Maya Keleher fights the good fight every night as young suffragist Alice Paul in the musical “Suffs,” whose national tour will be taking Playhouse Square by storm Feb. 3-22.
“Suffs,” which takes place from 1913 to 1920, follows the triumphs and failures of the brilliant, passionate American women who fought for the right to vote. These suffragists persevere with brains, relentless drive and a sense of humor in this musical.
The Tony Award-winning show, created by Shaina Taub, follows the years leading up to the passage of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote. Leading this story is Paul, a fiery, stubborn young organizer who will stop at nothing in the struggle.
“She kind of has blinders on. She’s like, ‘I have this one thing I have to get done and I have to be in pursuit of it all of the time,'” Keleher said. “In a lot of the show, you just see her keep pushing through. You see the obstacle show up and kind of shove her down a little bit and then you see her recalibrating and jumping right back in.”
Keleher, who did historical research to learn who Alice Paul was, appreciates that the musical’s creative team gave the actors the freedom to make their characters their own.
“It’s an honor. It’s a challenge,” she said of portraying Paul. “Sometimes it feels like there’s a great weight to carry when you’re playing someone who’s a real historical figure, right? You want to do them justice. You want to feel like whoever’s coming to see the show gets a glimpse into what they did historically,” she said by phone Jan. 23 from the tour in Providence, Rhode Island.
“Shaina Taub wrote this brilliant score of music and brilliant book that I think really gives audiences everything that they need. And so I kind of tried to take the pressure off of creating a carbon copy of Alice Paul, really making her my own,” Keleher said.
Through this show, the cast is also tapping into what activism looks like in the United States as a whole, the actress said.
“My hope is that whoever plays Alice Paul next also feels like they can make her their own, as a symbol of all the different kinds of activists that we have in the world,” said Keleher, a New Jersey resident.
Frustrating road to landing ‘Suffs’ role
Keleher, 32, is a 2016 musical theater graduate of Boston Conservatory. She landed the role of Alice Paul after a frustrating six years of auditioning and receiving no’s for musical roles.
For her “Suffs” auditions, the actress said she felt she was able to stay true to herself.
“I think those six years of no’s taught me so much about fighting for what you want and you believe in, and I feel like a lot of that comes through in how I portray Alice,” said Keleher, a native of Columbia, Connecticut.
Performing the show about the suffragists’ struggles is physically and emotionally exhausting but also exhilarating, Keleher said: “There’s an adrenaline to being able to give this story to people every night and feel that human connection and that hope with this whole audience.”
The musical’s other characters in the historic women’s suffrage movement include Black journalist Ida B. Wells; labor lawyer Inez Milholland; Paul’s best friend, Lucy Burns; factory union organizer Ruza Wenclawska; college student Doris Stevens; civil rights activist Mary Church Terrell; socialite Alva Belmont; Mary “Mollie” Garrett Hay, who’s second-in-command for the National American Woman Suffrage Association, and suffragist/civil rights activist Phyllis Terrell.
All of the characters in “Suffs” are played by female or nonbinary actors, including President Woodrow Wilson, his aide Dudley Malone and Tennessee legislator Harry Burn.
Being surrounded by all women and nonbinary people in the cast and creative team on tour “feels very, very special,” Keleher said.
“It feels like a space that’s been very cared for and very loving and I feel like we all really go to bat and make sure everyone’s OK,” she said.
Dramatic march scene in ‘Suffs’
“Suffs” premiered off-Broadway at the Public theater in 2022 and ran for 10 months on Broadway in 2024. It won Tony Awards for best book and best score by Taub, who also originated the role of Alice Paul.
Akron native Paul Tazewell, a Tony, Oscar and Emmy award winner, designed the show’s period costumes.
“Suffs” launched its first national tour in Seattle in September.
The number “March” is one of the most dramatic points in the show, when the suffragists conduct the 1913 Woman Suffrage Procession on Washington the day before Wilson’s inauguration. In the song, they reflect on the legacy they are creating.
“It’s very cool to be standing up there all together singing, ‘We demand equality. We demand an amendment,'” Keleher said. “It’s a really beautiful moment. We have a section where we talk about, ‘I want my mother to know I was here. I want my sister to know I was here. I want your great-granddaughter to know I was here.'”
Generational battle between suffragists
Paul represents the new guard suffragist, who clashes with the old guard’s Carrie Chapman Catt, a protege of Susan B. Anthony. Throughout the show, audiences see them both butt heads and connect.
“I think it’s a really beautiful battle to see on stage because so often in our history, we have opposing sides fighting for the same goal,” Keleher said. “They were just coming at it from very different approaches and very different backgrounds … And you also see a lot of reflection in both characters about what the other one is doing.”
While Chapman Catt strived to work within the system to pursue women’s right to vote, Paul took radical steps as she fought for women’s suffrage, including going on a hunger strike in prison. She began her work in the U.S. suffrage movement in 1910, after having fought for women’s suffrage in the U.K.
Hunger strikes led to force feeding for suffragists imprisoned in both the U.S. and the U.K.
Despite resulting health problems, Paul lived to age 92, dying in 1977. After the 19th Amendment passed in 1920, she continued to fight the rest of her life for the Equal Rights Amendment, which she co-authored.
Racial element in ‘Suffs’
Paul felt she had to make some compromises for her big march to come to fruition in 1913. That included bending to Southern delegations’ objections to Black women marching alongside white women by setting up a separate Black women delegation.
Wells angrily confronts Paul in the song “Wait My Turn,” whose lyrics include, “Guess who always waits her turn, who always ends up in the back? Us lucky ones born both female and Black.”
“Throughout the show, we’re seeing these Black suffragists fight for the same thing that all of these white women are fighting for, and we don’t necessarily see that full payout for them,” due to discriminatory practices at the state level, Keleher said. “I think that is really important to show in this movement.”
Arts and restaurant writer Kerry Clawson may be reached at 330-996-3527 or kclawson@thebeaconjournal.com.
Details
Musical: “Suffs”
When: Opening 7:30 p.m. Feb. 3, continuing through Feb. 22; 7:30 p.m. Tuesday-Fridays, 1:30 and 7:30 p.m. Saturdays, 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sundays
Where: Connor Palace, Playhouse Square, 1615 Euclid Ave., Cleveland
Onstage: Maya Keleher, Jenny Ashman, Anna Bakun, Tami Dahbura, Danyel Fulton, Marya Grandy, Marissa Hecker, Trisha Jeffrey, Livvy Marcus, Victoria Pekel, Brandi Porter, Monica Tulia Ramirez, Jenna Lea Rosen, Gretchen Shope, Aquila Sol, Laura Stracko, Gwynne Wood, Joyce Meimi Zheng, Abigail Aziz, Ariana Burks, Annalese Fusaro, Amanda K. Lopez, Merrill Peiffer
Offstage: Shaina Taub, book/music/lyrics; Leigh Silverman, director; Mayte Natalio, choreographer; Andrea Grody, music supervision; Christine Peters, scenic design; Riccardo Hernandez, original Broadway scenic design; Paul Tazewell, costume design; Lap Chi Chu, lighting design; Charles G. Lapointe, hair/wig design; Joe Dulude II, makeup design; Jason Crystal and Sun Hee Kil, sound design; Michael Starobin, orchestrations; Shaina Taub and Andrea Grody, vocal arrangements; Shaina Taub, Andrea Grody and Michael Starobin, incidental music arrangements; Lori Elizabeth Parquet, associate director; Hawley Gould, associate choreographer
Cost: $30-$129
Information: playhousesquare.org or 216-241-6000
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: ‘Suffs’ tour to march on Playhouse Square stage, highlight suffrage movement
Reporting by Kerry Clawson, Akron Beacon Journal / Akron Beacon Journal
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