Purpose and Passion: Kara Young’s Revolutionary Moment at the 2025 Tony Awards
In the glittering constellation of Broadway’s brightest stars, few shine with the incandescent brilliance of Kara Young. The actress, who has just etched her name into theatrical history at the 2025 Tony Awards, embodies the very essence of what it means to be a cultural force—both on stage and off. With her luminous presence and unparalleled dedication to her craft, Young has become the toast of theatrical circles, proving that talent, when paired with unwavering commitment, creates magic that transcends the footlights.
“Every single time I’m doing a show, I feel like it is the most important thing on the planet,” Young confides, her voice carrying the weight of someone who has witnessed the transformative power of theater firsthand. “I don’t have a favorite. It’s like this: Every, every single project has held its own weight.” This philosophy of passionate commitment has clearly served her well, as evidenced by her groundbreaking achievements at this year’s ceremony.
The 2025 Tony Awards will be remembered as a watershed moment, with Young’s triumph serving as its crowning jewel. Starring in “Purpose,” the critically acclaimed drama penned by 2024 Tony Award winner Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Young claimed the coveted prize for Best Featured Actress in a Play. But her victory represents more than personal achievement—it’s a seismic shift in Broadway’s landscape. Young has made history as the first Black person to be nominated four times consecutively and the first Black performer to win two back-to-back Tonys, cementing her status as a theatrical powerhouse.
The play itself, “Purpose,” has become the season’s most talked-about production, and rightfully so. Jacobs-Jenkins, who previously won the Tony Award for best revival of a play for “Appropriate,” has now become the first Black playwright to win the Tony for Best Play since August Wilson’s triumph with “Fences” in 1987. Set in the sophisticated confines of the Jasper family’s living room in an upper-middle-class Chicago neighborhood, the production is a masterclass in tension and revelation.
Young portrays Aziza, a Harlem-bred social worker whose world collides with that of the prominent Jasper family during a snowed-in gathering that exposes long-buried secrets. The patriarch, Pastor Solomon Jasper, is a Civil Rights legend married to the formidable Claudine. Their sons—Junior, a disgraced former state senator recently released from prison for embezzlement, and Naz, a nature photographer who abandoned divinity school—complete this complex family portrait.
“There’s so much in this play,” Young explains with the kind of intellectual curiosity that defines true artists. “Like a lot of the great writers, he creates these universes in a line or the space between the words.” Her character serves as both witness and catalyst, arriving as Naz’s close friend only to discover his family’s prominence. “This kind of thing never happens to me! I never meet famous people and you’ve been famous this whole time?” she exclaims in the production, capturing the bewilderment of stepping into a world of legacy and expectation.
The evening’s dramatic arc unfolds over less than twelve hours, as the family reunites for the first time in two years. What begins as a simple dinner quickly devolves into a cathartic explosion of sibling rivalries, parental disappointments, and the crushing weight of inherited responsibility. “We are so susceptible to get angry with the people we love the most,” Young observes with the wisdom of someone who has inhabited these complex emotional territories night after night. “What we’re seeing in the less than 12 hours of them being together for the first time in two years, they’re sitting down and having dinner, and all of these things come up, as they often do.”
This season’s Tony nominees read like a who’s who of entertainment royalty, with George Clooney earning recognition for his record-breaking play “Good Night, and Good Luck,” Nicole Scherzinger for “Sunset Blvd.,” and established Broadway luminaries like Audra McDonald for “Gypsy” and Jonathan Groff for “Just In Time.”
