Somewhere between silence, stillness, and "A Stranger," Tony nominee Julia Knitel has found the performance of her life.
“I fell in love with the piece before I even walked into the room,” Knitel recalls of her first encounter with Dead Outlaw, now running on Broadway at the Longacre Theatre. “I read the script, heard ‘A Stranger,’ and thought—if someone else gets to do this, I’ll be bereft.”
Thankfully, she didn’t have to find out. Knitel landed the role of Maggie Johnson, as well as a host of other side characters, in David Yazbek, Erik Della Penna, and Itamar Moses’ hauntingly human folk musical. She developed her roles from its humble start Off-Broadway through its eagerly anticipated Broadway transfer, culminating in her Tony nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. See Knitel's moving rendition of "A Stranger" in the Playbill Studio in the video above.
The responsibility of the role is not something Knitel takes lightly. “When I found out we were going to Broadway—and that I was going with it—I knew I had to do some deep soul work,” she says. “I had imposter syndrome. I felt like I was drowning in it Off-Broadway. I knew if I wanted to do this show justice, I had to come back different. Stronger. Calmer. More present.”
Calm is exactly what Dead Outlaw demands from her. While much has been made of her co-star Andrew Durand's ability to remain perfectly still within the show, Knitel also has to maintain steel-corseted steadiness. As Maggie, the soft-hearted love interest of Durand's Elmer McCurdy, Knitel delivers one of the show’s emotional pillars in the quietly devastating solo “A Stranger.” Sung over her lover’s lifeless body, the song drifts gently through memory, fantasy, and grief. But it never swells or shouts. Its power lies in restraint.
Rather than portraying a woman firmly rooted in her grief, the song sees Maggie suspended in a kind of emotional limbo—"a liminal space," as Knitel puts it—where the weight of loss hasn’t fully sunk in.
“She’s not processing in the moment that her love is laying on this table,” Knitel explains. “She's a ghost of herself. It’s not quite stream-of-consciousness, but it’s like she’s floating. She'll cry about it later. She can't cry now." Instead, Maggie drifts through fragments of imagined picnics, gravy boats, cherry trees; moments that feel more like fantasies than memories. “Her fantasy images are much more vivid than her memories,” Knitel observes. “I think she lived a lot more in the fantasy space with Elmer than she did in reality.” It’s a delicate psychological portrait—not of a woman grieving what she had, but of one mourning what she hoped could have been.
“A Stranger” is unique to the modern Broadway landscape, where performers seem trapped in an endless competitive spiral of singing louder, higher, and harder than anyone who came before them. This composition lives in an intentionally limited vocal range (less than an octave), yet Knitel finds boundless emotional depth inside those constraints.
“So much of my career has been about learning to sing loud and high,” Knitel admits, tucking her perfectly coiffed blonde bob behind her ear and shaking her head. “But this show—this role—lets me use my voice. Not a 'musical theatre' voice. Not a belting contest. Just me.” Knitel's previous Broadway credits, including Beautiful: The Carole King Musical and Bye Bye Birdie, weren't exactly the peak of musical theatre belting, but they weren't from her rooted sound, either.
Raised on a diet of folk legends like Emmylou Harris, Patsy Cline, Joni Mitchell, and Gillian Welch, Knitel says this role has realigned her with her musical roots. “These are the women I carry into the role. My artistic ancestors. And it’s such a rare thing to get to bring your authentic voice to a Broadway score. David and Eric trusted me to just sing. It’s profoundly freeing.”
Maggie, too, feels personal. More than any of the other women Knitel plays in Dead Outlaw, Maggie is the role she most “sinks her teeth into.” She calls the character a “desert flower,” someone soft and hopeful who blooms briefly in the harsh landscape of Elmer’s tragic life. “She’s the moment of peace in the chaos,” Knitel reflects. “It’s important every night that I don’t get ahead of myself. That I don’t see the tragedy coming. Because she doesn’t. She’s just in love.”
The arc of Maggie, as written, is short in the span of the show (and Knitel plays other small characters in the eight-actor show, including a news anchor, Elmer's mother, and a teenager). But Maggie is a pivotal character. If she had been allowed to take Elmer’s body home, the infamous decades-long odyssey of his corpse would never have happened. “The whole second half of the show wouldn’t exist if Maggie had just been allowed to bury him,” Knitel notes. But unfortunately, they weren't married, so she couldn't.
Instead, Maggie becomes the emotional heartbeat of the piece—a tether to Elmer’s humanity in the midst of him being thoroughly dehumanized. It’s that empathy, Knitel believes, that moves audiences to visit Elmer’s real-life grave today, leaving tokens of remembrance. “He was a flawed man in an imperfect time,” she says. “He didn’t have the tools to love himself. But he was still human. And that’s what theatre does—it helps us see the humanity in even the most broken stories.”
Knitel’s own story is not without struggle. Standing silently over a dead body and singing 'the quietest song on Broadway' is “incredibly challenging.” It requires stillness, breath, and emotional exposure, with no vocal gymnastics to hide behind. She credits meditation, breath work, and months of personal reflection for helping her find the strength to show up fully and calmly, night after night.
“I did that work alone, before I had even signed the Broadway contract,” she says. “Just me, and some singing bowls, and some crystals, and a whole lot of soul searching.”
Now, that quiet work has led to Broadway’s loudest recognition: a Tony nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Musical. Knitel is careful not to let the noise overwhelm the moment.
“When you say ‘Tony nominee,’ it still makes my eyes tear up,” she says, waving her hand in front of her face. “It means the world to be recognized—not for volume or vocal acrobatics, but for stillness, for softness, for vulnerability. To be celebrated for me, exactly as I am? That’s beyond my wildest dreams.”
Company of Dead Outlaw
Julia Knitel and Andrew Durand in Dead Outlaw
Jeb Brown in Dead Outlaw
Andrew Durand in Dead Outlaw
Andrew Durand and Julia Knitel in Dead Outlaw
Andrew Durand and Julia Knitel in Dead Outlaw
Trent Saunders in Dead Outlaw
Andrew Durand and Jeb Brown in Dead Outlaw
Andrew Durand and Jeb Brown in Dead Outlaw
Andrew Durand, Trent Saunders, and Eddie Cooper in Dead Outlaw
Andrew Durand and Julia Knitel in Dead Outlaw
Company of Dead Outlaw
Trent Saunders, Eddie Cooper, Thom Sesma, Andrew Durand, and Dashiell Eaves in Dead Outlaw
Company of Dead Outlaw
Thom Sesma in Dead Outlaw
