Ones to Watch: Shaina Taub Brings Suffs to Broadway on Her Own Terms

Calling Shaina Taub “One to Watch” might seem redundant to fans who have been keeping a close eye on her career for the past decade. But never has a work more fully epitomized Taub as an artist—or put her in a brighter spotlight—than Suffs, the musical Taub conceived, wrote and will star in on Broadway this spring at the Music Box Theatre.

“Broadway has always loomed large as this kind of shiny dream,” Taub tells Broadway.com Managing Editor Beth Stevens on The Broadway Show. “It feels it surreal to get to do it on my own terms. I don't think I ever imagined it would be with my own show, really getting to say the thing I wanted to say.”

Beyond her regular cabaret shows, Taub has performed her own material many times before. In 2016, she clowned around with Bill Irwin and David Shiner, scoring their off-Broadway sketch show Old Hats and joining them onstage as a vaudevillian chanteuse. And as a staple of the Public Theater’s Shakespeare in the Park programming, she wrote the music for fresh adaptations of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and As You Like It, emceeing both—the former as the foolish jester Feste and the latter as the perpetually melancholic Jaques.

Suffs, however, pulls Taub off the sidelines and into the emotional center of the story to which she’s dedicated the last 10 years of her life. “I'd been searching for a story about a group of girls taking on a system,” Taub explains, recounting how Rachel Sussman, now one of Suffs’ lead producers, first guided her towards the history of the American women’s suffrage movement. “It was like—there it was,” she remembers. “It was right in my own backyard. And it had yet to be dramatized in a major way.”

Alice Paul, one of the chief strategists in the fight for the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, became the story’s protagonist, and Taub—joining the illustrious ranks of Hamilton’s Lin-Manuel Miranda and Waitress’ Sara Bareilles—assumed the challenge of both writing and performing this complex character.

“I've performed a lot longer than I've written,” Taub notes, mulling over the multi-hyphenate identity she’s cultivated in the theater community. “I used to think I needed to kind of choose one path. But seeing people like Sara and Lin, and even [Hadestown composer] Anaïs Mitchell—a singer-songwriter performing her own music—I was like, ‘Oh, maybe I don't need to choose a lane. I can be a full artist and bring my whole self to that context.'”

Suffs had its world premiere off-Broadway at the Public Theater in spring 2022, extending its limited run three times. Since then, Nobel Prize Laureate Malala Yousafzai and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton have crossed the aisle, joining art and politics to help shepherd Suffs to exponentially greater visibility on Broadway.

“To think that we as the show could be a part of joining in these missions for fighting for women's rights and humans rights in concert with all of their wisdom and passion,” says Taub, still in disbelief of her team of producers. “In some ways, it's so surreal, and in other ways it feels so right. We're all fighting the same fight, and to get to have them be a part of it with us and to learn from them is an honor.”

It’s quite a feat being the creative inspiration behind such a pair of political icons’ Broadway debuts. Still, this buzz-worthy detail shouldn’t distract from the fact that Suffs, first and foremost, is Taub’s Broadway debut—and in more capacities than most artists juggle in their first turn on the Great White Way. “I think it's going to be a two-lane highway of fear and anxiety,” Taub remarks with only the slightest hint of a joke. “And then also just joy and exhilaration."

“For me, performing has always been my happy place,” she says, contentedly. “Even in all the craziness of everyday life or the craziness of being on a creative team—for the hours that I'm on stage, no one can bother me.”

GET TO KNOW THE ONES TO WATCH
Left to Right: NICHELLE LEWIS (The Wiz) | ALI LOUIS BOURZGUI (The Who's Tommy) | JOY WOODS (The Notebook) | BRODY GRANT (The Outsiders) | SHAINA TAUB (Suffs)

Watch the full episode of The Broadway Show with Tamsen Fadal highlighting all six of these rising Broadway talents. Also: Flip through the complete gallery of photos from our exclusive Broadway.com photo shoot.

The Broadway Show Credits: Directed by Zack R. Smith | Producers: Paul Wontorek and Beth Stevens | Senior Producers: Caitlin Moynihan and Lindsey Sullivan | Videographers: Born in Brooklyn, Shaun Copeland, Luis Ferrá, Eddie Lebron, Anton Ponomarev, Nick Shakra and Tyler Ward  Photo Credits: Photography by Emilio Madrid | Photo Assistants: Alan Padilla and Cooper Hammel | Location: Corner Studio. Styling Credits: Styling: Eliza Yerry | Hair: Monique Gaffney | Make-up: Angella Valentine and Eldo Ray Estes | Brody Grant: Black Tank: Abercrombie & Fitch; White Tank: Sunspel; Pants: Mavi; Shoes: Gola; Jewelry: Title of Work | Joy Woods: Dress: A.Potts; Shoes: Gianvito Rossi; Jewelry: Jenny Bird | Ali Louis Bourzgui: Top: Acne; Pants: Diesel; Shoes: Nike; Jewelry: Title of Work | Shaina Taub: Jumpsuit: Miss Selfridge; Shoes: New Balance; Jewelry: Jenny Bird | Nichelle Lewis: Jacket: Khy; Bodysuit: Wolford; Skirt: ASOS; Shoes: RAID