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.
