here - Temple Judah

What do the Civil War, the Charleston 9, and Broadway producer Harold Prince
have to do with Cedar Rapids, Iowa?
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They are recurrent, relevant and reminiscent of an event depicted in
Revival Theatre Company’s
Production of
Parade In Concert
Book by Alfred Uhry
Music and Lyrics by Jason Robert Brown
Co-Conceived and Directed on Broadway by Harold Prince
Based on the true story of the trial and lynching of Leo M. Frank
Production Team
Director Brian Glick
Musical Director Cameron Sullenberger
Lighting Designer Scott Olinger
Projections Designer Kristen Geisler
Costume Designer April Bonasera
Sound Designer John Lord
Conducted by Kevin Brown
Stage Manager Amber Lewandowski
November 12th, 13th & 14th
at Scottish Rite Temple
616 A Ave NE, Cedar Rapids
Tickets: artsiowa.com or 319-366-8203
Contact:
Brian Glick, [email protected]
Steven Ginsberg, [email protected]
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How this musical story relates to current topics of injustice, the lingering wounds of the Civil
War, and the active missions of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and Anti-Defamation League (ADL).
[Compiled from sources listed on last page.]
HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF REAL-LIFE EVENTS
Parade dramatizes the 1913 trial of Jewish factory manager Leo Frank, who was wrongly
accused and convicted of raping and murdering a thirteen-year-old employee, Mary Phagan.
The trial, sensationalized by the media, aroused anti-Semitic tensions in Atlanta and the state of
Georgia. When Frank's death sentence was commuted to life in prison by the departing
Governor of Georgia, John M. Slaton due to his detailed review of over 10,000
pages of testimony and possible problems with the trial, Leo Frank was
transferred to a prison in Milledgeville, Georgia, where a lynching party seized
and kidnapped him. Frank was taken to Phagan's hometown of Marietta,
Georgia, and he was hanged from an oak tree. The events surrounding the
investigation and trial led to two groups emerging: The birth of the Jewish
civil rights organization, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL); and the re-birth
of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).
Leo Frank
Frank was born in Cuero, Texas on April 17, 1884 to Rudolph Frank and Rachel "Rae" Jacobs.
The family moved to Brooklyn, New York in 1884 when Frank was three months old. He
attended New York City public schools and graduated from Pratt Institute in
1902. He then attended Cornell University, where he studied mechanical
engineering. After graduation in 1906, Frank worked briefly as a draftsman
and as a testing engineer.
At the invitation of his uncle Moses Frank, Leo traveled to Atlanta for two
weeks in late October 1907 to meet a delegation of investors for a position
with the National Pencil Company, a manufacturing plant in which Moses
was a major shareholder. Frank accepted the position, and traveled to
Germany to study pencil manufacturing at Eberhard Faber in Bavaria. After
a nine-month apprenticeship, Frank returned to the United States and
began working at the National Pencil Company in August 1908. Leo Frank
became superintendent of the factory in September 1908.
Leo Frank at trial
Frank was introduced to Lucille Selig shortly after he arrived in Atlanta. She came from a
prominent and upper middle class Jewish family of industrialists who, two generations earlier,
had founded the first synagogue in Atlanta. Though she was very different from Frank, and
laughed at the idea of speaking Yiddish, they were married in November 1910 at the Selig
residence in Atlanta. Frank described his married life as happy.
Frank was elected president of the Atlanta chapter of the B'nai B'rith, a Jewish fraternal
organization, in 1912. The Jewish community in Atlanta was the largest in the South. Although
the American South was not known for its anti-Semitism, Frank's northern culture and Jewish
faith added to the sense that he was different.
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After Frank's lynching, around half of Georgia's 3,000 Jews left the state. According to Steve
Oney, author of And the Dead Shall Rise: The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo
Frank, “What it did to Southern Jews can’t be discounted....
It drove them into a state of denial about their Judaism.
They became even more assimilated, anti-Israel,
Episcopalian. The Temple did away with chupahs at
weddings—anything that would draw attention.” Many
American Jews saw Frank as an American Alfred Dreyfus
because both were perceived as being victims of antiSemitic persecution. In part because Frank was the
president of the B'nai B'rith chapter in Atlanta, Adolph
Kraus, national president of B'nai B'rith, invited 15
prominent members in Chicago to attend the formation of
the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith in October 1913,
two months after Frank's conviction.
Lynching of Leo Frank
On November 25, 1915, months after Frank was
lynched, a group led by William Joseph Simmons burned
a cross on top of Stone Mountain, inaugurating a revival
of the Ku Klux Klan. The event was attended by 15
charter members and a few aging survivors of the
original Klan.
The Leo Frank story has been examined in books, TV
and film. Notably the fictionalized 1937 film They Won't
Forget with Claude Rains, and the TV movie The Murder
of Mary Phagan with Jack Lemmon, Peter Gallagher and
Kevin Spacey. There is also a new historical novel by
David Mamet titled The Old Religion.
HISTORY OF THE MUSICAL
Parade is written by Alfred Uhry with music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown. This musical was
first produced on Broadway at the Vivian Beaumont Theater on December 17, 1998. Uhry was
already well known for his plays, Driving Miss Daisy and The Last Night of Ballyhoo. However
Parade was Brown's first Broadway production. His music has subtle and appealing melodies
that draw on a variety of influences, from pop-rock to folk to rhythm and blues and gospel. The
production was co-conceived and directed by Harold Prince and starred Brent Carver as Leo
Frank, Carolee Carmello as Lucille Frank, and Christy Carlson Romano as Mary Phagan.
Harold Prince turned to Jason Robert Brown to write the score after Stephen Sondheim turned
the project down. Prince's daughter, Daisy, had brought Brown to her father's attention. Uhry,
who grew up in Atlanta, had personal knowledge of the Frank story, as his great-uncle owned
the pencil factory run by Leo Frank. Prince commissioned Jason Robert Brown and Alfred Uhry
to write what he called “an American opera.” A dark and ambitious piece, Parade received
mixed reviews during its initial run at Lincoln Center Theater, but Brown and Uhry both received
1999 Tony Awards for their work. A national tour in 2000 brought the show around the country,
a revised version produced by London’s Donmar Warehouse brought renewed acclaim and
attention, followed by a remounting at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. Parade continues
to be produced at colleges and theaters around the world.
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The plot of the musical dramatizes the historical story and does not shy away from the
conclusion of some that the likely killer was the factory janitor Jim Conley, the key witness
against Frank at the trial. The true villains of the piece are portrayed as the prosecutor Hugh
Dorsey (later the governor of Georgia and then a judge) and the rabid publisher Tom Watson
(later elected a U.S. senator).
In dramatizing the story, Prince and Uhry have emphasized the evolving relationship between
Leo and his wife Lucille. Their relationship shifts from cold to warm in songs like "Leo at
Work/What Am I Waiting For?", "You Don't Know This Man", "Do it Alone", and "All the Wasted
Time". The poignancy of the couple, who fall in love in the midst of adversity, is the core of the
work. It makes the tragic outcome—the miscarriage of justice—even more disturbing. Prince
told Playbill On-Line the musical is based on the true story of Leo and Lucille Frank whose boring
marriage gets an unexpected rebirth when Leo is accused of raping and killing one of the girls
working in his Atlanta factory. Clapped in prison, the wimpy Leo is forced to get some
backbone. "He starts a coward and becomes a hero," Prince said. His chilly, passive wife
"becomes a dynamic woman," he said. Prince said he was intrigued by the show's sociological
setting as well. The incident, taking place in a factory, becomes a lightning rod for feelings
among Atlantans that Northern industrialization was forced on the city after the Civil War. "The
story just seemed like a metaphor for what was happening there at that time," he said.
Brown, 29, also has a personal stake in Parade. His marriage was disintegrating as he wrote "All
the Wasted Time," the achingly beautiful climactic song in which Lucille and the imprisoned Leo
realize that their struggle to clear his name has made them truly fall in love—too late. The lyrics
are based on the couple’s letters.
WHY THE TITLE, PARADE?
"There’s some of me—the nice Jewish Yankee boy—in Leo," says Jason Robert Brown, "and
there’s some of my grandfather, too. But a part of me is also in all those people in Marietta who
were devastated by the war, forced to send their sons and daughters to work in factories."
Hence Jason Robert Brown‘s brainstorm of showing an eager young Rebel soldier going off to
war—and then instantly transformed into a grizzled, bitter, one-legged veteran in the fateful
parade 50 years later as the chorus
sings the rousing anthem, "The Old
Red Hills of Home." Brown took the
words from the Marietta gravestone
of Phagan, never realizing that they
were written by the infamous and
sensationalist publisher, Tom
Watson.
Harold Prince, too, knows the Parade
ground. Like Alfred Uhry, he’s
descended from German Jews who
were among the earliest settlers of
the South; one ancestor was
president of the Texas Cotton
Exchange. Controversy would be music
to the director’s ears—and nothing new.
"I’ve made a lifetime in the theater of
doing subjects both serious and
controversial, and I have no intention of
backing away now," says Prince. "When
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I did Evita I heard about it from all the Argentines in New York. Half were thrilled and half were
mad, but no one was bored." In fact, a case could be made that Parade is not such an unusual
choice of subject matter for Prince but may be his most un-compromising work. His 1966
Cabaret looked at Nazism but through the framework of raucous song-and-dance; Sweeney
Todd’s wronged hero made his tormentors into meat pies but in the form of a gothic fable, not a
study of cannibalism. Parade, though it has its share of pageantry and stirring melody, is
focused on injustice.
LEGACY
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of B’nai B’rith is still active, and its mission is as important
today as it was in 1913.
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And the KKK is as active today as it was in the past, though in the shadows of our culture. The
Klan was started by Confederate war veterans after the Civil War to prevent freed slaves from
obtaining rights. It has been called the first true terrorist group founded on American soil.
Though the US government managed to dismantle the so-called First Klan, its mission remained
alive in the minds of racist whites committed to overturning an unjust order.
The Leo Frank case inspired Klan-sympathizing racists to expand the parameters of hate by
including Jews, who they viewed as dishonest and alien to white society. A cross-burning
ceremony attended by some of Frank’s murderers in 1917 marked the official launch of the
Second Klan. Future US Senator Tom Watson helped reignite Klan activities through incitement
in southern newspapers.
Though modern Klan chapters remain decentralized to prevent infiltration, it’s clear the election
of President Barack Obama in 2008 fueled membership across the board. Klan leaders have also
formed recent alliances with Neo-Nazi groups to fight against illegal immigration and same-sex
civil marriage. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has provided – to some observers’
frustration – ongoing support for Klan members’ rights to hold rallies and run for public office.
The recent murder of nine people at the Charleston, SC Emanuel AME Church is just one
example of a current hate crime that we live with today, and reminiscent of the Leo Frank event
100 years ago.
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Will this production of Parade be controversial? Will it force the audience to feel, think and
discuss what they just witnessed on stage? Sometimes this hits a core with audiences. It is the
job of Revival Theatre Company in mounting this production to hold a mirror up to our
audience—our society, to make them feel and face what is happening in the world and our
everyday lives. It is easy to turn away, ignore and forget. In the case of Parade, will it strike a
nerve with someone who has distaste for a Jewish person? An African American? The brutal
murder of a young innocent girl? And the corrupt court & law enforcement systems that still
affects many today? The common theme here is how our emotions can overcome reason.
It might be odd that the retelling of this shameful & horrific scene in American history is in the
form of a musical were it not for the fact that the American musical theatre form is as
indigenous to our culture as are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
End
Sources taken from various internet and Wikipedia articles
• Alphin, Elaine Marie. An Unspeakable Crime: The Prosecution and Persecution of Leo Frank.
Carolrhoda Books, 2010. Google Books abridged version. Retrieved June 10, 2011.
• Blakeslee, Spencer. The Death of American Antisemitism. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2000.
• Dinnerstein, Leonard. The Leo Frank Case. University of Georgia Press, 1987.
• Frey, Robert Seitz; Thompson-Frey, Nancy (2002). The Silent and the Damned: The Murder of
Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank. New York, New York: Cooper Square Press (of
Rowman & Littlefield). p. 132. ISBN 978-0815411888. Retrieved June 17, 2015. (First published in
Lanham, Maryland in 1988)
• Friedman, Lawrence M. St. Louis University Law Journal; Summer 2011, Vol. 55, Issue 4, p. 12431284.
• Golden, Harry. A Little Girl is Dead. Account of Leo Frank case, 1965. Retrieved June 25, 2011.
• Knight, Alfred H. The Life of the Law. Oxford University Press, 1996.
• Lawson, John Davison (ed.). American State Trials Volume X (1918), contains the abridged trial
testimony and closing arguments starting on p. 182. Retrieved August 23, 2010.
• Levy, Eugene. "Is the Jew a White Man?" in Maurianne Adams and John H. Bracey, Strangers &
Neighbors: Relations Between Blacks & Jews in the United States. University of Massachusetts
Press, 2000.
• Lindemann, Albert S. The Jew Accused: Three Anti-Semitic Affairs (Dreyfus, Beilis, Frank), 1894–
1915. Cambridge University Press, 1991. Google Books, abridged version. Retrieved June 11,
2011.
• Melnick, Jeffrey Paul. Black-Jewish Relations on Trial: Leo Frank and Jim Conley in the New South.
University Press of Mississippi, 2000. ISBN 978-1604735956
• Moseley, Clement Charlton. "The Case of Leo M. Frank, 1913-1915". The Georgia Historical
Quarterly, Vol. 51, No. 1 (March, 1967), pp. 42–62.
• Oney, Steve. And the Dead Shall Rise: The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank.
Pantheon Books, 2003. ISBN 978-0679764236
• Phagan Kean, Mary. The Murder of Little Mary Phagan. Horizon Press, 1987.
• Ravitz, Jessica. "Murder case, Leo Frank lynching live on", CNN, November 2, 2009.
• Theoharis, Athan, and John Stuart Cox. The Boss: J. Edgar Hoover and the Great American
Inquisition. Temple University Press, 1988.
• Wood, Amy Louise. Lynching and Spectacle. The University of North Carolina Press, 2009.
• Woodward, Comer Vann. 1963. Tom Watson: Agrarian Rebel. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Extensive website about the show
• Cast and other information from the Geocities Jason Robert Brown website
• All the Wasted Time - Parade
• Parade at the Music Theatre International website
• Profile of the show at the NODA website indicating which characters sing which numbers
• ADL press releases via Atlanta Office of the Anti-Defamation League
• The ADL and KKK, born of the same murder, 100 years ago How a scandalous Memorial Day
strangling led Jews and anti-Semites to rethink survival strategies and form two stalwart
organizations, The Times of Israel, by Matt Lebovic May 27, 2013.