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Young will start rehearsals for a starry off-Broadway revival of The Whoopi Monologues<\/em> during the last few weeks of Proof<\/em>\u2019s run, at which point another theater stalwart, Adrienne Warren, will enter the show in her place. But ahead of that, the charismatic actor sat down with Vogue<\/em> to discuss career coincidences, onscreen rage, and growing up in Harlem.<\/p>\n Vogue<\/em>: With some two and a half weeks to find Claire, are you content with where you landed?<\/strong><\/p>\n Kara Young:<\/strong> I\u2019m never content in any process, to be very honest with you. I\u2019m always looking to build more history and nuance and humanness. Claire\u2019s been navigating this whole time being away from her family. There\u2019s been an immense amount of financial sacrifice that she\u2019s been working with to make sure that this family is taken care of. I\u2019m going to continue to build until my last performance, which is always the case. There always could be more. How do I honor someone in the five scenes that we have? How do we actually make this person real and filled with all of their life in those few scenes?<\/p>\n How do you let go of screen performances?<\/strong><\/p>\n It\u2019s a really different thing to get over. We had our premiere at BAM the other night, and here are people that know you, some that don\u2019t\u2014a mixture of people, mostly of community, to some degree. That is a really tough thing, but at the same time, I remember the first time I watched it, I watched it by myself in a theater, and I walked out and called my people and they\u2019re like, \u201cWhat does it feel like to be leading a film?\u201d And I said, \u201cI have to be honest with you, I literally stopped watching myself, because it was about the story.\u201d<\/em> It was just so meticulously, artistically compounded into Aleshea\u2019s vision, and every single shot is so intentionally done that the story took me on the journey. I forgot that I was in this film.<\/p>\n Are you usually more self-conscious watching yourself?<\/strong><\/p>\n For sure! But also, I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever had this experience. I\u2019ve led films, I\u2019ve seen them in theaters, but I haven\u2019t had this kind of experience where the play is now adapted into a film. I understand the journey a little bit differently, from seeing the play at Soho Rep in 2018 and being absolutely blown away by that, by those performances and the story. The journey of it and knowing the weight and importance of this cult play Aleshea has given us, that has been produced all over the world and now it\u2019s, like, in the vault\u2026 it\u2019s something about that that\u2019s beyond me. Like, my performance is not even the thing, you know what I mean?<\/p>\n What is this story to you? It has so many myths, and starts out like The Odyssey<\/em> kind of, but then it\u2019s not that. It bucks every expectation.<\/strong><\/p>\n The story, to me, is about two young women who have navigated their world as survivors, as resilient people who grew up in the foster care system, having suffered a traumatic fire where their mother died. That\u2019s what they know. They have made their world as joyous as it possibly can be, and they are okay together. Obviously the world comes at them very differently, but we exist together. We get a letter saying our mom is actually on her deathbed and to come visit her, so the journey is almost like a journey to know ourselves a little bit more. When we meet our mother, she tells us that our daddy tried to kill us and that her dying wish is for us to kill him. It\u2019s about cutting the root of the pain. Is God Is<\/em> is the most epic, Southern, Greek-odyssey-road-trip sisterhood of spirit. It\u2019s about understanding the root of who we are and cutting it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n