Curtain Call
For Kara Young, Everything Is Theater
“Watching someone be upset because they spilled their coffee is theater,” says the New York native, who’s starring in the buzzy new Broadway play Purpose. “Going into a bodega or deli and interacting with the people and the cats!”
Kara Young, who’s starring in Purpose at the Hayes Theater, has come home. She’s back in the dressing room she had when she starred in the 2021 Lynn Nottage play Clyde’s, for which she received her first Tony Award nomination. “There are so many memories,” she says of being backstage at the Hayes, especially ones including her costar in that show, the late Ron Cephas Jones. “That’s the beauty of these spaces and the memories that they hold.”
Young, the first Black actress to have received three consecutive Tony nominations for Best Featured Actress in a Play, won the award in 2024 for Purlie Victorious. In Purpose, by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and directed by Phylicia Rashad (“I call her Ms. Rashad,” says Young), she plays Aziza Houston, who asks her close friend Naz (Jon Michael Hill) to be a sperm donor. She then meets his family, prominent Black activists whom many critics have likened to Jesse Jackson’s. They’re celebrating a homecoming dinner for one of their sons, Junior (Glenn Davis), who’s just finished serving prison time for embezzlement. As the night wears on, secrets spill out, and the close-knit group is forced to confront painful revelations that call into question their long-held convictions.
“What Branden does so masterfully and meticulously is able to get to a truth which might make us laugh or sucker punch us in the gut and in the soul, in a moment,” says Young, who’s up for a Drama League Award for her role. “That is Aziza’s experience throughout [too], in awe and in reverence.”
Here, Young talks about pre-show prayers, her passion for carrot cake, and how she draws inspiration from New York, the city where she grew up.
On Relating To Her Character:
Aziza Houston is a lot of who I wish to be. She’s very knowledgeable of her history, very knowledgeable of Black history, very knowledgeable of herself, and incredibly unapologetic. She moves through the world freely. She’s very educated and wants to do right in the world for the sake of humanity. I feel really grateful to play someone that feels very close to me but is very, very far away from me. There are so many little nuances and details in the script that signal like, “Oh, I know this person really well.” She’s Harlem born and raised. I went to a very hippie elementary school.
On Her Pre-Show Routine:
We pray together before every show. That is an incredible centering, not simply of faith, but faith within oneself, faith within what we’ve built, the integrity of Branden and Phylicia, the integrity of all of the theater-makers that build the set, build design, costume, hair, all of the elements. It’s a moment to center all of what has been created. That puts us in a mode of readiness and the willingness to go.
On Her Dressing Room Decor:
I have this problem of accumulating so many things in my dressing room that then, when the show happens to be over, I’m taking out, like, a whole apartment. I definitely have some menthol cough-droppy kind of stuff, natural things. There’s no constant. There’s always a new element that comes in, and that’s why I leave with an apartment.
On Her Post-Show Comedown:
It really depends. I take a walk with one of my castmates for a little bit, or try to get a meal before I go to bed. I wouldn’t call it unwinding — I don’t know how other actors are or what goes through their mind, but I’m constantly taking notes for myself. A lot of those thoughts are explored and questioned and interrogated with myself when I’m eating.
On Her Go-To Snack:
I love Westville’s carrot cake. It is off the chain. There’s honestly nothing like it, honestly. I’ve eaten a lot of carrot cake because I love carrot cake, but Westville’s really just takes it home for me, all the time.
On Her Biggest Acting Influence:
New York City as a whole. It would be easy to name people who we all know, and I’m sure I have a big list of inspirations, but I really feel like this New York that I grew up in is filled with some of the most robust characters. You can turn a block at any moment and see a piece of theater. Watching someone admire something is a piece of theater. Watching someone be upset because they spilled their coffee is theater. Watching someone getting into a cab and the cabbie saying, “I can’t go that way” is theater. Going into a bodega or deli and interacting with the people and the cats! Every little nook and cranny of New York City is a source of inspiration when activating the imagination.
