"Suffs": A Musical About Women's Right to Vote Quiz

Answer:

"Suffs" is a Broadway musical that tells the true story of the American women's suffrage movement in the years leading up to 1920. The play focuses on the intense personal and political struggles of the determined women who fought for the right to vote. It officially opened on Broadway on April 18, 2024, at the Music Box Theatre.

When the musical opens, the scene is the 1913 National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) convention. The older generation of suffragists, led by Carrie Chapman Catt, is shown using very traditional, polite methods to win the vote (like hosting elegant tea parties). Alice Paul enters as a headstrong young woman who is completely exhausted by how slow and ineffective this polite approach has been. She wants a federal amendment immediately and proposes a massive, disruptive protest. When Carrie Chapman Catt firmly rejects her aggressive strategy, Alice refuses to back down, singing the powerful anthem "Finish the Fight".

The song "Find a Way" serves as the ultimate recruitment and rallying anthem for the young activists. Alice turns to her trusted and loyal best friend, Lucy Burns. Lucy provides the energy and sharp wit that Alice needs, helping her realize that if the older generation won't give them the resources to fight for a constitutional amendment, they will just have to build a new movement from scratch. Together, they begin tracking down the exceptional women who will form the core of their new group. They bring in the passionate labor organizer Ruza Wenclawska, the wealthy and charismatic Inez Milholland, and a young, eager student named Doris Stevens. While the younger white activists are singing about making a way, prominent Black suffragist Mary Church Terrell steps forward to demand that women of color not be left behind or segregated to the back of the march to appease Southern donors.

Frustrated, Alice gathers this team and finalizes the plans for a protest march. The climax of this sequence is the song "The March (We Demand Equality)". In this scene, Inez leads the parade on a real white horse, acting as a striking symbol of modern, powerful womanhood. However, the march quickly dissolves into chaos when an angry crowd of onlookers turns violent and physically attacks the women, creating the show's first major turning point where the characters have to fiercely defend their right to even exist in public spaces.

While Carrie Chapman Catt and the older suffragists work politely with the administration behind closed doors, Alice and her core allies stand outside the White House holding up banners that display the president's own hypocritical words about democracy abroad. They perform the defiant anthem "The Young Are at the Gates" as a direct challenge to the administration. Aggravated by the bad press during wartime, Wilson orders the police to arrest the women on trumped-up charges of "obstructing traffic".

The arrested women are sent to a brutal prison where the group begins to fracture under the pressure. In the song "Hold It Together," Ruza angrily clashes with Alice, arguing that Alice's methods are going to get them all killed, while Lucy and Doris desperately try to keep the group from falling apart. Alice leads the women in a grueling hunger strike. The ladies are seen being held down by guards and subjected to painful, horrible force-feedings through plastic tubes. This unbreakable resistance eventually forces the administration's hand, generating a massive public wave of sympathy when the letters detailing their abuse are successfully smuggled out to the press.

The final act of the musical shifts to August 1920 in Tennessee, which has become the ultimate battleground. Thirty-five states have ratified the 19th Amendment, and the suffragists need exactly one more state to make women's right to vote a constitutional law. The spotlight turns to Harry Burn, the youngest legislator in the Tennessee house, who is planning to vote "no" and crush the amendment. The audience then sees his mother writing him a letter. Her song is a quiet but powerful plea, telling him to "be a good boy" and help the suffragists. When the roll call finally happens, Harry Burn reads his mother's letter, changes his mind at the very last second, and votes "yes", which shatters the tie and seals the historic victory.