Interview: Whitney White Reflects on How Shakespeare Impacts Her Work: ‘Everyone Has Their Moment’

Who run the Broadway world? Girls. This March, BroadwayWorld is excited to spotlight five incredible female theatre-makers who are changing the game from offstage. In this second edition of 'Female Theatremakers' we are catching up with director extraordinaire, Whitney White.

'Female Theatremakers' is sponsored by Roundabout Theatre Company's world-premiere of Liberation. From Tony Award nominees Bess Wohl (Grand Horizons) and Whitney White (Jaja’s African Hair Braiding) comes a provocative, revealing, and irreverent jolt of a play about what really goes on when women meet behind closed doors. Liberation - now extended through April 6 only. 

Whitney White believes it’s a miracle when audiences show up to the theater.

“Think of all the ways we could be spending our time and how challenging the world is,” White shared with BroadwayWorld. “And the fact that we work in a business where hundreds, sometimes thousands of people show up to experience one story in real time. That is honestly what grounds me.”

In the midst of a busy season, this is what White remembers when she needs a grounding moment. After receiving a 2024 Tony Award nomination for her Broadway directorial debut with “Jaja's African Hair Braiding,” White is currently juggling a handful of major projects with serious starpower. Not only did she direct the recently extended world premiere Off-Broadway production of “Liberation” at Roundabout, but she’s also helming the first-ever Broadway mounting of Jason Robert Brown’s “The Last Five Years” — which also marks the first time she’s directing a musical on the Main Stem. White was also announced as a 2025 Drama League Special Award recipient for the two aforementioned productions as well as her upcoming production of “Macbeth in Stride” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music — in which she’s starring.

That particular production was a culmination of White’s time studying acting at the Brown/Trinity Rep MFA Program. Some of her favorite Shakespearean characters are Juliet, Ophelia, and Lady Macbeth — (spoiler alert) none of whom survive at the ends of their respective plays. White’s exploration of “fatalistic female characters,” as she referred to them, led to the creation of “Macbeth in Stride,” which is just one in a series of four creations. The production looks at what it means to be an ambitious woman through the lens of Lady Macbeth.

“Every major story is a permutation of a Shakespearean story,” White shared. “His work and world and stories, and the plays that he built over 400 years ago, that still lives with us today — whether we want them to or not. Learning about his work has affected how I view stories.”

White’s own story wasn’t a linear path. Music was actually her gateway to the arts. And then graduate school was where she began exploring her creativity as a director. 

“My journey towards becoming a director was so dependent on working with mentors and faculty members and in an education system that provided new opportunities and pushed me to new opportunities,” she said. White described her time at Brown/Trinity Rep as feeling like “someone kind of pushed me off a ledge — and then I ran with it.”

But White actually ran head-first into a major fork in the road. After graduating from the prestigious program, White received two offers; one to be Sam Gold's assistant director on “Othello” at New York Theatre Workshop and the other to perform in the opera “Porgy and Bess.”

“I’m still riding out the implications of that decision,” White laughed. But choosing to work with Gold helped launch her directing career while not losing sight of opportunities to perform. “You don't always know the full deck of cards you have, and it's in partnership with other community members that you can play with new sides of yourself,” White said.

White still doesn’t know if she’ll veer off onto one path and stay there — but she also knows she no longer has to choose one or the other. She keeps her options open. And that has led her to this massive moment juggling a hit Off-Broadway show, a highly anticipated Broadway musical, and her very own piece’s two week run. Still, she looks to Shakespeare as a guide.

“What you really learn from studying classic work is how to mark out story and character in an ensemble so that everyone has their moment to shine and every character is impactful,” White said.

That principle certainly guided White through the creative process for “Liberation,” which features a cast of eight. Each actor has a moment – if not more than one – where they’re highlighted. It’s in those moments and others that audience members understand just how vital each character is to the piece as a whole.

But interestingly, White said the lessons she’s learned from studying Shakespeare applied even more so to the two-hander that is “The Last Five Years.”

“I think that he codified something that was very Western and we're still living with that today,” White said of the Bard. “Every star-crossed lover tale is a Romeo and Juliet,” she shared as an example. 

So it’s with that lens that she’s tackling the story of up-and-coming novelist Jamie Wellerstein and pavement pounding starlet Cathy Hiatt.

White described the production’s stars, pop star Nick Jonas and Tony Award winner Adrienne Warren, as “powerhouse performers,” applauding their preparedness and professionalism in tackling the beloved musical. As far as her role in helming the production, White reiterated her love for people and especially actors, acknowledging they “give up so much to be on stage.”

“I'm trying to just make a Petri dish for them, a playground for them to bring this story to life as boldly and beautifully as possible,” she said. White also acknowledged the gravity of the moment; that Brown’s musical is finally making its long-awaited Broadway debut and that a Black woman is playing the role of Cathy. “That's like a once in a lifetime thing, and Broadway is America's biggest stage,” she said. “So it feels so right to be celebrating Jason's work here.”

And while this version of the show will look and feel different to previous iterations — namely the original 2002 Off-Broadway production with Sherie Renee Scott and Norbert Leo Butz, and the 2014 screen adaptation starring Anna Kendrick and Jeremy Jordan — White is adamant that the cult favorite remains true to its core. “I'm not trying to build something that feels totally foreign,” she said. 

“I want it to feel fresh and new and to take up that beautiful stage, but I want it to still feel like the show we all fell in love with. I want our theatre family to feel a part of this production.