Suffs – 05 April 2024

The movement and momentum and pacing of this show had me captured from the very first downbeat. Shaina Taub’s mastery of the stage as a writer, performer, historian, and creator, is absolutely awe inspiring. Her harmonies are breathtaking, and include chords just outside the typical musical theater canon of thirds and fifths. Her music, like her words, explores and questions. It pokes and haunts with its boldness, its tenderness, and its timeliness. 

We feel the passion and fire and temerity of the story’s fierceness, yet for me and many other audience members, this fearless brought out our vulnerabilities. I found myself crying from the sheer strength of these characters, these historical figures to whom the world is so incredibly indebted. These women’s stories matter now more than ever as this foundation they laid, upon which pillars of modern society were built, are once again threatened. Women everywhere are facing questions about their reproductive rights and healthcare. Women in a broader, gender expansive definition, are facing questions about clothing bans and book/information bans that tear away the fabric of their very existence; trailblazing any kind of safety for these women to live as the women they are is its own movement requiring incredible strength.

Suffs brought up a lot of feelings regarding how many different ways there are to want a similar outcome, and how easy it is to sabotage chances at that outcome. These women struggled knowing they could not compromise on the goal, but simultaneously felt forced to put aside differences within the movement. Yet some found themselves marching under a banner they didn’t fully believe in, part of a movement that did not always sit right with them or speak to their situation. I was struck by the portrayal of Ida B. Wells (Nikki M. James), and her crushing realization that she was helping other people get rights she did not (and would not) have herself. 

I was disappointed by how much of the cast was content with winning their own fight, though grateful for the historical accuracy and honesty. They got what they wanted, yet the injustice of the world didn’t go anywhere. Black women who had marched by their side to help them get the vote were discarded and forgotten. To use the language of the play, they waited their turn. And when it would have been their turn, the women whom they helped felt no need to return the favor. They fought hard and made huge sacrifices, but were content to walk away.

Then there’s that final scene – enter the student from NOW, who comes in as the next generation with impressive energy devoted to a vast multitude of issues. It echoes a familiar question from earlier in the show about what happens when people who want to fight on the same side of one issue are on opposite sides of another. Beyond the old fogey joke with Alice Paul (Shaina Taub) becoming Carrie Chapman Catt (Jenn Collela) was a more modern, more relevant issue, that was a pivotal question throughout. How do you get anything done when you don’t agree on what needs doing? How do you prioritize? What is the right way to get your point across, and how do you get your message to people who can exact change – then how much do you ask of them? What do you settle for?

In today’s political climate, I often feel the crushing weight of these questions, and I think it was this relevance that made Suffs hit home for me emotionally. The individual and collective strength of these women was overpowering and incredibly inspiring. But it did reinforce my own scattered thoughts about my own broken world, and Suffs didn’t inspire me to find the energy to fight. It made me aware of just how much energy it takes to fight, which made me wonder if I’d ever have it, and who would put aside our differences to assist. I’d like to believe that if I got my rights first, I’d look back and help the next group up. But this inner turmoil, conflict, and chaos within the suffragist movement, was very real; conceptually it persists today, and is magnified by the Internet and social media. We are not organized and personally bonded in the way that these women were. We often do not know who is really leading the charge. So we have dissonance.

In a way, the suffragists fought for our right to have this kind of dissonance – individual rights, individual votes, individual voices. While women are beyond the shadow of a doubt worthy of and entitled to the same rights as men, I wonder if the world is really better off now when there are so many voices shouting over each other that we don’t hear the beat were marching to. We function as a collective if we’re all too busy shouting to listen to the needs of one another.

This makes Suffs an important show for our time. Suffs reminds us that, as important as individual convictions and rights are, when we can agree on enough to unite side-by-side, we can change the world. We still could, with a little trust in each other. I hope Suffs helps history cycles back to this movement and this moment, because, beyond inspiring pride and hope, it’s one of few historical precedents on how to succeed at finishing the fight for equality and justice.

The performance I attended was a preview performance.

I did not attend this performance on a press pass.