In 2024, Shaina Taub’s musical Suffs brought its campaign to Broadway. The show, following the various sects of the women’s suffrage movement as they look to secure the right to vote, won two Tony Awards for book and score and sustained a nine month Broadway run, a feat for any show, but especially a wholly original work like Suffs.
Following its Broadway closure in 2025, Suffs has now brought its show on the road with a national tour which includes a stop in Chicago. I sat down with actress Marya Grandy who plays Carrie Chapman Catt to discuss her time on the tour as well as her time spent in Chicago as a frequent part of our theatre scene. Here is that conversation.
SOPHIA CASA: Diving into the show that you’re currently touring with right now, Suffs, can you tell me a little bit about how your journey with the show sort of began?
MARYA GRANDY: Sure, well, my journey with the show began by seeing it in New York. I had several good friends in it, and Shaina Taub, the creator of the show, had been a lyricist on a show that we had worked on together about a year prior, and so the first time I saw it, I just went as a supportive friend and theater-goer, and I absolutely loved it. I thought the music was beautiful. I loved how it was a fully femme and non-binary cast telling this story of the unsung heroes of the suffrage movement. I was a little dismayed by how much of this information was new to me. I was an American Studies major in college, and suffrage got very little ink. There wasn’t a whole lot of research on it. There weren’t a whole lot of published works about it at the time, and so to hear the name Alice Paul for the first time in a Broadway musical about the suffrage movement was humbling. Like most people who saw the show, after I saw the musical, I went to Google University to look up some of these people who were involved, but a year later, my agents reached out to me and said, hey, this show is going on tour, and you have an appointment for Carrie Chapman Catt. Do you want to go on tape for it? And I was very surprised because when I saw the show, I thought, oh, if I ever were to get seen for this show, I’d get seen for Woodrow Wilson. I’d get seen for the president because that’s sort of the lane that I have found myself in as a character actor in musical theater, doing primarily character actor stuff. So when I got the appointment for Carrie, I reached out to my agents and I said, are you sure? Like, are you sure that this is the part that they want to see me for? And they said yes.
CASA: Wow. And I mean, the part of Carrie Chapman Catt is a big part, so I guess, can you tell me a little bit about what it’s like to specifically play that role? Because you’re right, it’s not a very character actor type role. So can you tell me a little bit about how you’ve sort of found even yourself growing and changing through taking on this role?
GRANDY: For me, Carrie, she represents the establishment of the suffrage movement. She was a direct protege of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who basically started the suffrage movement at Seneca Falls in 1848, and she took up the mantle from them. For the purposes of our show, she is the old guard. And within the company of this tour of Suffs, I’m the old guard, like I’m one of the older people in the cast, one of the older people in the company. And that is something I come by, honestly, it’s something I take great pride in that sense of leading by example, where the challenge came in was with Carrie’s dynamic with Alice Paul. So Carrie Chapman Cad is sort of the Nancy Pelosi of the situation, then Alice Paul is the AOC of the situation, right? Like they’re working towards a common goal, but they’re coming at it from very general, very different generational stances.
CASA: Of course, as you sort of allude to, you know, Suffs is a show very much entrenched, whether it intended to or not, in this current political moment we find ourselves in still is sort of echoes today. And so yes, the show played on Broadway, but now it’s on tour. And there’s something very unique and kind of interesting that comes from it going across the country and to many different locations. So can you tell me a little bit about how responses have been? What has it been like to take this show in particular on tour? I know you’ve toured before, but specifically with this one.
GRANDY: Shaina’s goal was always to have the show tour. Shaina grew up in rural Vermont, and her exposure to Broadway was touring shows. She and her mom would come down to Boston and see shows as they came through on tour. And she understands how impactful that is for people who can’t get to New York. And what I’m so proud of with what we do with Suffs is the representation that is on stage. We have, the age range in our cast goes from 20 to 63, and we have every possible combination of actor type, of gender identity, of racial identity. And it’s really exciting to go to cities and meet these young people in particular, who see themselves on stage. And our producers have been very good about working with the League of Women Voters across the country, which was an organization that Carrie Chapman Catt founded. And we have had at many venues, we’ve had voter registration tables. So young people who just haven’t gotten to register to vote before have had a chance to make their voices known by registering and saying, okay, this is what it means to me. This is how I step up. And what’s been amazing has been going to smaller markets or places that don’t have a strong theater base. Salt Lake City was this amazing revelation for so many of us because what we didn’t know was that Utah was on the front lines of suffrage. Their Lieutenant Governor, suffrage is her primary platform. She has gone around the world talking about voting rights. Utah was the first state that allowed women to vote after the 19th Amendment was passed. There’s a huge monument to suffrage in Salt Lake City. And so things like that have been remarkable surprises for all of us.
CASA: That’s incredible. So similar in the vein of traveling across, something that I was specifically interested in is, you are, as you call it, you’re a bi-coastal actor. So you spent part of your time in New York, part of your time in Chicago. What leads you to continue to stay here?
GRANDY: My mom grew up in Barrington and she wanted to make sure that I was born where she was close to her family. They weren’t living there at the time, but that’s where they wanted to start their family. And so I spent my, I spent many, many Christmases flying back out to Chicago or to Barrington, I should say, to spend time with extended family. And then cut to many years later, my husband and I were living in New York and I was working steadily in New York theater. And I had an opportunity to work on a show in Chicago. I stayed with my best friend and to work on this show. And I got to see a bunch of theater while I was here. And I was really just blown away by the team sport element of it. The idea that because so much of the Chicago theater scene is based firmly in nonprofit and sort of seasonal theater, that was very new to me. Living in New York where it’s almost entirely commercial theater, this community shows up for each other in ways that humble me every day. It is not, it’s certainly not immune to the slings and arrows of the economy. Chicago theaters are still finding their way back with regards to subscribers, with regards to programming and getting their funding back. But there is a real rising tide, lifting all boats element to it.
CASA: Well Marya, thank you so much for talking with me.
GRANDY: Thanks Sophia.
[“KEEP MARCHING” FROM SUFFS PLAYS]
Suffs performs at Broadway in Chicago’s CIBC Theatre from July 7-19th.
For WNUR News, I’m Sophia Casa
