Belizean/American Kara Young Nominated for Tony Award

Clyde’s is a Broadway play about a truck stop sandwich shop that offers its formerly incarcerated kitchen staff a chance at redemption. The play features, among a host of incredible actors, Belizean/American actor Kara Young. She plays the role of a formerly incarnated mother Letitia (Le-ti-sha) who spent time behind bars for stealing medication for her sick daughter. Throughout the play Letitia discovers her creativity and learns to let go of the past. Now, Young is nominated for a Tony Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play, for her role in Clyde’s. The award recognizes excellence in Broadway Theater.  News Five’s Paul Lopez spoke with Young via zoom. Here is that story.

Paul Lopez, Reporting

Kara Young made her Broadway debut in Clyde’s, a play written by two Pulitzer Prize winners. She has been nominated for a Tony Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play, for her role in Clyde’s. Young plays Letitia, a formerly incarcerated mother seeking redemption.

Kara Young

Kara Young, Tony Award Nominee

“I play Letitia who is a formerly incarcerated mother of a sick child and she stole seizure medication to save her daughter. So it is sort of a conflicting sort of shame that she has being away for the amount of time that she was away. Now, she is back and sort of grappling with survival and being a good mother and feeling like, she is really trying not to fail, doing everything in here power when everything is failing her.”

Letitia encounters other past inmates employed by Clyde’s kitchen. There she learns to hone and embrace her creativity while making sandwiches.

Kara Young

“It is the place where she gets to be a creator, a creative and really learn to own her creativity in a certain way, with the help of her shaman like teacher Montrellous who is played by the incredible Ron Chephas Jones. And also, learning a lot from her peers, Rafael who is played by Reza Salazar, and Jason who is played by Edmund Donovan, and as well as weighing the way the system has hardened someone like Clyde who is played by Uzo Aduba, because I feel like in the journey of Letitia, I would like to think that she is literally not weighting the good and the bad per say, but weighing the way society has hardened people.”

 Kara Young decided to pursue a career in acting after she and one of her classmates did an improvisation for a college presentation which left the entire classroom in tears.

Kara Young

“There was a class that I took and there was this improv, me and this girl we structured and improv and performed the improv with the plot points and when we looked up everyone was bawling. There was something inside me, I was doing acting as an extracurricular activity when it a musical theater and did all these things because I love to do it, but in that moment I was huh, this is special, something is special about this. So, I left college, came back to the city and was like, I am going to be an actor.”

Both of Young’s parents, as well as her grandparents were born and raised in Belize. Her mother was once crowned Queen of the Bay, and her grandmother was once crowned Ms. Belize.

Kara Young

“I was born in New York and both my parents are from Belize. Both of them are born Belizeans rose in Belize. My grandmasters are Joanne and David Jenkins. My other grandparents are Sonia Davis and Evan Young. I have a lot of beautiful roots in Belize. My mother was Queen of the Bay. My aunt was Queen of the Bay, my grandmother was Miss Belize. It is the very rich history that I hold dear to me. My grandfather Evan Young was a promoter for boxing. Bird’s Isle is a staple for Belize City. These are things I hold dear to my heart.”

The Tony’s luncheon where nominations are announced was held at the Rainbow Room where Kara’s father has been working hospitality for the past three decades. Kara told us that the moment when her father was given a standing ovation by the audience for his support, it encapsulated what the Tony’s nominations means to her.

Kara Young

“They were nailing all the nominees per category and they were naming my name and Emilio Sosa who is one of the Chairman of the American theater Wing also added that he came into rehearsal for this and there was a gentleman beaming with pride and said his daughter was nominated for a Tony. And then, preceding that, my father walks out and the entire room gives him a standing ovation. And in that moment I felt like this is what this moment, this is the core of what this moment means.”

Reporting for News Five I am Paul Lopez.