About this Piece

Shaina Taub began working on what would become the Tony Award-winning musical Suffs in 2014 shortly after receiving a copy of Doris Stevens’ 1920 memoir Jailed for Freedom. The book tells of the figures at the heart of the women’s suffrage movement—many of whom were largely forgotten—and their unwavering efforts to ratify the 19th Amendment giving women the vote. “It’s an untold, crucial chapter of our history; it was so dramatic and dynamic. These protests the suffragists pioneered were really the first examples in American social movements of this massive, visual rhetoric, of literal choreography and music and pageantry and color and formation and parades, picket lines. Just the staging of the protests alone was so inherently theatrical to me,” Taub told Elle.

The musical is centered on Alice Paul, founder of the National Woman’s Party and an organizer of the “Silent Sentinels,” who picketed the White House from 1917 to 1919. When it opens, the firebrand Paul is criticizing the less “aggressive” tactics of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Over the course of the musical, Paul gathers a team of like-minded “suffs,” stages marches and protests, meets unsuccessfully with President Woodrow Wilson, organizes a picket line outside the White House, is sent to prison, where she calls for a hunger strike, has her sanity questioned, and helps pass the 19th Amendment, all before devoting herself toward the passage of a future equal rights amendment.

Initially scheduled for a 2020 premiere at New York’s Public Theater, the show opened in 2022 and transferred to Broadway in 2024, earning Taub Tony Awards for Best Book of a Musical and Best Original Score. Beyond the theater, the music and story of Suffs has resonated powerfully, providing a touchstone for current social movements. “That’s what theater can do,” says Taub. “We get to literally conjure our ancestors and imagine what they might say. In these last few years since we opened on Broadway, it’s just taken on a life of its own. People perform it at their synagogue, at their church, at their school recital, at a protest, at a rally.”

Tonight’s song cycle was created with an eye toward carrying the larger message of social progress. It opens with Paul’s soaring idealistic credo “Finish the Fight,” when she promises to take the suffragist cause on her back. From those early moments of resolve we head into the darker-tinged self-doubt of “Insane,” as the imprisoned Paul is subjected to a sanity test. In a clever twist, Paul concludes that the truly maddening ending will be “If our fighting and hoping and dying has all been in vain / Then I’ll go insane.” A duet between Paul and the lawyer Inez Milholland, “Show Them Who You Are,” shows the plucky stick-to-itiveness of these two trailblazers in spite of adversity.

The cycle closes with the same song as the Broadway musical: “Keep Marching,” Taub’s surmise of what the suffs would advise today’s advocates. The gospel arrangement heard here is by Allen René Louis, who created this special version for Broadway Votes’ campaign ahead of the 2024 election, reminding us that while progress is possible, it’s not guaranteed without persistence.

—Amanda Angel