Backstage at Suffs: Building a Movement on Broadway

In a musical, when several cast and crew have to work together, what have you learned about collaboration?

Mayte Natalio, Choreographer

If everyone on the team has the same end goal, the best idea should win. If people have different agendas, then you might stray – not that everybody always agrees on things. There have been many times in this process where we’ve lost battles, but because we all had the same end goal, we all were proud of the decisions that were made collectively.

Shaina Taub, Book, Music, and Lyrics

We disagreed a lot. What ultimately made those disagreements productive was that everyone was 100% committed to the show.  The only thing that drives me crazy is if someone’s not rigorous, or they’re not showing up, or their heart’s not in it. As everyone in the collaboration is giving all of themselves, I know they’re thinking about it deeply. I know they’re working as hard as I am. I know that they’re committed to getting it right. I can respect the different opinions and know that we’re going to come to a better solution. Ultimately the show is this tapestry of a thousand million little choices and disagreements and amazing breakthroughs and conflicts and everything else.

Rachel Sussman, Producer

From the producing end, it sometimes feels like it’s in direct conflict with the needs of the artistry. Because we live in a capitalist culture, the goals that Jill Furman, my producing partner, and I are focused on may not align 100% with the needs of the creative team. So how can we try and find opportunities for alignment, and when are we going to disagree? When are decisions being made because of the business, and when are we able to make decisions because it’s the best thing for the show?

How did the show’s message inspire you?

Andrea Grody, Music Supervisor

There was no way to make this musical without living the values of the Suffs. Making a musical and being an activist was the same in this process, and it permeated every level of our process, all the way down to how we structured our teams and how we scheduled the work day. I feel like I can take those lessons forward into the other musicals I’ve done. I feel I’ve learned to be a Suff in so many ways from working on this.

I’ve learned a lot about the dangers of burnout. There’s a big theme in the show where Inez Milholland (character), pushes herself past the point of physical exhaustion to her death. And while so much of Suffs was so beautiful – I allowed it to consume my life. I started to equate my self-worth with its worth to the detriment of all other things in my life. A lesson from Suffs is that I don’t want to allow a project to feel like it is defining me and my time, energy, value, and identity in this way. It’s no one else’s fault. I let it get to such a level that it informed the writing because it’s similar to my character.

What did you learn from this project?

Leigh Silverman, Director

The story of Suffs is one of endurance and resilience. There are no shortcuts. To me, the work that happened on this show was happening inside of a world that changed a bunch of times over since the beginning of Shaina writing it. We have been through a lot of years of really intense political change in this country. [The play shows] how you can hold on to kind of the motivating, inspiring, catalyzing idea while the world shifts around you.

I want to continue to think about how to bring humanity and kindness into production. The role of a producer holds an amount of power. We each have our own individual power, but then, depending on the roles we have, we come into the room with different levels of power on the show itself. I’ve been thinking a lot about how to produce responsibly. In the past, I thought because I was in a role of power, I should make decisions versus letting an idea in the room or knowing that there are other ideas that should be spoken and ensuring that there’s an opportunity for everyone else to feel empowered around me.

I’m encouraged by the communication that we had in this process. While I was the choreographer, there were many questions that I had about everything – lighting, text, music, costumes, but not in a useless way. There are things that in some other processes might not be welcome, or you might feel like you’re stepping out of bounds, or that’s not your place to step into that.

Beyond the resilience that is so obvious in the women the piece is about – what is one way that the women portrayed in this story have changed the way you think about activism?

When I started working on this process, I was like, all I want to do is be Alice Paul. And now I’m like, I’m so glad I’m not Alice Paul. Don’t get me wrong though, she is an icon of mine. On one hand, I think her relentlessness is so admirable, but on the other hand, she had no life outside of this movement. I’m trying to learn what balance can look like – to have a full life that is not just work. I should add, I had a baby, which does contextualize my answer.

White women by and large in the movement, did not have any appreciation of intersectionality. They thought they had to be first. And as we say in the show, you know, that black women had to “wait their turn.”  Systems of power in this country would much rather that happen. They would much rather different marginalized groups blame each other. It’s a myth that white women will achieve any modicum of freedom at the expense of women of color. [It’s important] to understand that it’s an act of rebellion to be intersectional. People in power and billionaires want to blame folks from all different groups in the country for problems… anyone but them. But actually, when we come together and we understand that all of our liberations are connected – and that’s not just a trite phrase, it’s actually about building a coalition together. That’s what I’ve seen in organizations that I’m lucky to be a part of, like the NYCLU or the Working Families Party. I see that in groups of people and civic leaders and union organizers who understand that we are a stronger movement when we are fighting with and for each other. And that’s something that a lot of the characters, the white women specifically did not get. 

Also, I’ve been thinking so much about working within a system and working outside of the system. In the show we symbolize it with fire and tea – the idea of lighting fires outside in the street versus inside the halls of power having tea, and the need for both. I wrote this show between the ages of 25 and 35, and I think I came into this a little more on the fire side. And I like to think of myself still on the fire side.

Working within the system of Broadway, I think we’ve done a radical thing to tell the story and to do it with compassion in the way that I like to believe that we have. And yet there was no way we could have made our tickets free. There’s no way that we could have made the show accessible to all the students and kids that we wish could see it. There was no way because we were within the system of Broadway. And yet, what do you do? Do you turn your nose up at Broadway because you’re not going to be able to have the radical access that you want to have and burn fires outside, or do you go inside and use the house that you’re given to the best of your ability? I guess I’m a moderate in that way because I want to be a part of the Broadway community. I believe in its power because even though our tickets are expensive and there’s nothing our well-meaning producers could have done about that, that’s just how it is. Even though they did a lot of great ticketing initiatives to try and do what they could to bring that down, we’ve now, through the soft power and influence of Broadway, allowed our show to reach into the free streaming music services that a kid in a rural town whose family never could afford a ticket can hear the songs, and we filmed it for PBS that anyone can see. But only through working within the system of Broadway were we able to achieve some of our “burn the system down” coals, you know?

What is one thing that this show has taught you – personally, artistically, or politically, about what is possible?

I think the extent to which the show grew from the beginning into something amazing, and then grew from there into something with the same core, but something quite different and still amazing, has really taught me what’s possible if you keep working toward your light, toward the goal, even as the world changes, as we change, and I will take that lesson forward as I encounter other difficult processes to remember.

Surround yourself with the people who inspire you. Passion runs out and energy runs out, and you get tired and you get frustrated, but if you’re surrounded by people who light that fire for you, you keep going.

It feels good to be wrong. It feels good to be challenged. It actually helps make you more flexible. I have no idea what I thought the show was going to be ten years ago, but it certainly wasn’t this. And this is better than anything I ever could have imagined.

Resilience is possible. We are capable of tolerating discomfort, emotional injury, and failure – and can come out stronger. It can feel like a platitude, but I’ve been through all manner of negative things in this process – my own self-doubt, my own demons, and I’ve had to read negative things people have written about me and my work in very public forums and deal with it and keep going.