Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Each year, millions of Americans cast votes during election season, a fact made possible by the 19th Amendment, which was passed hardly more than a century ago. The Broadway musical, Suffs, brings the fight for women's rights to the stage. Built around Alice Paul, a feminist and leader in the movement, it highlights the fight for equal rights, even though it rankled many. One of those figures is Ida B. Wells, who argued that the Suffs cared mostly about white women. The Black journalist and activist is played by Nikki M. James, a Tony Award-nominated performance.

Suffs won the 2024 Tony Award for the best book of a musical and best original score, and was nominated in several other categories, including Best Direction, from Leigh Silverman. She also directed the recent revival of Yellow Face starring Daniel Dae Kim. Suffs is closing on Broadway this weekend and about to embark upon a national tour. Leigh Silverman joined us back in the fall along with actor Nikki M. James. I started by asking Leigh what changes she knew she wanted to make when Suffs went from the Off-Broadway theater at the Public to a Broadway stage.

Leigh Silverman: Well, I think Shaina had started rewriting before we had even closed at the Public. She had big ideas. I think because she is the star of the show, she could feel nightly where audiences were leaning in, where they were sitting back, where there was confusion. She could feel it. As the writer, she was already coming up with ways that she wanted to reconceive. We have a brand new creative team Uptown. We have a new orchestrator, we have a new choreographer, and the process of bringing the show to Broadway was an absolute joy of reimagining, revisiting, reconceiving, and holding onto what felt like the core of our story and bringing it to a bigger theatrical landscape.

Alison Stewart: When you were moving to Broadway, Nikki, were there new aspects of your performance that you wanted to approach in a new way?

Nikki M. James: Yes, I think one of the big changes that Shaina made from Downtown at the Public Uptown to the Music Box is bringing in a little more heart. I think she was so committed. The amount of research Shana Taub did, she should have an honorary doctorate in women's studies. The amount of research, the amount of books, and also her commitment to telling so many diverse people's stories, she felt like she wanted to have as many facts as possible. Then as we were moving Uptown, there was like an element of, "Who are they really?" That's where, as a dramatist, her imagination plays a part.

That happened a lot with Ida's story, we get to delve a little bit deeper into what Ida may have been feeling, her own thoughts, her own doubts about the work she was doing. That was big, and then the big change that happened in my personal life that really affects what's happening for me in approaching this character is between the Public and Broadway, I had a child. I became a mother, and that aspect of Ida's life was a thing that I didn't necessarily relate to as much before. Ida was a mother of four children, and she was doing all this work while raising a family. That has really changed how I approach this character and my connection to her.

Alison Stewart: Well, congratulations on the little one.

Nikki M. James: Oh, thank you.

Alison Stewart: Let's play the song that really encapsulates your character, Wait My Turn, which introduces us to Ida B. Wells. Let's listen to it, and we can talk about it on the other side. This is from Suffs.

[MUSIC - Nikki M. James: Wait My Turn]

Wait my turn?

When will you white women ever learn?

I had the same old talk with Carrie Chapman Catt

20 years ago

I thought you might be better but you still don't know

You want me to wait my turn

To simply put my sex before my race?

Oh, why don't I leave my skin at home

And powder up my face?

Guess who always waits her turn

Who always ends up in the back

Us lucky ones born both female and Black

Wait my turn?

Well, I sure don't see you waiting yours

Alison Stewart: What's a line from that song that really, really captures who she's about?

Nikki M. James: Oh, I think you want me to put my sex before my race. I think the intersectionality of being a woman of color and wanting to put forward women's rights and also realizing that she can't separate her Blackness from her womanness. In this situation, she was thinking, "So you want me to support this march, at the time, in our story, Ida arrives in Washington, D.C and storms into the office of Alice Paul and her and her team on the eve of this big march on Washington where Alice and her cohorts have asked Black women to march in the back in order to make peace with some of the Southern women who are saying, "We would definitely want to march, but we don't want to march with those people."

That's a theme that I feel every day of my life, where you're asking, you can't separate these two parts of yourself. I think it's really poignant, and it really, in just one sentence, gets right into the heart of this issue here.

Alison Stewart: When you're thinking about all of the characters that are in the play, Leigh, you have Paul and Wells, Wells and Terrell, Terrell and Paul, Catt, go on and on. How do you begin to map that out? The interpersonal conflicts?

Leigh Silverman: It's about the conflicts, and it's also about the joy of working together in community. I think we wanted to have both the ability to show the tensions and also to show what it is for these activists to all want the same thing, to be pointing in the same direction and yet have so many different ideas about how to get it done, that felt like one of the most relatable, universal. Certainly, the thing that, I think, audiences feel when they come to see the show is the idea of how do we work together in such a difficult and fractious time? The Suffs, what they were up against, they had much fewer resources than we do now.

I think in terms of conceiving the show, what I started with was, today, my relationships, my friends, the people that I work, the activists that I know, and to say, "Okay, how do we bring that sense of purpose, dedication, joy, heartbreak, the cost of what all of this kind of work does, how can we bring that to an audience in a way that lets them say, 'Yes, this is the story of then, but what is also the story of now?'"

Alison Stewart: We're talking about Suffs with its director, Leigh Silverman, as well as actor Nikki James, who plays Ida B. Wells. There's this interesting subplot in the show. It's the relationship between Wells and Gent's, Mary Church Terrell, who is another Black activist, educator at Black Dunbar High School. What? Did somebody say Dunbar? [laughter] You know what I'm talking about. How would you describe the viewpoints that Terrell and Wells each represent?

Nikki M. James: Well, it's so complicated and nuanced, and we tried it. We just touched the little surface. We have two and a half hours and we're telling lots of stories and we have to sing along the way, too. If we're thinking about Mary and Ida and we just look at their backstories, Ida was born a slave in the South. She was a person who was an orphan by the time she was 16 years old, raising her siblings and fighting that fight. Mary had access to education. She had parents who had money. They were able to operate in circles in a different way, and from that, they have a different perspectives.

Mary had a way of working within the system, befriending people, making alliances, whereas Ida was really just railing and banging against the wall. When you read a lot of their writings, their diary entries and stuff, you realize they have deep, deep respect for each other. In a lot of ways, they admired each other's ability to come at this from different sides. In our show, we show their friendship, their respect, their mutual respect and love that they had for each other, as well as that tension of, "I can't believe you're--" I have this line like, "Here you are again, giving a speech for a bunch of white ladies, huh?" She says, "Why are you fighting me? I'm not the enemy."

I think that there's this really juicy situation where you're fighting with a person you respect and love. Then we have this moment towards the end of the show where the 19th Amendment is passed and we're on a phone call, a fictionalized imagination of how this news may have gotten to Ida, who wouldn't have been in Tennessee. We celebrate for a second, and then Ida says, "They'll still stop our women from voting." Then Mary says, "I know." Then you know, in that moment, that they've won this one battle, and then they're going to continue to fight together alongside each other and sometimes against each other.

Alison Stewart: Let's hear another song. This is from the track, The Convention, Part I. It takes place during the 1916 National Woman Suffrage Association Convention. A section features Wells and Terrell. Let's listen.

[MUSIC - Ida B. Wells and Mary Church Terrell: The Convention, Part 1]

Ida B. Wells: So you've agreed to speak at your 100th white women's convention?

Mary Church Terrell: Are you just here to sow dissension?

Ida B. Wells: Don't you resent

That you're a prop they trot out at events?

NAWSA presents our rich little Negro mascot come here to preach

See?

We have no race hatred

We let Mary make a speech

Mary Church Terrell: If I didn't speak

They wouldn't even mention race

I tolerate their system

Because that's the only way they'll ever listen to our case

Ida B. Wells: But when the system wants you dead

What then?

Mary Church Terrell: I can't have this out with you again.

Ida B. Wells And Mary Church Terrell: Why are you fighting me?

I am not the enemy

Reporter: Ladies, a photograph please?

Ida B. Wells And Mary Church Terrell: We stand united in sisterhood

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: That's the best moment.

Nikki M. James: Great.

Alison Stewart: It wasn't like, "Hey."

Nikki M. James: Yes. Well, because what they have to face outside is a show of unity. Because they realize they are fighting a bit bigger enemy here, but behind the scenes, they can really get at each other and change each other's minds in a way. It keeps you honest to have a collaborator and a colleague and a comrade who is reminding you every once in a while that there are more perspectives than just your own. I think we can learn a lot from that lesson, that we can disagree while also still pulling in the same direction.

Alison Stewart: One of the big differences from the Downtown version and the Uptown version was the song Watch Out for the Suffragettes. It was a vaudeville tune. All the actors dressed as men. This show begins with Let Mother Vote, which outlines the conservative structure of Carrie Chapman Catt. It's also the announcement of the show. How much did this change? Reframe your thinking about the show.

Leigh Silverman: It was everything. All of the vaudeville that was in the Downtown production was taken out for Broadway. I think one of the other major changes is that the show was almost entirely sung-through Downtown, a lot of recitative, and all of that was turned into a book, a Tony-winning book now for Uptown. I think the combination of losing the vaudeville and adding scenes, traditional book scenes to the musical reframed and reshaped so much of how the musical can be received. I think that starting with Let Mother Vote, which is, first of all, why wouldn't you start a show with Jen Colella singing?

Alison Stewart: Right. It's true.

Leigh Silverman: I mean, come on, we're no dummies. Also, you have the layout of how the world is in the moment that Alice Paul enters it. This was the prevailing strategy, Carrie's idea of being polite, gentle, Look at All of Us Mothers. The idea of NAWSA at that time, Carrie's organization, had a strategy that, and by laying it out in song for us at the top of the show, gave us a world for Alice Paul to intersect with, try to join, and then fight against and say, "Carrie, come on, let's get going. What are you doing? We've been like this for 60 years. Let's do something new." She really sets up one of the other major central tensions in our show, which is the intergenerational tension.

Alison Stewart: Sure. Speak more about that. That's so interesting.

Leigh Silverman: We explore all kinds of different tensions amongst this community of people who are trying to get the vote. The intergenerational tension between Alice and Carrie, I think it's also between Mary and Ida. We see it in a number of different places throughout the show, but it is this very, I think, relatable idea that young people come into a movement and they say, "What have you been doing? You're doing it wrong. I have a better idea." The Younger at the Gates, which is-

Alison Stewart: The big song.

Leigh Silverman: -a big song at the end of Act 1. I mean, the top of Act 2, it used to be at the end of Act 1.

Alison Stewart: That's what I was going to say.

Leigh Silverman: It is truly, I think, the anthem and something that we, as a production, are really honoring, celebrating, and also trying to explore, which is for the people who have been there before, they also know something about how to get change to happen and that, in fact, we can't have success without both. We need Carrie and we need Alice, we need Ida and we need Mary, and sometimes they don't know they need each other, but I think part of what the show is exploring is that it takes us all.

Alison Stewart: We're talking about Suffs with Nikki James, she plays Ida B. Wells, and Leigh Silverman, she's the director. You mentioned you had a child. How much did motherhood really shape the way you think about this show?

Nikki M. James: Right now, audience, I'm trying not to cry. Becoming a mother changed how I think about not just this show, but everything in my career. What am I willing to leave my family for? What sacrifices are worth making? We live in a world where not every job that I take as an actor even will cover all of my childcare expenses, so there's the practical concerns, then also I have to think about what I want my legacy to be. I want my child to be proud that when I left the house and wasn't able to put her to bed any night for a year, that I was doing something that I both believed in and I thought made the world a better place.

Doing this show, being surrounded by a company of mostly women and female identifying non binary performers and being held up by this community, and when I was breastfeeding a young five-week old child during a workshop back in the early parts of 2023, and knowing that those people had my back and then walking on that stage every night and seeing audiences moved, seeing people see themselves, seeing people feel hopeful, seeing people see a history that they didn't know they were a part of and wanting to explore that, makes it worth it.

Then it also makes me think, oftentimes, especially this show, which is looking backwards and forwards, I'm a mother and my mother is still around and doing a really great job helping me raise my child, the connectivity that Leigh is talking about, the generational stuff, I have such a deep respect for my mom now in a way. [laughs] The way you roll your eyes and your parents know nothing, and now I realize, "Oh my God, she knows so much." Also, we're flailing. Half the time your child is asking you a question, and she's only two, and she still asks me questions that I don't necessarily know the answer to. I think, "Wow, I have to give you an answer right now."

I'm also going to sit with that and say, "Is that what I want to say? Is that what I really mean?" I'm so proud. I continue to be so proud to be a part of this. I know that my daughter Isla will be proud of me, too, when she is able to really experience it at some point.

Alison Stewart: She said something really interesting there, "They all had my back, everybody on the show." Do you think that's because of women? Largely women? Do you think it's the group of people you have? Oh, boy. [laughs]

Leigh Silverman: I think Broadway specifically has not been a very hospitable place for women in general. I've had a number of experiences where women designers that I've hired, actors have said, "I'm pregnant, or I'm having a child, or I need childcare, I need to have a place for my breast milk." Any of those kinds of considerations. That is not what Broadway was essentially built for. It's been a real joy and honor in my career to be able to, when I can, use whatever influence I have to change that. It was essential to this company that Nikki felt that way.

We made sure that she could be breastfeeding if she wanted to in the rehearsal room while she was learning music and getting notes, and that that was part of it. Because I think that kind of integration is essential if you want mothers and parents in your workplace. It's up to the people who are in charge of those workplaces, I think, to figure out how to make it more hospitable and at least to ask the question, "How can I? What do you need?" You can't always answer that question or satisfy with an answer, I do think that being curious about how to make something possible is a good way to start.

Nikki M. James: I don't know if it's because we're all women or mostly women, or if it's just the people who are attracted to telling this kind of story are those kind of people who are thinking about community more than they're thinking about the individual, it is always nice to know that the people you're working for are walking the walk and not just talking the talk and the people that you're working with. I can't say enough good things about that aspect of it. As hard as it has been, it's been also a great joy, and I'm very proud that this show is going to be a part of my story of being a mother.

Alison Stewart: It was announced the show is going to close on January 5th and it's going to go into national tours.

Leigh Silverman: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Why should someone who hasn't seen Suffs make time to see it before it closes?

Leigh Silverman: Where to start? I think, it's a--

Alison Stewart: Because the tickets are so expensive. I always say that on this show. You have to really want to see a show.

Leigh Silverman: You do.

Alison Stewart: Somebody who's like, "I'm going to save up and I'm going to go see Suffs."

Leigh Silverman: I will say we have a rush every single day for cheaper tickets. There's a number of different ticket initiatives that are in place right now, so if you visit our website, there are a lot of different opportunities here. I do want to say that Suffs is a very unique theatrical experience. I think the opportunity to see this show right now, leading up to the election and post election, it's giving you something, not just an entertainment and not just history, but an opportunity to feel hope, to sit in a room and feel the feelings with a group of other people who care potentially about the kinds of things that you care about, which is progress and possibility and being part of a bigger community.

It feels like this show, right now, in this moment, until January 5th and then when we go on the road, is hopefully bringing people together to feel inspired, to continue to make change in their own communities as well.

Nikki M. James: I always say that this show is hopeful without being naive or cynical. There's so much entertainment that leans into, the worst aspects of the world, this is not. This is about the best aspects of people and about community, but acknowledges that it is difficult, that it's not Pollyanna at all, but it's also not saying-- it's not cynical. Shana Taub's music is extraordinary. She is an unbelievable dramatist and songwriter. I'm telling you, you're not gonn see a more talented group of people who love each other more on stage.

If you're going to spend your $100 on something or your $150 on something, I think Suffs is the one. We're not around for that much longer, so you have a lot of time to see all the other stuff. Come see Suffs.

Alison Stewart: That was actor Nikki M. James and director Leigh Silverman speaking about the Tony Award-winning musical Suffs, running at the Music Box Theatre through January 5th before the show embarks on a national tour. See the show while you can.