Good morning, Broadsheet readers! The CDC recommends doctors provide pain management counseling for patients getting IUDs, Taylor Swift concerts are canceled after a terrorist threat, and Shaina Taub premiered Suffs just in time for a historic election.
– History in the making. I spoke to Shaina Taub a few weeks ago about her Tony Award-winning musical Suffs, about the women of the suffrage movement. Since then, a lot has changed—we now have a major female candidate for president. So Taub’s Broadway show, which she wrote and stars in, has new resonance as female voters head to the polls to vote for a female candidate. The crowd reportedly chanted “Kamala” at a performance the night after Joe Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed Kamala Harris.
Suffs premiered in April in New York. The show, produced by Hillary Clinton and Malala Yousafzai, has been a surprise hit of the season, drawing audiences and winning Taub the Tonys for best book of a musical and best original score. What’s surprised theater-goers the most has been the show’s humor (raising its own question about why people are so surprised a show about women’s history can be funny). The show isn’t a history lesson but is a human story of bonding, conflict, and building a movement among friends. “These were three-dimensional, complex women who had a sense of humor and had fun and messed around and got drunk and were whole people,” Taub says.
The show dramatizes the generational clash within the suffrage movement in the early 1900s, between the state-by-state strategy of Carrie Chapman Catt and the more radical efforts led by the younger Alice Paul (played by 35-year-old Taub)—as well as conflict within the movement as white women sacrificed the vote for Black women (represented by characters including the journalist Ida B. Wells) to notch their own victories. It invites the inevitable comparisons to Hamilton, which Taub says she doesn’t mind, although she was more inspired by her favorite musical, Ragtime. The difference is that Hamilton told a familiar story in a new way, while Suffs is introducing many viewers to this history for the first time. “There’s no script to flip,” Taub says.
“It’s left out of our school curriculums, it hasn’t been written into our textbooks,” Taub says. “There’s whole generations of people who have grown up without it…who then become the filmmakers, and the theater-makers. And they don’t think of this as something to dramatize.”
When Taub and I spoke, the presidential race was still between Donald Trump and Biden. “We’re performing the show on the precipice of a really scary election,” she said at the time. “I hope we can provide an antidote that is not shallowly optimistic, not pessimistically dark, but somewhere in between.” The political conversation seems to be moving in that direction—and Suffs can meet it there.
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
The Broadsheet is Fortune’s newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women. Today’s edition was curated by Nina Ajemian. Subscribe here.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- Scary plot. Three Taylor Swift concerts in Vienna were canceled after authorities arrested two suspects alleged to have planned a terrorist attack on the shows. The plans focused on the event, rather than an attack on Swift herself. She has yet to comment on the plot or the cancelations. NBC News
- Brand boycott? X CEO Linda Yaccarino announced the company’s antitrust suit against the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) and the World Federation of Advertisers. X, owned by Elon Musk, accuses the organizations and advertisers of a “systematic illegal boycott” of its platform. The organizations haven’t yet commented on the suit. AP
- Through the pain. The CDC has recommended that doctors counsel patients on how to manage pain prior to getting an intrauterine device (IUD), also updating guidelines to include more pain-relief options for the procedure. Recently, more women receiving IUDs have shared their painful experiences on social media. New York Times
- Redemption arc. The U.S. women’s soccer team is set to play for the Olympic gold medal against Brazil. Last year, the team was eliminated from the World Cup in its worst major-tournament finish. Coach Emma Hayes is credited for rebuilding the team, despite facing backlash for some of her roster decisions. Wall Street Journal
MOVERS AND SHAKERS
DBS, Singapore’s largest bank, named Tan Su Shan as deputy to current chief executive officer Piyush Gupta. Tan will succeed Gupta next spring, becoming the first woman to head DBS. Currently, she is head of DBS’s institutional banking group.
The Estée Lauder Companies appointed Rashida La Lande as executive vice president and general counsel. Previously, La Lande was executive vice president and global chief legal and corporate affairs officer at the Kraft Heinz Company.
ON MY RADAR
It's time to close the merch gap in women’s sports once and for all Elle
Usha Vance is here to clean up her husband JD’s mess. But to what end? Daily Beast
The irony of Republicans’ ‘Tampon Tim’ insult Time
PARTING WORDS
“We wanted to be the first company that gave them an opportunity.”
— Amy Errett, CEO of hair care and color company Madison Reed, on the company’s multimillion-dollar partnership with the University of Connecticut and its women’s basketball team
