When she was a student at Gettysburg College Kara Young stood in front of the class with another woman improvising a serious scene. Young played a mother struggling with substance abuse. The other woman in the scene was her daughter who needed money for necessities that her mother couldn’t provide. Once they finished Young looked up and saw her classmates bawling.
“I thought, Whoa! There is something that I can do to change people. It wasn't power. It wasn't ego. But it was magic,” recalls Young. “If you make somebody laugh or cry, you change them. Something is chemically changed inside.”
Young had taken a “loving” to performing when she was five-years-old and had discovered mime. Growing up in Harlem she followed her brother taking an after school mime program at the 92nd Street Y. Her teacher, Zahava Gratz, had a big impact on her. “She took me under her wing and nurtured me,” says Young. "I remember her taking very good care of my spirit. I felt that I belonged.”
She wasn’t certain what exactly she would do with her life when she arrived at Gettysburg. (She would ultimately leave and study acting at City College of New York and then New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts.) Yet after that college improv experience Young knew her path. “I specifically remember thinking, this is what I'm going to do for the rest of my life.”
Since then Young has dazzled in nuanced performances in All The Natalie Portmans, Halfway Bitches Go Straight To Heaven, The New Englanders and Syncing Ink. On screen she starred in Hair Wolf, was on four seasons of Girl Code on MTV, was featured on HBO’s Random Acts of Flyness and in the Amazon feature, Chemical Hearts.
Young recently made her Broadway debut in the new play Clyde’s written by two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage. Directed by Kate Whoriskey, the Second Stage Theater production centers around Clyde, (Uzo Aduba), a tough-as-nails owner of her self-titled sandwich joint and her kitchen staff (Ron Cephas Jones, Edmund Donovan, Reza Salazar and Young).
Everyone, including Clyde, has served time in prison. They are all dreamers in search of reinvention, redemption and something so much better. They all, (or most of them), refuse to let the truck stop’s greasy spoon exterior or the harshness of life in Reading, Pennsylvania keep them from their devotion to their art—crafting the ultimate masterpiece of a sandwich.
The powerfully evocative, riotously funny and deliciously unique play has landed on many lists as one of the best plays of 2021. Young plays Letitia, a struggling mother who was incarcerated for stealing seizure medication from a pharmacy for her then three-year-old daughter.
“Didn’t have no insurance. They kept turning me down and Carmen woulda died before all of the medicaid paperwork went through,” says Letitia in the play who is seven months out of prison. Her daughter is now five. “It was expensive and I was panicked, you know, got desperate, not thinkin’. That’s the truth of it. I would’ve done anythin’ to protect her.” Letitia admittedly also “got greedy” during the theft and stole “oxy and addy to sell on the side,” she says. “…my mistake, and this is on me.”
For Young, her love for the play and compassion for Letitia is boundless. “I wish I had an ounce of the strength that she has to wake up every day and face the world,” says Young. “Letitia is the personification and epitome of resilience, perseverance and survival. She wants and needs to discover her voice, hold onto her creative spirit and find her magic.”
At its heart Clyde’s reminds us of our desire to be loved and what connects us all. “There is humanity in the people who are often overlooked. As a society we've chosen to forget them,” says Young. “It's important to see yourself in these people. When you truly listen, there is something in each of these characters that you can hold onto and discover as a universal truth.”
Jeryl Brunner: As actors in Clyde’s you are such a powerful and riveting ensemble. Why do you believe you work together so well?
Kara Young: We love each other so much and support one another outside of being on stage. I believe all that transfers and becomes a part of the chemistry. Also, Lynn Nottage has a lot to do with it. Her pen made the words. As an artist, leader and creator, I've absorbed that community is at the forefront of all things for her. Bringing people together is a way for change. She values every single person in the theater. The dressers, stage hands, ushers, people who work the lights, sound and costumes and everyone in between is important. Every single person is of value. They make all this happen every day.
Brunner: Can you talk more about discovering mime when you were five-years-old?
Young: I took mime because my older brother was taking it and I wanted to be like him. We performed in nursing homes, for the kids at the 92nd Street Y and at other schools. I really loved making an imaginary world with nothing. Then I did musical theater with another beautiful teacher, Liza Castro-Robinson. I went to school in Spanish Harlem and she gathered a bunch of kids who were all brown and loved musical theater. She would take songs from musicals like Chicago or Funny Girl and create scripts with us in mind. I am not even a singer, but she gave me a solos all the time. It was all about being with each other and loving it.
Brunner: Is there a role you are aching to play?
Young: I want to play Tinker Bell in a new rendition of Peter Pan. A movie adaptation would be lovely.
Brunner: What is some of the best guidance you have gotten as an artist.
Young: My friend, Craig muMs Grant, passed away this this year. He was one of my mentors, a big brother who taught me a lot along the way. When we were putting together a memorial for him, for the Labyrinth Theater company, I stumbled upon a video. He was talking to the kids from Developing Artists, an incredible organization dedicated to young adolescents in the arts. In the video he said, ‘If you take care of and do the work, the work will take care of you.’ It is something that I revisit a lot.
