The actress who is portraying a famed suffragist with Iowa roots in the national touring Broadway production of “SUFFS” is visiting the Iowa State University campus today and the building that bears her character’s name.
Marya Grandy says she’ll be taking part in a voting rights discussion with faculty, staff and students at ISU’s Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics.
“Carrie Chapman Catt wasn’t just sort of this monolithic person. She contained multitudes, and I feel like this will give us an opportunity for me to learn what these people know about her,” Grandy says, “and then I can share what my experience has been playing her over the course of the past eight months.”
Catt enrolled at ISU in 1877 and was the only woman in the graduating class of 1880, earning a bachelor’s degree in general science. She followed Susan B. Anthony as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Catt led the effort which brought about ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920, giving American women the right to vote.
“One of the things that’s been most impactful of touring with this show is going to the home states of many of the characters that are depicted in ‘SUFFS’,” Grandy says, “and so to get to go to Carrie’s alma mater and to see a building with her name on it, it’s going to be very, very moving for me.”
Catt was a Wisconsin native who grew up in Iowa and her girlhood home is now a museum in Charles City. Grandy says it’s a privilege to be able to portray this key figure in the fight for women’s right to vote.
“SUFFS’ tells the story of the final seven years of what was almost a century-long struggle to get the 19th Amendment passed, which was getting rights to vote for white women in America,” Grandy says. “And then of course, once the 19th Amendment passed in 1920, you had another 40 years before women of color were given the right to vote in 1950.”
While many of the events depicted in ‘SUFFS’ took place more than a century ago, Grandy says it remains an important story to tell today.
“It’s still being called into question whether some people have more rights than others and whose voices deserve to be heard. The message of our show is that everyone’s voice deserves to be heard,” Grandy says. “A lot of people talk about ‘SUFFS’ as being a chapter in women’s history, and we make the argument that it’s a chapter of American history.”
After opening on Thursday, “SUFFS” is playing five more shows through Sunday at the Des Moines Civic Center.