INTERVIEW | Sunny Min-Sook Hitt: “Belfast has always been a haven for weirdos and artists”
And how "Oh, Mary!" became a runaway Broadway success
I watched the Tony Awards earlier this summer, eager to see if Cole Escola’s hilarious play “Oh, Mary!” would win anything - I’ve been a huge fan of Escola’s since I first saw them on “At Home With Amy Sedaris” and have followed their career ever since. Escola won the Tony for Best Lead Actor in a Play for their portrayal of First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln as a frustrated and striving wannabe cabaret star, dealing with her closeted gay husband and feeling suffocated in the White House.
“Oh, Mary!” director Sam Pinkleton won the Tony for Best Direction for a Play, and during his acceptance speech, I heard a name I recognized: Sunny Hitt, the associate director for the play. A quick Google search confirmed that that was the Sunny Min-Sook Hitt I went to dance class at the Belfast Dance Studio with when I was six years old, and then had lots of mutual friends with in high school. A Waldo County kid was a part of “Oh, Mary!”, one of the most subversive and exciting shows to hit Broadway in years. Very cool.
Hitt has for the past decade established herself as a leading theater and dance artist in New York and elsewhere around the country - from joining the anarchic dance troupe The Dance Cartel in 2013, to working as choreographer for off-Broadway and regional theater and opera companies nationwide, to making the leap to Broadway in 2024.
We talked last week about why Belfast is such a special place, how creative opportunities can find you when you least expect it, and all the interesting things she’s working on right now, like the Pinkleton-directed and Alan Cumming-produced musical “Ceilidh,” which has its North American premiere this month.
[This interview has been edited for clarity]
EMILY: As a fellow Waldo County kid and product of the arts community in Belfast, I suspect you know exactly what I mean when I say that Waldo County, and specifically Belfast, is a very weird place. It’s this heady mix of working class Mainers, crunchy granola folks, hipsters, back to the landers and truly avant-garde weirdos, all in this little 7,000 person town. How do you explain this place to people that have never heard of it?
SUNNY: Well, you know, it’s so funny, because nowadays, people have heard of Belfast. They have heard that it’s a cool place. And I’m like, “Stop moving there!” That wasn’t the case not that long ago. Anyway, even though I’m at this point where I’ve lived in New York nearly as long as I lived in Maine, I still don’t call myself a New Yorker. I still keep Maine plates on my car. I feel a deep allegiance and loyalty to Belfast and to Maine.
Belfast has always been a haven for weirdos and artists, and has been so welcoming for people with different perspectives and strangenesses. I really don’t want that to go away. I know I don’t live there anymore, but it’s still my community, and I think there’s something very precious about it. I think, growing up, I always felt this sort of pride that we weren’t Camden.
Oh man. Heard. No shade to Camden! I mean, maybe a little shade. But it always felt like it was just entirely meant for rich people. Most of them very old.
There are creative people in the Belfast community that to me are just ageless, like Mary Weaver and her children’s theater, and the Belfast Dance Studio, and the Belfast Maskers. I’m so happy the Maskers are still there, that the dance studio is still there and that Shana Bloomstein is running it now. I’m just so happy that these cultural and community pillars are still there. I’m so happy there’s still that kind of self-created creative community. If Belfast were to get too, I don’t know, slick and expensive, we’d end up a bit like Camden. And I really worry with the cost of housing being what it is, that we’re in danger of that. It’s a real problem.
This show that Sam and I are doing now, “Ceilidh,” makes me think of Belfast in a way. It’s not about Maine at all. It’s about Scottish culture, and it’s written by two wonderful Scottish writers, and it’s all about traditional Scottish dance and song and storytelling. And yet, with the music being what it is, and some of the older actors that are in it, there’s something about their vibe that I’m like, “I’m in Belfast. I’m at a contra dance. I’m hooking arms with a stranger.” It’s funny, I kind of hated contra dancing as a kid. I didn’t like that it was all these barefoot strangers with B.O. But now, I feel like there’s something so beautiful about that human connection. I think it’s so needed, when we are all so disconnected and on our phones.
I was having a conversation not too long ago with a coworker who loves contra dancing about how interesting it is that in the dances happening all over Maine, there’s this new crop of people in their 20s, even their early 20s, who are super into it. Maybe that’s a rejection of that disconnection, and embrace of doing something in person and communal like that. And that’s such a New England thing, and such a Belfast thing.
I am really glad Belfast kind of makes art and performance and supporting the people that make art a priority. Even if it’s something really weird and out there, or if it’s contra dancing. It just seems like an integral part of the community.
I’m always curious about how creative people end up following that path. What are some of the formative experiences with art you had as a kid?
My parents didn’t want me watching commercial TV, so I didn’t see any TV other than PBS. So after school, I would be waiting for ballet class to start across the street, and I would go to the Belfast library and check out VHS tapes of “Great Performances at Lincoln Center.” I would just watch that on repeat. And musical theater movies too, like “The Sound of Music” and “My Fair Lady” and “West Side Story.” I loved “West Side Story.” And this was before the internet, so whatever content I could find I had to seek out for myself. And then, in my teenage years, I got a subscription to Dance magazine, which was just incredible. Getting a magazine subscription back then was a huge deal. Getting to listen to WCYY out of Portland was a huge deal, because they actually played cool music back then.
I have to credit my parents, because they were always taking us to performances in Orono and Portland. They really made a point of it, even if my parents didn’t have a ton of money. My mom is an immigrant from Korea and my dad is American, and he was working as an actor in New York and living on a tiny salary, and my mom didn’t have a high school education. And eventually they bought some land in Morrill, and that’s where they still are. But he was still deeply involved in theater and the arts and they made sure that was part of our lives. He didn’t push me into theater, because he was always like, “You’ll never make any money.” But, you know. Here I am.
I’d love to know the story of how you first connected with Sam Pinkleton, and what led you to “Oh, Mary!” and where you’re at now. It’s not usually a direct line from Waldo County to the Tony Awards.
It started around 2012, when I was back living in Maine, after initially living in New York after college. I’m teaching some classes, I’m teaching yoga. I was dealing with some health problems. I’m dancing, but not really in a way where I’m actively trying to perform. I’m almost 30 at that point, and I was in this place where I was thinking “OK, maybe I’m not going to have this career I had dreamed about when I was 18. Maybe I’m going to focus on just dancing for my own enjoyment, and figuring out what comes next.”
My younger sibling took me to see this show in New York by this company called the Dance Cartel. I thought, “If I ever performed again, this is the kind of performance I would want to be involved in.” Everyone in that company is such a unique kind of clown; everyone comes with a variety of artistic backgrounds. The shows are very much like a mishmash of dance with theater and comedy and improvisation. It just lit some sort of spark in me.
And then, about a year later, I saw that the Dance Cartel was having auditions. I had not been to an audition in years. At that point, I was just like “Fuck it.” I drove down to New York, went to the audition, and that’s where I met Sam. He’s very close with Ani Taj, who started the company, and he was helping to run the auditions. Now the three of us are very close friends and collaborators.
I had a call back after the audition, and then they asked me to join the company. I think, sometimes, when you reach that place where you don’t have an agenda, and you’re not, like, trying to climb the ladder of success or recognition, and you’re just doing it for yourself and because you love it and it’s fun, that’s when you can be most open to something new. Because back then, I was just seeing where it might lead.
Sam eventually pulled me into a workshop for a new musical he was working on, “Soft Power,” and then he asked me to be an associate choreographer for the show. I hadn’t planned on being a choreographer, and I was definitely feeling pretty insecure about making that leap. I think it took someone like Sam to say, “I see your skills, and I think you might be good at this.” I feel incredibly fortunate to have had collaborators and colleagues that have done that for me. I am not at all surprised Sam won a Tony Award.
When did you join the “Oh, Mary!” team? Did you start with the original 2024 off-Broadway run?
I wasn’t involved in the original off-Broadway run at the Lucille Lortel Theatre. Their budget was like this [Hitt pinches her thumb and forefinger together]. The intention was to have a little eight week run and just hope some people come see it. It’s a small cast. The set is intentionally made to look really simple and kind of bad, like bad community theater. It wouldn’t be some massive financial loss if it didn’t do well.
So everybody was hugely shocked when it kept selling out and getting extended. And then the move to Broadway was very, very fast. I think there was maybe a month between it closing off-Broadway and opening on Broadway in the spring of last year. Totally crazy. Sam called me up and said, “I need an associate director.” Of course, I said yes. The entire cast, the stage management, pretty much everybody made the move to Broadway, so I was the one who needed to catch up really quickly.
It’s kind of incredible it’s been so successful and beloved. I feel like it’s going to run forever. The casting choices for Mary and her husband are totally inspired.
And it’s even more wild because plays very rarely run this long on Broadway. It really does not happen very often. So we’ve learned during the process of replacing actors and moving beyond Cole [Escola] that we have to treat it like a musical, in a sense, because of the nature of the blocking and movement. It’s very specific. There is definitely a rhythm to the jokes and the comedy in order for it all to land and for it to stay tight. The timing, the pacing in the show is so tight that it really does feel like choreography. The blocking is very precise. The transitions are very precise. There’s all original piano music in each transition, so it feels like every scene buttons up before the next one starts. It feels like a musical in that way.
And yet, I think with each actor that comes into the show, they have to find their own truth in it to make it actually work, whether it’s Jinkx Monsoon and Kumail Nanjiani or whomever is coming into the role. Being able to deliver these ridiculous lines from a truthful place is the challenge. Finding those guardrails is part of my job.
What’s up next for you?
Well, the show right now that’s opening in Baltimore on Wednesday, “Ceileidh,” is having its U.S. premiere. The music is infectious. It’s really a beautiful show. It’s directed and choreographed by Sam, and I’m the associate director and choreographer. And then, after that, my next project is a musical version of the Thornton Wilder play “The Skin of our Teeth,” called “The Seat of Our Pants.” I’m choreographing that, and it opens next month at The Public Theatre in New York. I think Ethan Lipton [the writer of the show] made this play that is very strange and difficult, very accessible and human and touching as a musical. It speaks to the moment we’re in without actually being about the moment we’re in. I’m mildly terrified, and really excited about it. I’m constantly busy. It’s good.