Danyel Fulton as Ida B. Wells, Trisha Jeffrey as Mary Church Terrell and Victoria Pekel as Phyllis Terrell perform in the first national touring company of “Suffs.”
By: K. Michelle Moran | Birmingham-Bloomfield Eagle | Published April 16, 2026
DETROIT — The origins of the award-winning, critically acclaimed musical “Suffs” — about the women’s suffrage movement — can be traced to a metro Detroit native’s middle school days.
“Suffs” — which runs through April 26 at the Fisher Theatre in Detroit — is the brainchild of producer Rachel Sussman, who grew up in Bloomfield Hills and Bloomfield Township and attended Birmingham Public Schools. While at Berkshire Middle School, Sussman chose women’s suffrage for a school project.
“That was really when I started to become insatiably curious about the topic,” Sussman said by phone. “There was, like, two paragraphs in that entire public school textbook about the suffrage movement. I just thought, ‘There has to be more to it than that. Why is this being kept from me?’ And so I started doing all my own research and learned it took three generations of women over 70-plus years to pass the 19th Amendment — and that was still an unfinished fight for equality.”
In 2014, the Tony Award-winning producer, educator and entrepreneur brought her concept to Shaina Taub, who would become the first woman to independently win Tony Awards for Best Score and Best Book in the same season for “Suffs,” which also won the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding New Broadway Musical. It was hailed by “Variety” as “thrilling, inspiring and dazzling entertaining,” and the Chicago Tribune called it “unquestionably the most emotionally stirring musical of the season.” Women in the suffrage movement called themselves “Suffs.”
“The show is uplifting and entertaining and so much funnier than people expect it to be, but it also is a punch in the gut in a way for a lot of people,” Sussman said. “It sneaks up on you.”
The “Suffs” cast is all women and nonbinary actors, Sussman said, with some performers playing male historical figures. The show covers the period from roughly 1912 to 1920, although the women’s suffrage movement started decades earlier.
The League of Women Voters — which was founded in 1920 by Carrie Chapman Catt, one of the main characters in “Suffs” — has been involved in the show, and leagues across the country are sending members to see it. That includes the League of Women Voters of Grosse Pointe.
Judy Florian, director of communications for the LOWVGP and vice president for voter services for the League of Women Voters of Michigan, said league chapters are excited to see the show and hope it will help educate audiences.
“As a league, we can’t forget the women who were part of the suffrage movement,” Florian said. “People had to work hard to get this right (to vote). … We want to make sure our youth are aware of this.”
Sussman acknowledged that “Suffs” is educational, but she laughingly said they don’t promote it that way because they don’t want that to discourage people from coming.
“We never want to lead with it being educational. … I think people walk away realizing they learned so much more than they ever thought (they would),” Sussman said. “One of my favorite things is when I see audience members looking up some of the women and their biographies during intermission. We wanted it to feel dramatically compelling. We wanted you to care about these characters.”
Although women gained the right to vote in America more than 100 years ago, voting rights remain a source of contention.
“The League has been very vocal about the fact that our democracy is being threatened,” Florian said. “We have to protect our democracy and make sure every eligible citizen can vote.”
This marks the first national tour of “Suffs.” Sussman has been to multiple cities on the tour so far, but she’s especially excited to see it come to Michigan.
“Detroit is going to be, by far, the most meaningful to me, and I can’t wait to see my own community experience the show,” Sussman said.
Sussman grew up performing in theater and dance, the former of which she intended to study at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts until she decided to focus on producing instead. Her parents have long been active in community theater, and her father remains involved with the Birmingham Village Players.
“My parents were always progressive and also gave me and my sister so much freedom to follow our dreams and do what we were passionate about,” Sussman said.
While she’s lived in New York City for the last 18 years, she returns home frequently and has lectured at the University of Michigan and co-founded The MITTEN Lab — Michigan Incubator for Theater Talent Emerging Now — in Bear Lake.
She and her wife, a therapist, are the parents of a 2-year-old son, who was born two weeks before the Tony Awards.
“So, he and ‘Suffs’ were my two babies of 2024,” Sussman said.
She said she is committed to the Jewish philosophy of Tikkun Olam, which she explained is about leaving the world a better place than you found it.
“That philosophy is an undercurrent in a lot of my work, which is socially conscious,” Sussman said.
She said the show’s epigraph is from the Talmud: You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.
“The fight is essential, whether or not you see the fruits of your labor — that it’s worth it,” Sussman said. “And so the show really sort of has that idea, that intergenerational progress is the key and we will be constantly passing the torch. And we are still in this ongoing struggle since the suffrage movement, as we think about women’s rights and where voting rights are today. This is not resolved in any way. In some ways, it’s gone backwards. And so it feels incredibly resonant to people, this story, which is about a chapter of our history from over a hundred years ago, and it gives us some hope and galvanizes us to know change is possible.”
Besides the Fisher Theatre productions, the original Broadway production of “Suffs” was recorded for PBS and will air on all local PBS affiliates at 9 p.m. Eastern Standard Time May 8.
The Fisher Theatre is located at 3011 W. Grand Blvd. in Detroit. For tickets or more information, visit us.atgtickets.com/venues/fisher-theatre.