Kara Young has found her 'Purpose.' Now she's making Tony Awards history.

USA Today

2 days ago

Kara Young has found her 'Purpose.' Now she's making Tony Awards history.
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Tony-winning 'Appropriate' playwright returns with 'Purpose'
Kara Young, LaTanya Richardson Jackson and Harry Lennix star in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' "Purpose," about an influential family with shocking secrets.
NEW YORK — Kara Young makes any show a must-see event.
In 2021, the ebullient newcomer made her Broadway debut in Lynn Nottage's 'Clyde's,' bringing spiky wit and desperation to a formerly incarcerated single mom. Since then, she's earned Tony Awards nominations for all four of her Broadway outings, winning best featured actress in a play for 'Purlie Victorious' last season.
She's in the mix once again this year for Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' Pulitzer Prize-winning 'Purpose,' making history as the first Black performer to receive four consecutive Tony nods – and only the second person to do so overall.
'I actually cannot believe it,' Young says. 'I haven't truly understood or realized what has happened in the last four years.' Between her unremitting theater schedule, as well as her burgeoning film and TV career, she hasn't stopped long enough to sit down and take it all in.
'People have been saying, 'Just absorb what has happened,'' she says. 'I hope to have a moment to do that eventually. Right now, the work is the thing.'
For Kara Young, 'Purpose' is the 'greatest challenge ever'
On and off Broadway, Young has always been drawn to plays with political and social vibrations: exploring racism ('Purlie Victorious'), identity ('The New Englanders'), disability and caregiving ('The Cost of Living').
'I am a Black person and what that represents in any story is bigger than myself,' says the actress, whose parents immigrated from Belize. 'I just feel incredibly grateful to work with some of the most amazing, prolific writers in our industry. Every single time I'm stepping into one of these worlds, I'm learning more about humanity.'
'Purpose' aligns with her ethos of wanting to tell stories that spark conversation. Directed by Phylicia Rashad, the nearly three-hour drama follows a prominent Black family, the Jaspers, with deep roots in the American civil rights movement. Younger son Naz (Jon Michael Hill) has agreed to be a sperm donor for his social worker friend, Aziza (Young), who stumbles into an explosive family dinner at his childhood home one weekend. At first filled with admiration for Naz's aging pastor patriarch (Harry Lennix), she is quickly exposed to the hypocrisy and threats that have propped up the Jaspers for decades.
'Aziza feels like someone who I've always wanted to be,' Young says. 'She is an unapologetically queer woman moving through the world and was raised to be a free person. There is no code-switching whenever she walks into a new space; she's incredibly respectful but she lives freely.'
'Purpose' is both uproarious and unsettling, forcing theatergoers to sit in their discomfort. Aziza is, in many ways, the audience surrogate, which requires Young to really be present with her venom-spewing costars as new lies and revelations are unfurled.
Going in, 'I understood that it was going to be the greatest challenge ever,' Young says. 'It's almost like going back to the roots of acting, when an acting teacher tells you that the most important thing is listening. Aziza is walking into a space not as a fish out of water, but with an overwhelming curiosity of who her friend is. There are new things I hear and see every night – I'm always gagged. (Laughs.) That's the word, right?'
Young is surrounded by an astounding, first-rate ensemble that includes Alana Arenas, LaTanya Richardson Jackson and Glenn Davis. But it's her quietly devastating performance that ultimately packs the biggest gut punch.
'Kara is an absolute star and always has been – and I mean that in a way that's almost classical at this point: inimitable, brilliant, elevating everything she touches, with chops for days,' Jacobs-Jenkins says. 'I'm both shocked and grateful Hollywood hasn't fully managed to rob us of her. She has remained so loyal to the stage – a true theatre animal – and we really should be so thankful for that. She's just such an obvious legend-in-the-making."
How the Tony-winning Harlem native stays 'grounded'
Young was born and raised in New York's Harlem neighborhood. Her parents, who worked in the healthcare and hospitality industries, never pushed her into extracurriculars. Rather, she discovered her love of performing at age 5, after tagging along to her brother's after-school mime class at the 92nd Street Y.
As she got older, "I started doing musical theater in El Barrio with the Black and brown kids," Young recalls. "There was this beautiful woman, Liza Castro-Robinson, who would take all of the classic musicals and write a story around those songs.' (The actress downplays her singing abilities, but says she would still love to play Mrs. Lovett in "Sweeney Todd" or Roxie Hart in "Chicago.")
Young has already begun to garner big- and small-screen attention: She starred in Prime Video series "I'm a Virgo" in 2023, and will next lead Aleshea Harris' film adaptation of "Is God Is" alongside Mallori Johnson, Sterling K. Brown, Vivica A. Fox and Janelle Monáe. She was "really shooketh" when Oprah Winfrey came to see "Purpose," and even more so when Whoopi Goldberg stopped by. ("There are people who have pure magic that lives inside of them, and that is Whoopi," she marvels.)
But even with her rapid ascent, Young has never forgotten where she came from. "Purpose" is playing at the same theater where she did "Clyde's," and she has many fond memories of spending time backstage with the great Ron Cephas Jones, who died in 2023. ("He was such an epic man.") Young has the same dressing room as she did back then, where she keeps a portrait of her dear friend's late mom, Claudia Whittingham. ("Growing up, I always wanted to be her. I felt like she was my twin.")
Family and community are what keep her centered amid all the chaos of this current Tony season.
"Just calling my parents, even if it's for two seconds, like, 'Mom, I just want to hear your voice,' or 'Dad, tell me something great.' Even if I don't see him, I feel him,'' Young says, smiling. "New York keeps me grounded, too. I say hey to the dude on the corner selling random items, or the woman who might be asking for a little change. I hear my super every morning, and walk down and hug him. I've gotta stay feet planted in these streets."
"Purpose" is now playing at the Hayes Theatre (240 W. 44th Street) through Aug. 31.