Kara Young (actress)

Kara Young is an American actress. Known for her dynamic roles on stage both on Broadway and off-Broadway, she has received various accolades, including two Tony Awards, a Drama Desk Award, an Outer Critics Circle Award, and a Obie Award. Having won the Tony Award in 2024 and 2025, she is the first Black actress to be Tony-nominated in four consecutive years (2022, 2023, 2024, 2025) for Best Featured Actress in a Play and the first African-American actress to win two consecutive Tonys.

Young studied at the New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts before making her stage debut in Patricia Ione Lloyd's play Pretty Hunger (2016) at the Public Theater. The following year, 2017, she joined the LAByrinth Theater Company. She gained acclaim for portraying Viola in the 2022 off-Broadway revival of William Shakespeare's romantic play Twelfth Night at the Classical Theatre of Harlem.

She won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play two consecutive years for playing a naive former servant in the Ossie Davis satirical play Purlie Victorious (2024) and a pregnant lesbian in the Branden Jacobs-Jenkins play Purpose (2025). She was Tony-nominated for her roles as a sandwich maker in Lynn Nottage's play Clyde's (2022) and a caretaker in Martyna Majok's dramatic play Cost of Living (2023).

Young was born and raised in Harlem in New York City. Both of her parents immigrated from Belize. Her father, Klay Young, began working in the Rainbow Room in 30 Rockefeller Plaza in 1992 as a server; he was later promoted to captain. (In 2022, Kara attended a special event there as a Tony Award nominee). Her mother worked in health administration at Bellevue Hospital.

Young had an interest in performing from the age of five, when she learned to mime in an afterschool program at the 92nd Street Y. She briefly went to Gettysburg College and the City College of New York before studying at the New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts, where she graduated. She studied traditional theater in Thailand for a month in 2008.

Young joined the LAByrinth Theater Company in 2017. She has appeared off-Broadway in plays such as NSangou Njikam's Syncing Ink, Jonathan Payne's The Revolving Cycles Truly and Steadily Roll'd, Stephen Adly Guirgis's Halfway Bitches Go Straight To Heaven (a LAByrinth co-production), Jeff Augustin's The New Englanders, and C.A. Johnson's All the Natalie Portmans. A New York Times review of her starring role in All the Natalie Portmans said that Young "can fit what feels like a mountain of blood, heart, sinew and febrile emotional response into a frame that can't stretch past five feet". Young often plays characters much younger than herself, adolescents or even preadolescents, aided by her small size and wide-set eyes.

In November 2021, Young made her Broadway debut at the Hayes Theater playing a single mother, Letitia, in Lynn Nottage's play Clyde's. The Times called her performance "superb". At the 75th Tony Awards, she was nominated for Best Featured Actress in a Play for Clyde's.

In 2022, Young played a caregiver, Jess, in Martyna Majok's play Cost of Living at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre on Broadway. At the 76th Tony Awards, she was again nominated for Best Featured Actress in a Play for Cost of Living. In 2023 she portrayed Lutiebell Gussie Mae Jenkins in the revival of the Ossie Davis play Purlie Victorious on Broadway, for which she won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play.

• African-American Tony nominees and winners

• Kara Young at IMDb
• Kara Young at the Internet Broadway Database
• Kara Young at the Internet Off-Broadway Database (archived)