Joaquina Kalukango is Broadway’s Next Great Leading Lady

“She’s a firecracker,” Joaquina Kalukango says of Nelly O’Brien, the character she plays in Paradise Square, a new Civil War–era musical bowing on Broadway in mid-March. “She’s able to see people’s true hearts.” Nelly is a free Black woman and New York City bar owner who presides over the collision of Black and Irish-American cultures—and the birth of tap dance—in the notorious lower Manhattan neighborhood that was then known as the Five Points. “This is a story about people who manage to overcome their differences and create something beautiful in the face of fear and danger,” Kalukango says. If Nelly… Read Full Article