Yahoo News Audra McDonald on Bringing Adrienne Kennedy’s ‘Ohio State Murders’ to Broadway: “We Just Wanted to Do Right By Her”
With her most recent Tony Award nomination, for her role in Adrienne Kennedy’s Ohio State Murders, Audra McDonald reached yet another career milestone.
The six-time Tony Award winner already holds the record for most competitive wins by an actor but has now tied the record for most nominated individual performer, with 10 nominations. This puts her in the same category as Chita Rivera and Julie Harris.
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McDonald, who is also the only person to win awards in all four Tony acting categories, says this nomination comes as an “incredible honor,” particularly because of the recognition it gives to Kennedy, a revered playwright who made her Broadway debut with the play at the age of 91.
In the play, which ran on Broadway from November through January, McDonald played writer Suzanne Alexander, who returns to Ohio State University to give a lecture on the violence in her writing. As she speaks, Alexander slips back into the college-aged version of herself and relives the racism and related violent incidents that happened to her while she was on campus.
Some elements of the narrative are similar to the personal history of Kennedy, who McDonald collaborated with frequently throughout the run.
The Tony nomination also came as McDonald was in the midst of a workshop, for a production which she said she could not yet name. The Ragtime and Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill star says the timing could not have been better.
“It was nice to get the nomination on a day when I was back in the rehearsal room for the first time in a few months, kind of starting on another exploration, and that excites me,” McDonald said.
McDonald spoke with The Hollywood Reporter earlier this month about honoring Kennedy through the work, why she chose to play dual roles and what more Broadway can do to support works by underrepresented artists.
How much were you able to speak with Adrienne Kennedy about this role?
Quite a bit. I was on the phone with her at least once a week, if not more. She was very giving of her time and willing to discuss any and everything. So it was amazing to be able to just literally go to the mind itself. And because the piece is semi-autobiographical, to be able to literally understand exactly what she was feeling in certain moments that are autobiographical. You don’t usually get that opportunity, not only with the playwright, but when the playwright is the person who experienced a lot of what went down. That’s really unusual. So that was an incredible, incredible gift.
And by starring in this show, you helped Kennedy make her Broadway debut. Did you feel a sense of responsibility as part of that?
Yes, [director] Kenny [Leon] and I felt that responsibility. I don’t want to call it a burden. We just wanted to do right by her. At the end of every rehearsal, Kenny would say “This has been Adrienne Kennedy’s, Ohio State Murders: He would speak her name at the end of every rehearsal every single day just to keep all of us focused on what was most important, and serving the piece and serving her and making sure that this moment was everything it could be. She so deserved it.
You also had the dual responsibility of opening the newly renamed James Earl Jones Theatre on Broadway with this play. What did that mean to you?
That was overwhelming, as well. We felt the history of that moment. And again, in some ways, as well as feeling the responsibility of doing well, it kind of took the pressure off of it being about any one particular performer or director. We knew it was a part of history. And so we just wanted to serve that. In some ways, it was bigger than us.
This play, and your character in particular, dealt with some very heavy material. Were you able to leave the role at the theater during the run or did it stay with you?
That was my attempt to try and leave it at the theater every night. But I think it was only after the show closed that I realized that I wasn’t necessarily leaving it at the theater. It took a minute for me to recover. But at the time, I thought “Oh yeah, I’m leaving this as a theater, and I’m going about my life.” But there were absolutely residual effects of living that out on a nightly basis that I felt physically and emotionally after the show was over and it took about a month, a month-and-a-half to shed all of that.
In this production, you were moving fluidly between playing the younger college student version of Suzanne and her older self looking back on that time. How did you differentiate and switch between the two?
That was a lot of help from Kenny, and then we have to give props to Adrienne, who allowed us to do that, because they’re originally written for two different actresses to play. We asked for permission to meld it into one actress playing both parts, to slip into those memories in order for the older Suzanne to process and retell it. I liked as an actress, being the one to sort of relive it, instead of giving it to someone else to relive it as I watched.
It felt like it was a more visceral experience of a memory play; also in the way that she would just fall into certain memories. Because in the play, she doesn’t really tell the story in a linear way. People think it’s a murder mystery, and part of it is, but she tells you who was murdered kind of immediately. So it made it easier to play the role, I think, to slip in and out in the way of an older person telling the story. My grandmother would tell me stories and I could see her kind of slip back in time as she would recount things. In the same way that I could speak to Adrienne, and she would slip back in time telling the stories, and she would say things to me, like “You know Audra. It’s as real as if it were yesterday. I feel the same things I felt when those moments were happening,” and she was recounting things that happened to her 60 years ago.
Ohio State Murders had its time on Broadway cut short, closing about a month earlier than expected. How do you think Broadway can better support works like this?
More outreach, more awareness. It’s still an interesting time. We’re still not completely back from the pandemic. And the alchemy of what gives a show legs to run…I mean, if people really knew, everything would be running forever, right? So there’s fairy dust involved in what’s a hit and what’s not at certain times and a lot that’s out there is worthy.
But there does need to be more awareness and outreach to not only bring in more diverse audiences, but to the main demographic of people that come in to see Broadway shows and to let them know that they need to not only go to stories about what they know, but to cultures and stories that they don’t know.
Interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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