This spring, Whitney White directed the ensemble drama “Liberation” from Broadway, then directed two modest “The Last Five Years” on Broadway. Just days after the musical opened, she stood in a room on the second floor of the Brooklyn Academy of Music and rehearsed the adaptation of Shakespeare's tragic adaptation, “Macbeth,” which begins her performance on Tuesday.
White, who plays a version of Mrs. Macbeth in the song “Reach for It,” led the way. “Power shouldn't look like me,” she sang the microphone.
Maybe that should be done.
White, a multidisciplinary artist with a rare number of hyphens, is an actor, musician, theater and television writer (Amazon series “I'm a vergo”) and a stage director nominated for the increasingly sought-after Tony. White's current projects observed during the rehearsal break are all about ambitious women. “I'm strangely one of them,” she said.
White grew up in Chicago in a one-bedroom apartment with a working single mother. Her first exposure to the theatre was at the Apostles of God, her grandfather's church, which boasts a choir of 50 people. A visit to Cirque Du Soleil was another formative experience.
At Northwestern, White took theater classes, but she exclusively found a scene there and instead majored in political science. During an internship in Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, she realized that she had to be an artist after all.
“There's nothing else I can do with myself and my heart,” she said.
After working as an actor for several years, she enrolled in a Masters course at Brown University. There she met actor Charlie Thurston, a co-star in Macbeth in Stride. Thurston recalled how she lighted up the classroom.
“She is very present, alive and brings her full self,” Thurston said. This was also evident in a quick taco lunch on the rooftop of Bam. From a motorcycle jacket to heeled boots, white dressed in black was dynamic, charismatic and cheerful.
All MFA actors have to direct the scene, and after seeing White, the professor suggested that she have a gift. “I have a loud heart, and when I'm overseen, my heart isn't that loud,” she said. “It seemed like I had to continue doing this.”
After graduating, she applied for both acting jobs and a directorial fellowship. Just as she booked the “Porgy and Beth” tour, the New York Theatre Workshop invited her in 2016 to help direct the “Othello” starry production. She accepted.
The next year was busy. During the day, there are workshops with white directors. In the evening she bartendered and performed at venues that looked like Joe's pub. At the train house, she wrote musicals over the phone. Sometimes she will have to hide these talents so that she doesn't identify people. “I had to segment myself over the years,” she said.
In 2018, she landed Aleshea Harris' first major theatre project, “What to send out when it's down.” In 2022, she received the OBIE Award for directing Alexis Cher's “Our Dear Drug King.” And in the fall of 2023, she brought Joselyn Bio's “Jaja African Hair Braid” to Broadway.
In a review in The New York Times, Jesse Green wrote that White continued his “stage energizing and boiling down in a happy bubble.” She was nominated for Tony for her job.
“Jaja's” and “What To Send Up” are both ensemble plays by black women, while white is portrayed as working across medium and genre and style. “Her goal has always been to create a very broad, beautiful and extensive career,” said Bio, a friend since “Jaja.”
White reflected this. “If I had drilled a pigeon, I would never get there,” she said.
Still, there are some common threads. White styles are usually enthusiastic and accessible. She rarely encountered a fourth wall she didn't want to crush, when she liked a job of acknowledging and welcoming to the audience. According to her, all shows are love letters to women in her family, women who sacrificed for her, women who don't always feel comfortable in traditional theatre spaces.
“I'm trying to do my job for everyone,” she said.
To see the name of White attached to Jason Robert Brown's “The Last Five Years,” the niche show that is popular with musical enthusiasts, running until June 22nd, was something of a surprise. It shows the breakdown of the marriage between two musical novelist Jamie and actress Kathy. Structurally clever, it is more traditional than most people in White's work, premiering in 2001, but it is neither a new play nor a classic.
But Kathy is ambitious for herself, like the “liberation” woman and Lady Macbeth, even if her ambitions become unrealistic during the show. “It was this year's through line. White said. In Cathy, White recognized herself. She had never seen the roles that black women play, but she proposed it to Adrienne Warren, the recent Tony winner, White's collaborator and musical version of Netflix's sense, “The Queen's Gambit.”
“Whitney had a vision from the start,” Warren said. The vision was convincing. “She's just infected,” said Warren, who plays Cathy. “She's like a director's fireworks.” (Pop star Nick Jonas plays Jamie in her Broadway debut.)
Still, like Jamie and Cathy's relationship, it wasn't very happy. The reviews are mixed, and in Curtain's speech, Brown praised the inclusive efforts on diversity equity and how they challenged him, saying, “I don't think you're either, but I couldn't meet Whitney White without that challenge.” He praised White, but some of the theatrical world interpreted this as Brown, claiming that White, a proven director, was hired for reasons other than her merit. (Show representatives did not make Brown available for comments.)
White was diplomatic. “I think he was proud of his work and said he was grateful for everyone's contributions,” White said. She believes her director speaks for itself. As Beth Wall, who wrote “Liberation,” said a few days ago, “She's giving who she is for her job, and that's extraordinary.”
White doesn't tell you “Macbeth walking.” (Directed by Tyler Dobrowsky and Taibi Magar.) At Bum, she was able to focus all her energy on performance. She prepared “Macbeth in Stride.”
“It's thrilling to go home on her particular journey, as opposed to trying to balance everything all at once,” Thurston said.
Again, the white balances just as well. (And as a mother of a toddler, she has to always balance anyway.) She wants to direct Shakespeare and more musicals. (The shows called “Queen's Gambit” and “Saturday Church” are with SIA's music.) There are more parts to “Everything is Fantasy” and other shows.
“I'm looking, I'm hungry, I'm looking,” she said. For Mrs. Macbeth, ambitions were particularly poor. In white, it makes a better promise.
White paused when asked how personally ambitious she was. She then smiled and said she hoped her answer wouldn't sound too indifferent. “I tapped just 20% of what I could do, like I could,” she said. “I haven't started either.”
