Off-Broadway play 'N/A' engages in up-to-the-moment political conversations

Mario Correa's drama, starring Holland Taylor and Ana Villafañe, resonates differently with audiences each night in tandem with the current news cycle.

Believe it or not, playwright Mario Correa didn't pen his drama N/A — in which two Democratic Congresswomen debate the state of their party and the U.S. political system as a whole — with current events in mind. Timing its world premiere, at Lincoln Center's Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater through September 1, to an election year was producer Jeffrey Richards's idea. But numerous moments of N/A have proven quite timely in ways expected and not.

Though the script hasn't changed since opening, N/A's resonance keeps shifting in tandem with the fast-moving news cycle. "This play is speaking to our times, and it's going to continue," director Diane Paulus recalled telling all her actors. "Buckle your seatbelt because every week is going to bring something new, if not every day."

She even said performer Holland Taylor told her, "at half hour she just has to turn it off because there could be a piece of news that comes in the last 30 minutes before you go on stage and could rock your world."

That's true even though the events that inspired N/A took place between 2018, when "A" (Ana Villafañe) became the youngest woman elected to Congress, and 2023, when "N" (Taylor) abdicated her longtime position as Speaker of the House.

Sound familiar? Yes, it's no accident that the play evokes Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Nancy Pelosi. Correa even said Pelosi staffers who attended the show remarked on the actors' resemblances to the Congresswomen. But the parallels extend beyond those two figures, even as "the influence of these women and what they represent as movements [...] are felt every single day," Correa said.

For example, when it comes to politicians stepping down...

At a performance a few weeks before our mid-July interview, Correa recalled, "When N says she's not running for reelection in Democratic leadership, and she's passing the torch to the next generation of leaders, the audience applauded."

"That was the first time," he continued. "I thought, 'Oh, so they're thinking about this in the context of that,'" referring to the then-mounting calls for President Joe Biden not to run for reelection following the presidential debate on June 27 (which was also N/A's opening night).

I can only imagine the audience reactions to that scene since he actually exited the race. Or to a line suggesting that the Latina A could one day become president now that Kamala Harris, a biracial woman, is the Democratic nominee. Or to any of N's arsenal of sitcom-worthy zingers, not unlike those that made Harris a viral meme.

"That's the beauty of theatre, right?" Paulus said. "I've directed the play in such a way that Holland and Ana, while they're in dialogue with each other, [they are] also in dialogue with the audience."

N/A was born in part out of Correa's past career as an aide to former Congresswoman Connie Morella, whose early years on Capitol Hill overlapped with Pelosi's. Many of N's lines are inspired by events he witnessed there in the late '80s and '90s — some of which, thankfully, are less of the present moment.

"For example, the Congresswomen didn't have a ladies' room anywhere near the house floor, and they petitioned for a space of their own," Correa said. "A woman staffer was kept off of the House floor on the day that she was supposed to be [there] with my boss [...] because she was wearing pants."

In one scene, N self-describes as "radical" for having witnessed, and advocated for, those strides in women's political equality now seen as the bare minimum, "all while pushing a stroller." Even as Harris could make history as the first female president if elected, that scene is poised to elicit strong reactions: Some viewers might embrace N's parallel between the progressivism of then and now. Others might, like A, scoff.

That, though, was part of Correa and Paulus's vision for N/A all along. "It really is about intergenerational relationships," Correa said. "I hope it is sort of timeless in terms of the conversations that are being had about how we create change and progress."

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Photo credit: Holland Taylor and Ana Villafañe in N/A off Broadway. (Photos by Daniel Rader)