Denver's Jenna Bainbridge, left, with the cast of 'Suffs,' posing for a spread in 'Town and Country.'
Denver actor Jenna Bainbridge still can’t quite believe it. “I get to originate the role of a wheelchair user in a world-premiere musical …” she says, almost incredulously.
And not just anywhere. Bainbridge is a player in the new ensemble musical “Suffs” at the famed Public Theatre in New York City. That’s the place legendary founder Joe Papp opened in 1967 with the world’s introduction to “Hair,” followed by “A Chorus Line” in 1975, “Fun Home” in 2013, “Hamilton” in 2015 and a whole lot more.
She is now in the room where a lot of theater history has happened. A room that presently gathers six Tony Award winners among its 21-strong, all-female-identifying cast, including Phillipa Soo (“Hamilton”), Jenn Colella (“Come from Away”), Nikki M. James (“The Book of Mormon”) and Director Leigh Silverman (“Violet”).
Lin-Manuel Miranda visits Jenna Bainbridge backstage at 'Suffs.'
“I look around this room and think, ‘Look at all these Tony Award winners’ – and they are looking back at me like I am their colleague,” Bainbridge said. “And then I think, 'Oh, wait … I am.' We are all equals in this room.”
While “Suffs” is still in preview performances, Bainbridge’s life already has changed forever. In the past week, the cast has been visited by Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonathan Groff and Lin-Manuel Miranda. And to think: They have come to her, not the other way around.
Bainbridge’s life will enter yet another stratosphere April 6 once “Suffs,” which tells the history of the American women’s suffrage movement leading to the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920, officially opens. The buzz is thunderous, and many of those who have seen it are already saying the words out loud: “Suffs” is the next “Hamilton.” Miranda himself Tweeted out that "Suffs is gobsmackingly incredible."
The Public has moved 55 productions to a Broadway theater in its history – which means a Broadway debut just might be in Bainbridge’s immediate future.
“Obviously, we are all aware that it is a possibility, and we all hope that happens,” she said. But what makes her face really light up at the moment is the part about getting a chance to help create a brand-new musical from a wheelchair. It’s never believed to have happened in a Public Theatre production before, and it has only happened once in Broadway history – for a revival of “Oklahoma!” in 2019.
Bainbridge is called “an ambulant wheelchair user,” a term that refers to individuals who are disabled and use wheelchairs but are capable of walking in some circumstances. Bainbridge walks – and often performs – with a noticeable gait due to a spinal-cord injury as a baby. Her condition is called transverse myelitis, a neurological disorder of the spine. Bainbridge has had a wheelchair for her personal life since she was 15, and is using it onstage for “Suffs.”
'Suffragist' City
“Suffs,” written by cast member Shaina Taub, tells the stories of real-life figures in the suffrage movement, but Bainbridge does not play just one specific character with a disability – she plays 12 ever-changing characters from her wheelchair. Namely Harry T. Burn, a Republican member of the Tennessee House of Representatives who at age 25 initially voted with anti-suffragists on the question of the 19th Amendment. But Burn heeded a plea from his mother and reversed his vote, breaking a tie that made Tennessee the 36th and final state necessary for national ratification.
What makes “Suffs” a special musical, Bainbridge said, is simply everything. “This is the most important, exciting work I have ever gotten to be a part of,” she said. “It flips the script on what we think of as a musical. And it’s being presented entirely by fem people – the majority of whom are women of color.”
Jenna Bainbridge as Belle in Phamaly Theatre Company's 2010 'Beauty and the Beast.'
And not only is “Suffs” changing Bainbridge’s life – she is changing the lives of everyone around her. Just being in the same room with her fellow actors and crew, she is enhancing and informing the professional and human experience of everyone around her.
A few days after the first few wintry rehearsals for “Suffs” began in New York, Colella approached Bainbridge and told her: “It's remarkable that, at this point in my life, you are the first wheelchair person that I have worked with in theater. I keep thinking about how ridiculous it is that it took until 2022 for that to be the case.”
Soon Colella, who originated the role of the pilot who makes an emergency landing in Newfoundland on 9/11 in “Come from Away,” started noticing everywhere the barriers that make it even more difficult for disabled people to pursue a career in theater, especially in a city like New York. “Why isn't there an elevator in this subway station?” Colella said. “And, why hasn't somebody shoveled this walkway yet? There is no way Jenna can get to the theater in her wheelchair if the sidewalk looks like this."
While this is the first time a lot of the “Suffs” team have worked with an actor navigating a physical disability, Bainbridge’s director has a long history of it, which Bainbridge credits in part for her casting in “Suffs.”
“I love to educate, and one of the things that Leigh really empowered me to do from the very beginning of each new process was to talk to the cast about my disability,” she said. “So I have been able to say to people, ‘Here's my wheelchair. Here are my canes. Feel free to interact with them. Feel free to interact with me and my wheelchair, just like you would interact with anyone else's body.”
She does get a lot of questions. Like: "Is it OK if I sit on your lap here?" Or, "Is there any pain associated with you walking? Or, “Is this an appropriate question to ask?"
“I hope I am teaching people not just how to interact with disabled people in the theater, but also how to interact with disabled people in the greater community, and how you can be an ally.”
Phamaly roots in Denver
Denver theater audiences were introduced to Bainbridge in 2009, when she was just a junior at Castle View High School in Castle Rock. She played half of a conjoined twin in an award-winning production of “Side Show” staged by Phamaly, Denver’s renowned disability-affirmative theater company. Her signature roles there have included Luisa in “The Fantasticks” and Laura in “The Glass Menagerie,” and she opened eyes and hearts to misconceptions about beauty and disabilities playing Belle in a revelatory staging of “Beauty and the Beast.”
Before long she was graduating from the University of Denver's Lamont School of Music and tearing down walls and barriers in starring roles for BDT Stage, the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, the Arvada Center, Aurora Fox, Town Hall Arts Center and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. (And she was a 2011 Miss Colorado contestant.)
Jenna Bainbridge as Hermia in 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' for the Colorado Shakespeare Festival in 2013.
Bainbridge credits all of the skills she brings to “Suffs” back to her time in Denver with Phamaly. Learning how to comport herself in a rehearsal room. Learning how to memorize lines. Learning how to adapt choreography to her body and her needs. ”That all came from being at Phamaly, and being around other disabled people,” she said.
“The world had told me that my disability was something to be ashamed of and something to hide. Phamaly taught me that is complete bull. Phamaly taught me that my disability is a part of me, and is something beautiful that should be embraced and celebrated and showcased.”
Phamaly taught Bainbridge not to look at herself and simply say, 'I'm a good disabled actor.”
“Being a marginalized person in the world, Phamaly gave me the confidence to say, 'Yes, I have a disability, and I'm a great actor – and those two things are not mutually exclusive. This is who I am, full picture, full stop.”
In 2013, then-Denver Post Theater Critic Lisa Kennedy sagely described Bainbridge’s portrayal of Cinderella at BDT Stage as “a cautious manager of her own expectations.” In the early years, the same might have been said about Bainbridge herself. No more. Times have changed, and Bainbridge is now rolling into a future with no limitations.
“My experience with Phamaly is what led me to places like The Public,” she said. “It was Phamaly that gave me the confidence to say to them, 'This character that I am creating: I want them to be a fully ambulatory wheelchair user because I never saw that on a stage my entire time growing up – and I think it's important that is not true for the next generation.”
Let the good times roll.