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LOS ANGELES \u2014 As a young teen, Shaina Taub remembers being hungry to learn about the women who fought for the right to vote, but her history classes didn\u2019t offer much information.<\/p>\n
\u201cI heard about Susan B. Anthony and sort of that one anecdote that gets cherry-picked to be taught to us in school,\u201d she recalled.<\/p>\n
Then, when she was 25, a producer gave her the book “Jailed for Freedom” by Doris Stevens, and she was hooked.<\/p>\n
\u201cI stayed up all night reading this thrilling, dynamic story about how women were the first American citizens to march on Washington, to picket outside the White House,\u201d Taub said. \u201cThey were imprisoned. They went on hunger strikes. It absolutely blew my mind, and I just wanted to try and write the show for my 14-year-old self.\u201d<\/p>\n
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<\/center> The show is “Suffs,” Taub\u2019s musical which tells the story of Alice Paul \u2014 a central figure in the suffragist movement who spearheaded an unprecedented march of thousands of women in 1913. Taub starred as Paul in the original Broadway production and made history herself, as the first woman to independently win Tony Awards for\u00a0best score\u00a0and\u00a0best book of a musical.<\/p>\n That musical is now in LA, and Taub took a break from playing Emma Goldman in the Broadway revival of “Ragtime” to celebrate opening night at the Pantages.<\/p>\n \u201cThe last time I was at the Pantages was almost 30 years ago to see ‘The Lion King’ with my grandparents,\u201d she told the audience after the show.<\/p>\n During her visit, she was greeted by a collection of artifacts from the Ebell of Los Angeles, which Ilana Turner, the institution\u2019s senior manager of marketing and communications, says was home to the local suffragist movement.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Ebell of Los Angeles was founded in 1894 by Harriet Strong, who was a suff,\u201d Turner explained. \u201cShe founded the Ebell … in an effort to give the women of Los Angeles a place to congregate and come together, promote arts and culture, fight for education, and fight for the right to vote.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis is really cool,\u201d Taub said, noticing a plate bearing one of Ebell\u2019s mottos: \u201cI will find a way or make one.\u201d It\u2019s a sentiment that\u2019s echoed in a pivotal song in the show called \u201cFind a Way.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s just about the determination to figure something out,\u201d Taub explained. \u201cI phrase it as a question sometimes of like, how will we find a way? How are we going to do this?\u201d<\/p>\n The answer wasn\u2019t easy. Different groups fighting for the same goal were also fighting each other about how to achieve it. The show also delves into the role Black women played in the movement and how race was included or not. When Paul, capitulating to Southern groups, asks Ida B. Wells to march in a segregated section at the back of the demonstration, Wells sings a stirring anthem, \u201cWait My Turn.\u201d (She ultimately refused, and marched with her delegation from Illinois.)<\/p>\n Although it mostly chronicles the years between 1913 and the ratifications of the 19th Amendment in 1920, the show also alludes to the decades of activism that led up to those events and the decades of activism before Paul was involved.<\/p>\n \u201cI think you see that cyclical aspect of activism that you have to always keep fighting, and there\u2019s always going to be a new fight,\u201d Maya Keleher, who plays Paul in the touring company said. \u201cThey were met constantly with different challenges and had to keep picking up the fight and keep going and that\u2019s just really inspiring to me as a woman and as a person in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n Even now, Taub says, the fight continues, in ways that have become very personal to her. She recently suffered a pregnancy loss that required her to have a life-saving surgical procedure called a\u00a0dilation and curettage, or D&C \u2014 the same procedure used in abortions, which is no longer available in parts of the country.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a revelation to me that miscarriage care is identical to abortion care,\u201d she said. \u201cThere are over 20 states in this country where we are forcing women to undergo very dangerous miscarriages and potentially not make it to care on time or have to flee state line. … It\u2019s extremely frightening.\u201d<\/p>\n
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