hundreds and hundreds" of letters Taub has received about Suffs, that is keeping at bay any disappointment she may be feeling about the show closing. Suffs will close January 5, after opening on Broadway April 18, 2024. 

Speaking to Taub a week before closing, during Hanukkah, the composer/performer reflected on her journey to Broadway, and making history as the first woman to win a Tony for Best Score and Best Book by herself. She recalls that when she was a second grader, in 1996, she wrote a 15-page paper called "Magical Broadway." That paper now hangs in her dressing room at the Music Box, next to her two Tony Awards. 

"I think something I was worried about with my first Broadway show is I've had this fantasy of Broadway. I wrote [in second grade] that I thought it would be magical. But what if the fantasy didn't live up, or what if it didn't feel as magical?" Taub says with her characteristic fervor and enthusiasm. "But I can really say, unironically and earnestly, that it's been as magical as I thought it would be. That doesn't mean it's been easy. That doesn't mean it's been simple. But it has been magical just to get to do this, to get to tell the story, to get to share my work with this unbelievable company and crew and come here every day and being in a theatre every day."

Below, Taub shares what to expect in the future life of Suffs, and how she's not sad that Suffs is closing—and also what she can reveal about a Ragtime Broadway revival and how she tried to put Emma Goldman into Suffs. The conversation below has been edited for length and clarity.

Since Suffs has been making $1 million a week for a while now, has there been discussions of extending Suffs?
Shaina Taub: No. Another show is coming in [The Picture of Dorian Gray]. And it's sort of the life cycle of Broadway. But I'm really, really excited for a tour to kick off. That's always been a big part of my dream on the show. So hopefully, we can just keep this momentum going around the country.

I remember when we first chatted about it earlier this year, you were excited for when it gets licensed and little kids getting to do it. 
Absolutely, yeah. Hopefully we'll get to announce our licensing home pretty soon. I can't wait for that. While January 5 is the end of our Broadway chapter, it really feels like the first day of the rest of Suffs' life, in so many exciting ways. And I can't wait for that. I just hope I can, like, grow old, going around to high schools, seeing Suffs—that would be my dream. I hope I get lucky enough that it just gets reimagined and revived over the years in exciting, surprising ways.

Imagine a City Center revival in, like, 10 years.
My greatest dream, that'll be awesome. I mean, [Suffs orchestrator] Michael Starobin definitely has a 27-piece version of this in his head. I would love to turn him loose.

So can I talk to you about your November 6? Because you have the strongest mental fortitude that I think I've ever seen.
Well, I really appreciate that. I felt just as despairing and angry and all the things that morning when I woke up and turned my phone over and saw the headlines—I'd gone to bed kind of seeing the writing on the wall, but waking up to it.... I just felt so lucky that I had a thing to do that felt so clear. In a morning where it felt like, "What were the words? How could you take a step out your door?," I had a script to say, and I had steps to do. I had this amazing day of being inside of these two works of art. It's a purpose for the day. I really feel like I lucked out on a sad day. 

We all got there in the morning to Suffs. Then we circled up, and we were talking about trying to think of the show that day as an act of service. People are feeling a lot of things, and we can provide a container for them to feel that, and we can help guide them through those feelings—not to provide an answer, not to provide any kind of comfort—but to provide a forum to air it out in public. The theatre is one of the only places we can come together to feel loudly in public: We can cry, we can laugh, we can yell, we can do all these things, and it's encouraged as part of it. And as soon as the curtain rose on our matinee, there was an enormous standing ovation and this huge cheer. And I remember [actor] Jenn Colella saying to me a few numbers in, when I saw her backstage, she was like, "I planned for us to show up for the audience today, but what I didn't realize is they're showing up for us. They're having our backs." It really felt like this amazing exchange of energy—the gratitude people felt to be in a theatre on that day was huge. The election night show itself had also been electric, as you can imagine. You were there. Were you at Suffs on election night? 

Yes, and I was also going to go to the Suffs matinee the next day, if we had done that story where I followed you around on November 6. [Editor's Note: As you can imagine, both Taub and I were not up for it on November 6.] 
That's right! You know on election night how electric it was. And then, what's wild is the matinee after, it felt just as electric, like [if] there was just a meter of sound, it was as high. People were as exuberant in their vocal reactions to things. Whereas the air on Tuesday night was this sort of anticipatory, cautious, hopeful celebration, the next day sort of felt like this defiance. And there are the same moments in the show that get a lot of applause or get a lot of reaction. But there was one big applause that hasn't happened before (if my memory serves me, it only happened on that afternoon after the election) was when Emily Skinner is doing "A Letter From Harry's Mother," and she comes forward and she sings, "Now your own little girl is nearly three. What do you want her future to be?" And there was this huge, like, burst of applause and cheers after "What do you want her future to be?" And I was so moved by that. That just felt like the question that we're all now tasked with asking ourselves and each other: What do we want our future to look like? What do we want our kids' future to look like? And so that really struck me. 

And then, yeah, I walked over to Ragtime when you were at Ragtime. And I was just so grateful to be inside that show, which I think is just... I like to say the mark of a true, great work of art is it speaks to whatever time it's in. And I think the time is always right for Ragtime. Ragtime always feels like it was written yesterday and tomorrow and right now. I don't know, I think I was probably running on fumes a little bit, but I feel joy from music and collaboration and community and singing and being in a theatre. So I was getting all these endorphins of just being around everybody, all feeling these things together that I hadn't cried yet. But I also know this was a common feeling—I was hearing from people or reading about tears weren't coming as easily on this day, maybe because, like.... I wasn't surprised by the election results, whereas in 2016 I was, and I don't know which feeling is worse. But the only the time tears finally showed up for me was at the very end of Ragtime, when Joshua Henry was singing, "Make them hear you." The entire company who's not on stage, we would all kind of gather in the wing of the stage; there's a lot of space off stage right. We were all about to enter. And every single night, we all gathered to watch him sing that because, I mean, it was the most astonishing live performance of any song I've ever heard in person live (and that's a high bar, I've heard a lot). It was just unbelievable to witness and do that every night. 

And while we were watching on election night, the little kids in Ragtime—we have this wonderful little boy and little girl, and then young Coalhouse who's, I don't know exactly how old our sweet young Coalhouse was, I'm guessing five. During, they were kind of off to the side, and they were kind of dancing with each other, running around a little dancing and playing, just like they are on stage at the very end of the show. And that just really made me cry, because I was looking around and all the adults were crying and the kids were playing, and just their innocence and that question that Emily had sung: What is their future going to look like? How can we make sure we're not going to let them down? That's when it really got me.

In this recent concert, the last word in the show, "dream," it was sung quietly whereas in previous versions, it's usually done in a full belt. That day, did it feel like, "This was the perfect choice. And we didn't realize it when we had made this choice last week."
I think the election was on all of our minds. I think part of Ragtime's mastery is, I think it would have resonated deeply in any election result. It is a strong enough foundation with enough multiple layers of meaning that that ending would have resonated beautifully in any event. I think we fail as dramatists if our work will only resonate in a good time or a bad time. I know Ragtime achieves it—and what I can only hope that Suffs could, what I strove for, is that it could have enough layers to contain the aftermath of any American event. It'll be interesting to see it performed over the years. 

I'm going back and forth between both shows, but Stephen Flaherty's melody, it was built to contain both, as [director Lear DeBessonet] would say, "the promise and the wound of America." Like, [singing] "When he is old enough, I will show him America." Like the melody goes up on "show." And that can both mean, "I want to show him all the amazing things about this country and the opportunity it can provide you. But also, I'm going to show you the horror and the reality of what this country has failed to live up to in terms of its ideals." And that melody can contain information for both.

I also enjoyed, when Emma Goldman gets deported and you do a little sayonara wave. I just thought, "Oh, Emma, take me with you!"
Yeah. I like to think that Emma, on some level, was a little proud [chuckles]. It was somewhat of an accomplishment to have been disruptive enough to the systems of power that she was deemed such an enormous threat she had to be ejected. It was a goal of mine to sort of find Emma Goldman's joy in her activism. She really, in all of her rage and all of her defiance, she enjoyed standing up to power, and she found a sense of play in it. 

And continue to be an activist after she left. 
That's right. I mean, there's so much more to her story. That's why I always say Emma Goldman and Ragtime was such a big inspiration for Suffs because you could do an entire Evita-style musical about Emma Goldman, you could do a nine-season HBO prestige series about Emma Goldman. There's so much more to her story than gets shared in Ragtime, and yet, just that delicious morsel that we get in Ragtime was enough to inspire me as a 10-year old to look her up and learn more, and want to follow that trail of breadcrumbs. And that's what I hope [for Suffs]. You know, I tried to fit as many people as I could in Suffs, I wish I could have fit more. I used to fit more, and I had to peel away for the sake of clarity. There's even characters in Suffs that don't get as much stage time as their story would merit. But I hope it provides that trail breadcrumbs for others to learn more, especially kids. 

How was Emma Goldman in Suffs? Because she didn't support women's right to vote.
No, I'm sorry. Maybe you misunderstood me. I mean, the size of her role in Ragtime was an inspiration to me for the inclusion of as many characters as I could. Although, I did have dreams early on of having Emma Goldman show up, because it was so interesting to me, as you just said, so fascinating to me that Emma Goldman was anti-suffrage. And I used to, in early outlines, be like, "Wouldn't it be so awesome if I could get Emma Goldman in there for just, like, a six-line exchange?" Because Emma Goldman kind of shows up: She shows up in Assassins, she shows up in Tintypes, she shows up in Ragtime. And I sort of dreamed of continuing that thread, but I couldn't do it all. 

Not even a quick line of, "You're just upholding the patriarchy!"
Exactly, exactly, because it's so fascinating, right? It's like there's so many different ways to be a feminist. She's even more "burn it down" than Alice Paul. Alice Paul was not radical enough for her.

So speaking of Ragtime, can you tell me anything about a possible Broadway transfer?
I'm sure I can't. It's not my place. It's not my place. But I dream of getting to do it again for sure. It's my favorite show, it would be an honor.

I actually do think you succeed in having Suffs be a musical that resonates in good times and bad times. "Keep Marching" at the end of the show—months ago, when Kamala was nominated, it had a very hopeful tone. And then listening to it now, the days after the election, it has a defiant tone. And both interpretations work. My question for you, as the person who wrote those words: Does it help you—as a performer, as an activist, as a human—to say those words every night and remind yourself?
Absolutely! Absolutely. There was so much discussion over the years of developing Suffs of how to end it. 

The beats were always there for the ending, there was just a lot of back and forth among the whole team about how much to celebrate versus how much to not. We've been taking the audience on this ride of this fight for the 19th amendment, and then when it passes, how much should we allow the audience to celebrate, and how much should we be clear-eyed about the incomplete nature of that celebration? The incomplete nature of that celebration was always a part of my thesis for the show. And I'm so glad we landed where we did. It's why it took so many drafts.

My hope with "Keep Marching" was to write something—the musicals I idolize, Cabaret, Ragtime, Fiddler on the Roof—the time is always right for those endings of those shows. I've seen those shows over and over again throughout the years, and they feel timeless, not timely. They speak to whatever moment there is. So I was like, how could I strive to write an ending that could, hopefully, that isn't just for 2024 that could be, hopefully applicable in whatever the outcome was of the election? And hopefully, I'll sit and watch it in 35 years, when Encores! starts a series on the moon.

But I am not immune to the seduction of cynicism that has crept in, with everything going on right now with our country being run by a couple of corrupt billionaires. I feel it as well. But I think the show is helping to heal me as well, to get to remind myself every night and to sing those words. And I mean, the lines that have been sticking out to me recently are "learn as much from our success as our mistakes." Because I am sitting here by this giant box of just hundreds and hundreds of beautiful letters I received over our amazing Broadway run from kids, older folks, all ages, all backgrounds, all across the country who have felt moved by the show and felt empowered or seen by the show—which is something I want. I want people (especially kids, especially girls) to feel empowered by the story, to feel inspired like they can take on a challenge. 

And also, I want people to understand the mistakes of the movement. Suffs is, in a lot of ways, both a celebration of the suffs and a cautionary tale about the perils of progressive infighting. It's why I chose to put the dramatic conflict in the show between the suffs themselves, because I did not want those sitting and watching Suffs to feel like it's a liberal exercise of patting yourself on the back or being on the right side of history. In fact, when we are too divided within our own progressive movement, it's a problem. As I think we've seen in a lot of ways this year, the mistakes of this movement are so many—Alice Paul, my own character, made racist compromises to advance her and her white compatriots freedoms above Black women. It's evident in the show and in history. Obviously that's something to learn from—that we will never achieve freedom for ourselves if we're doing it at the expense of someone else. 

And then I felt a lot of people in the audience really nodding at "the gains will feel small and the losses too large. Keep marching. You'll rarely agree with whoever's in charge." Something I've been noticing in the aftermath of the election is at the stage door, there's a lot of tears—especially from the adults. And I get it. I've cried a lot too now, and I get the defeat that people are feeling. But I don't see that in the kids. I meet kids every night who are just, like, lit up, and want to tell me about that they started a democracy club at their school, and they wrote a protest song. And they are going to dress up as Alice Paul and Ida B. Wells at their school. And they're just excited—excited about the story and about using their voice. And it's just so moving to me, because it reminds me that night of seeing the kids at Ragtime. How are we going to show up for these kids? If they're not feeling that sense of defeat right now, we've got to join them. We've all had an opportunity to lick our wounds and hopefully get some much-needed rest. But starting January 20, we can really get back in the fight.

How do you keep yourself from feeling disappointed that Suffs is closing? Because the common refrain, when a show closes, is: "Why can't Broadway support new, original work? What does it say about the future of the industry?"
I gotta be honest with you, it was funny: When we found out we were closing, and people were kind of like, "Oh, I'm sorry to hear that," it didn't quite click for me, because I don't feel sad. I cannot believe the amazing run we've had! 

If you told me this time last year that we would have gotten this unbelievable run and all the amazing things that have happened to us, I would have been over the moon and in shock—I kept my expectations so low. It's my Broadway debut as a writer! If we had just opened, that would have been an accomplishment. This has been so far beyond what I could have thought. I think it would have smacked of some hubris if I thought on my Broadway debut as a writer, I would have just been one of the extremely rare (I don't know what the statistics are but it feels like) one-in-a-million shows that get to run for several years. Like, the fact that we've gotten to be here a year, I feel thrilled [chuckles]. It would have been amazing to run longer, but I feel like we have made our presence known and we've made our impact. I feel that every day. I feel that in all these letters. I feel that at our stage door, I feel that in all of our incredible fans who have come back and back to see us and seen us and loved us. I feel that in the community we've made here.

And I'm being totally real with you, Diep! I can't believe it's gone this well. I feel so, so lucky. I feel so glad we got to run through this election. I kind of remember being like, "Oh man, it would be great to last the summer. Man, it would be great to last through the Tonys." Each new step, I tried not to move the goal post. And the fact that we got to run in the lead up to the election and the aftermath, and all the things we were talking about before, that we got to hold audiences through this time. I feel like we got to be here right in the time we needed to. We got to show up right in the moment that was meant for us. And we were here, we will always have been here. 

And you won two Tony Awards, so people really will know you were here!
I did not think this is where Suffs was going to go. It was such a long, hard journey. There were so many stops and starts, there were so many setbacks. I would be sitting there rewriting, being like, "It's never gonna happen. We're not gonna get another production." I had so much despair. I was talking with Nikki M. James, who's been such a guiding light this whole time and a force of nature. She said to me, "I think I believed in it at times where you didn't." And it's true. The fact that Jenn and Nikki and [director Leigh Silverman] and [choreographer Mayte Natalio] and [producers Jill Furman and Rachel Sussman] kept the faith....

And I'm only here because of the previous generation that paved that way for me, with [Jeanine Tesori] and [Lynn Ahrens] and [Liz Swados]. It's just true, and that what Suffs is all about, that generational hand-off. I feel now a beautiful responsibility to pay it forward and to keep working hard and to keep encouraging young people to write. In some ways, I feel like I'm just getting started, I feel so excited to keep going. It is so rare that an artist gets to finish a piece and get the experience that I've had, and the opportunity that I had to have my piece so fully, beautifully realized on a Broadway stage for a whole year. It just doesn't happen. I'm so lucky. I get to know what that feels like to have the work pay off. I just will spend the rest of my life figuring out how to repay that luck.

Are you working on anything new?
I'm taking a vacation the week after we close. Then I'm working on two new musicals. I can't say what they are yet, just because they haven't been announced and I'm really excited about them. I'm working in teams, I'm collaborating. I loved writing Suffs by myself, it was sort of like my DIY MFA. But now I'm so excited to be collaborating. I'm collaborating with some of my favorite writers on the planet, and both stories are Jewish stories. And I'm really, really excited about them.

So, when can we expect the release for the PBS taping of Suffs?
I don't know yet. It's still in conversations when that will happen, but I know that it will happen.

I've been telling everyone I'm going to watch that and What the Constitution Means to Me, and I'm just going to have a really good cry.
I love it, that can be your Barbenheimer! I'll join you for that watch party, we'll do a double feature.

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Photos: Shaina Taub's Suffs on Broadway

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