In 'Suffs,' Shaina Taub Fights For Women's Rights. On Broadway, She's Smashing Barriers.

The New York actor and composer says she hopes the musical and its cast album energize audiences who are feeling weary amid America's political divide.

Even before she began writing the musical “Suffs,” Shaina Taub wanted to create a project that would stand as a testament to women’s empowerment.

The New York actor and composer was at work on a gender-swapped adaptation of the Robin Hood legend in 2014 when she received a copy of Doris Stevens’ “Jailed for Freedom.” Published in 1920, the book is a first-person account of the women’s suffrage movement and the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which recognized women’s right to vote.

It was then, Taub said, that the seed for “Suffs” was planted.

“I’d been searching for a story about a group of girls working together, taking on a system,” she told HuffPost in an interview. “This was exactly what I’d been looking for.”

“Suffs,” now playing at New York’s Music Box Theatre, makes Taub the second woman in history and the first in over 50 years to write the book, music and lyrics for a Broadway musical in which she also stars. (The first was Micki Grant, who in 1972 starred in her musical “Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope.”)