From Hamilton to Suffs, History Has Its Eyes on Rising Star Hannah Cruz

Age: 32

Hometown: Newtown, CT

Current Role: Hannah Cruz plays Inez Milholland, the American labor lawyer who led the 1913 women’s suffrage parade, in Shaina Taub's historical musical Suffs.

Credits: Cruz launched her career playing Vivienne Kensington in the non-equity national tour of Legally Blonde The Musical. She went on to play Ellen in the national tour of Bullets Over Broadway and Eliza in the national tour of Hamilton, and has performed at Ogunquit Playhouse in both Young Frankenstein and the American premiere of The Da Vinci Code. She made her New York stage debut as Ruza in Suffs at the Public Theater, followed by off-Broadway turns in Only Gold and The Connector.

On Stage, No One’s Keeping Score
“My mom and dad put me in every sport imaginable and it became very clear right away that that wasn't going to be my bag,” says Cruz about her early days dabbling in childhood hobbies. “I wasn't not athletic,” she clarifies, “but I would get so invested in the winning and the losing of it all that I would just weep all throughout games.” Her parents smartly traded in the high-stakes world of sports for the collaborative world of theater, and by eighth grade it was an all-consuming lifestyle. “I don't know how I graduated high school,” she says. “All I did was work on the shows.” Her bedroom also boasted the décor of a diehard fan, with posters and understudy slips covering her walls. “I would listen to A Chorus Line and Spring Awakening and Next to Normal over and over and over and over again,” she remembers. “There was no question in my mind that it's what I would do.”

This People’s Got It, and This People’s Spreadin’ It Around
When Cruz landed the role of Mama Rose in her high school production of Gypsy—her senior musical—Patti LuPone solidified her place as Cruz’s number-one idol. “We had actually just gone on a trip to go see Gypsy at the St. James with Patti,” Cruz relates. “That was the most incredible theatrical experience of my entire life. I will never forget it.” Her own performance, in turn, borrowed a lot from LuPone’s. “A whole lot,” Cruz emphasizes. It ended up lending her musical mental breakdown in “Rose’s Turn” a gravitas beyond her years, and the internet took notice. “I put my ‘Rose’s Turn’ on YouTube,” Cruz says, citing Andrew Keenan-Bolger and other YouTube-savvy performers fresh from the University of Michigan as her role models. “It got some traction and it was my dream come true just to be recognized for what I was doing.” Cruz had been planning to enroll in Ithaca College’s musical theater program that fall: “I had my Ithaca sweatshirt. I was ready to go,” she says. Her viral moment, however, got her an audition for the role of Vivienne Kensington in a national non-equity tour of Legally Blonde The Musical. “I did that instead of going to college.”

It's Not Easy Being Green
Tired of the endless auditioning for "big blockbuster musicals," going in sometimes for over a dozen callbacks with nothing to show for it, Cruz decided to step away from the grind. "I was living in California doing Elsa in the Frozen show at the Hyperion at Disneyland—which was a great job," she says. And then the national tour of Hamilton called. "I got a self-tape request for Eliza, and I was like, ‘OK, I know how this works. I'll audition for the next five years.’" It turns out cynicism is subverted when you least expect it. "I was shocked at how quickly it happened," says Cruz. "I had been told up until that point, ‘We think you're too green to lead a show.’ But that's the catch-22. How can you get experience if you don't give me experience? But they were handing me it. And it was frightening, but I also felt in a certain way, ‘Thank God. This is what I want. A chance to try it.’”

A Pilgrimage From Transylvania to New York City
A Hamilton tour and a pandemic later, Cruz found herself at Maine's Ogunquit Playhouse in a production of Young Frankenstein. “It was the perfect first job after Hamilton,” she remembers. “It was fun material. I wasn't sobbing and screaming every night.” At the same time, a new Shaina Taub musical Suffs was casting its off-Broadway world premiere at the Public Theater. Cruz had already sent in two self-tapes for the role of Ruza Wenclawska—a Polish-American suffragist and trade union organizer—but the creative team now wanted to see her in person in New York. She was about to say no to the convoluted trip from Maine to New York City, but her boyfriend—now fiancé Edred Utomil, who played Hamilton opposite her Eliza on tour—didn’t let her pass on the audition and booked her plane ticket.

It did turn out to be the travel nightmare she was dreading, sending her to the audition anxious and sleep-deprived. But it was the warmest room she had ever been in. “I'd never been treated like a person so much as I was in that room, acknowledging the work I had done to not only get there, but to prepare the material,” she recalls. “I felt safe to make a lot of crazy, weird choices, and it was really fun. I found out I got the job on the car ride back to Ogunquit.”

Trading Suffs
Just a few months after the Public Theater premiere of Suffs, Cruz landed in the off-Broadway cast of Only Gold at MCC Theater. At the same time, Suffs was going back to the drawing board with another workshop, "That's when [director] Leigh [Silverman] called me and asked if I would play Inez in the workshop,” says Cruz. As she describes the proposal, “It was very much a ‘Let's see if we like it, and if we both like it, then we'll keep doing it.' I didn't feel a ton of pressure. But I think it took me a minute to warm into her." Inez Milholland was the role Phillipa Soo played at the Public Theater, so this would be Cruz's second time following in the footsteps of the Tony-nominated Hamilton actress. "Inez and Eliza are both very different—and Pippa and I are both very different. And yet there's something maybe subconsciously that is similar," Cruz says of their intersecting careers. Since that workshop, she's settled into her own Inez and found an affection for the woman whose sense of sexual and political freedom was lightyears ahead of her time. "I feel like I've lived in her longer, so now it just feels right to me," says Cruz about the role she now gets to inhabit on Broadway. "Getting to play someone that confident and brash is really freeing as a person.”

A Broadway Debut for the History Books
“It’s really unreal,” says Cruz about sharing space with Hillary Clinton, one of the Broadway production's lead producers. “She was at the sitzprobe, she was at our first day of rehearsal, Malala was here the other day,” Malala Yousafzai being another of Suffs’ activist producers. “To be performing this history for women of such magnitude—it's really an honor." Still, Cruz is keeping her emotions in check as she approaches her official Broadway debut. "I think my brain is being a natural beta blocker to me right now," she jokes. "It's funny, because I'm 32 now, and I always had this thing where I wanted to make my Broadway debut by the time I was 30—and there were ways that could have happened," she adds. "But I'm really happy that I waited and that I know myself so much more now. I'm able to let this be exciting, and yet still let the work be very grounded and present without letting that interfere. I've worked really hard and a long time to be here, so I feel very happy and fulfilled. Sixteen-year-old Hannah would be screaming."