Vermont native's musical goes to Broadway with push from Hillary Clinton, Malala Yousafzai
A Waitsfield native who’s been making her way toward Broadway for several years is finally getting there, and with some big-name firepower behind her.
Shaina Taub last year debuted her musical “Suffs” off-Broadway. The work tells the history of the American suffrage movement just over 100 years ago and will move to Broadway in 2024, according to the Broadway magazine Playbill. Opening night is set for April 18 at the Music Box Theatre on West 45th Street in Manhattan.
Taub wrote the book, music and lyrics for “Suffs,” which will be produced by Jill Furman and Rachel Sussman. It’s the co-producers, though, who really call attention to the support behind Taub’s musical: former U.S. Secretary of State, U.S. Senator and First Lady Hillary Clinton, as well as Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai.
“My mom got me the Chorus Line cast album for Hanukkah when I was seven years old,” Taub wrote Wednesday on Instagram when she shared a screen shot of the Playbill announcement. “Being a part of the Broadway community has been my dream ever since. But to realize that dream in this way, on my own terms, is beyond my wildest ones.”
Taub’s star has been ascending on the New York theater scene for a decade. The singer-songwriter raised her profile in 2016 when she created a musical version of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” produced by The Public Theater in Central Park.
Hadestown
Many Vermonters became aware of Taub’s New York career that year when she performed in the off-Broadway production of the musical “Hadestown” by Addison County native Anais Mitchell. “Hadestown” would go on to Broadway in 2019 and win eight Tony Awards, though Taub was not part of the Broadway production.
Taub spoke with the Burlington Free Press in 2019 about her then-unnamed musical about the suffrage movement, which she had hoped would open off-Broadway in 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic delayed the production’s debut for two years.
“The goals are similar to something like ‘Hadestown’ ? it (the suffrage musical) won’t be on Broadway first, and God willing it will be on Broadway at all, but we’ll see. Right now I’m trying to finish it,” Taub told the Free Press in that 2019 conversation in her Brooklyn neighborhood.
She wrote on social media Wednesday that her musical about women fighting for the right to vote “is for all the driven, stubborn, loud little girls out there fighting to be heard, and for everyone out there fighting for a better world.”
Making tracks toward Broadway
Taub has spent the past few years taking parallel tracks toward Broadway. The alum of Lyric Theatre in Burlington began working in 2018 with music legend Elton John on songs for a musical version of the film “The Devil Wears Prada.” The production opened in Chicago in 2022 with a book created by another Vermonter, Burlington native Kate Wetherhead. A revamped version of “The Devil Wears Prada,” which is expected to arrive eventually on Broadway, is scheduled to open in the U.K. in 2024.
Contact Brent Hallenbeck at [email protected].
This article originally appeared on Burlington Free Press: Broadway-bound musical by Vermonter gets help from Hillary Clinton