Kara Young on ‘Purlie Victorious,’ Tony Awards, Broadway Fame, and Diversity in Theater

Some theater actors like to leave their characters behind at the stage door every night. But for Kara Young, the characters that have brought her much acclaim and applause on Broadway—and two-for-two Tony Award nominations (for Best Featured Actress in a Play)—stick around. Indeed, she insists that she continues to learn from them long after she has spoken their words and hung their costumes back on the dressing room rail.

“I think they’re there all the time,” she said of the people she has played to date. “I still get revelations about the characters all the time. They have all become part of me. I know that sounds corny, but it’s true.”

Young is back on Broadway—perhaps a third Tony nomination awaits, for Best Actress in a Play—playing Lutibelle in the revival of Ossie Davis’ 1961 play, Purlie Victorious (Music Box Theatre, to Feb 4), which brilliantly skewers the viciousness and absurdities of racism. (Young has also recently appeared on screen in I’m a Virgo, playing Jones, a queer communist activist, but she says she cannot talk about this, or screen roles more generally because of the ongoing actors’ strike.)

Read more at The Daily Beast.