Inside: The Scottsboro Boys

Transcription

A Young Vic and Catherine Schreiber Production
Music & Lyrics by John Kander and Fred Ebb
Book by David Thompson
Direction and Choreography by Susan Stroman
1
Welcome to the Young Vic’s series of Inside guides. We hope that they will
provide you with an insight into our productions and take you on a journey
through the creative process.
They are compiled by emerging directors who are part of the Young Vic’s
Director’s Network. The director undertakes research and interviews with actors
and the creative team, giving you unique access to the production.
The Director’s Network provides positive and proactive support for emerging
directors by offering a range of opportunities to help them develop their craft.
These packs are produced by the Taking Part Department at the Young Vic.
Taking Part is committed to offering our community in Lambeth and Southwark
a wealth of opportunities to be involved in the big world inside the Young Vic. We
produce work with local schools, young people and adults, which run alongside
our professional productions.
From the plays we produce, to the way that we produce them and all of the other
work that we do, we’d like to think there’s something at the Young Vic that would
interest everyone.
If you live or study in Lambeth or Southwark and would like to find out more
about our work or get involved please visit www.youngvic.org/takingpart
You can also read our blog to find out what we’re currently up to
http://youngviclondon.wordpress.com/category/taking-part/
If you have any questions about these packs or our work please contact
[email protected]
We hope you enjoy learning about our production from the inside.
The Taking Part Team
Photos by Richard Hubert Smith unless otherwise stated
Compiled by: Laura Farnworth
Edited by: Georgia Dale
First performed at the Young Vic on 18th October 2013
2
Contents
Introduction from Laura Farnworth
Part 1: Finding the Musical - A True Story
1. The Real Scottsboro Boys
2. The people behind the characters
3. Synopsis
4. Following the story
5. Kander and Ebb: Score and Libretto
Part 2: A Musical with a Political Message
1. Why tell this story as a musical rather than a play?
2. Staging Techniques to tell the story
Theatrical Form and the Minstrel Show
The Design
Character Doubling
Character and Caricature
Breaking the Minstrel Show Form
Light and Location
Picture Perfect
Jumping Time
3. Activities
4. Some other musicals which convey a political message
Part 3: Staging a Musical
1. The rehearsal room floor
2. A day in the life of rehearsals
3. The Scottsboro Boys ‘bible’
4. The challenges of this musical
Part 4: From Broadway to London: The transfer
1. Create versus Recreate
2. The Role of ‘The Associate’ and ‘The Assistant’
3. An original and new cast
4. Rehearsals – Susan Stroman arrives
Part 5: Meet the Company
1. Susan Stroman, Director
2. Jonathan O’Boyle, Assistant Director
3. Alex Constantin, Company Stage Manager
4. Catherine Kodicek, Head of Costume at the Young Vic
5. Colman Domingo and Forrest McClendon - Mr Bones and Mr Tambo
6. James T Lane, Emile Ruddock, Kyle Scatliffe, and Carl Spencer – Ruby/Ozie,
Willie, Haywood and Andy
7. Clinton Roane - Roy Wright
8. The Company, Biographies
Appendix
1. Further information
2. Taking Part Sponsorship
3
Hello,
My name is Laura Farnworth. I am a director and theatre maker. Before working on this
resource guide, I had not heard about the true story of the Scottsboro Boys, and even
though I work in theatre, I am a little ashamed to admit I was not very familiar with the
musical genre either. So the writing of this pack has been a real education for me. It has
taken me on a journey, where I have discovered my own appreciation for the musical form,
and also a conviction for why the story of these nine young men and boys should be told
today. It is these thoughts and insights that I share with you in the hope that they may give
you a new relationship to musicals and a closer connection with our production; The
Scottsboro Boys.
Researching the true events and injustice of the Scottsboro case has both moved and
appalled me. I have found it shocking that a rash lie told in 1931, had such terrible
consequences that destroyed the rest of these young men’s lives. It is unbelievable to think
that their pardons are still in progress today.
Speaking to members of the creative team of The Scottsboro Boys has given me an
understanding of the precision, skill and craft that goes into staging this show. I have been
surprised by how effective the musical form can be for communicating such a harrowing
story. Artistically, I have been impressed by the theatrical form and imaginative staging
behind the creation of The Scottsboro Boys. With storytelling at its very heart, The
Scottsboro Boys is theatre at its best.
I would like to thank all the creatives who I have met and talked with, and who gave me
their valuable time from such incredibly busy schedules in the remount of this show. I
particularly would like to thank Jonathan O’Boyle, the Jerwood Assistant Director on this
show, whose insight and observations of the process have been invaluable to me and to the
making of this guide.
I hope you enjoy.
With best wishes, Laura
4
Part 1: Finding the musical
– A True Story
The original Scottsboro Boys, 20 March 1931
5
Part 1: Finding the Musical – A True Story
1. The Real Scottsboro Boys
This article first appeared in Words on Plays, the performance guide series of San
Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.). Dan Rubin is the editor of Words on
Plays and A.C.T.’s publications manager.
The Scottsboro Boys
A True Story
By Dan Rubin
On a Train to Memphis
On March 25, 1931, a number of youths—all poor and uneducated southerners—were
bumming a ride on the 44-car Alabama Great Southern chugging its way through
northern Alabama on its way to Memphis, Tennessee. One of the travelers, a white boy,
stepped on the hand of the black Haywood Patterson as he held onto the side of a car.
Heated words were exchanged. When the freight train slowed to climb a hill, the white
boy and his pals jumped off to gather rocks, with which they began pelting Patterson
and his friends (Eugene Williams and brothers Andrew and Leroy Wright). Patterson’s
group, with the help of other black hoboes they recruited, pushed or otherwise
encouraged the white boys from the train, ending the dispute.
Only that was not the end. It was the first bout in a battle that would go on for decades
and expose Alabama’s social inequality and broken judicial system to the world. The
Scottsboro case began “with a white foot on my black hand,” Patterson later wrote,
eloquently encapsulating the plight of black Americans living in the South at the time—
a tragedy that, for many, the Scottsboro Boys came to represent.
The defeated white gang ran to the nearby town of Steveson and complained to the
stationmaster. The stationmaster got word to the authorities in Paint Rock, and by the
time the train pulled into town, a well-armed posse was waiting to stop it. Patterson,
Williams, and the Wright brothers were pulled off, as were five other black boys:
Clarence Norris and Charlie Weems, who had been involved with the earlier scuffle; and
Olen Montgomery, Willie Roberson, and Ozie Powell, who had been traveling alone in
other train cars, oblivious to the confrontation. Mostly strangers, they were bound with
plow line, shoved onto the flatbed of a truck, and transported to Scottsboro’s
dilapidated, two-story jail. The outspoken Patterson asked what they were being
arrested for. “Assault and attempt to murder,” he was told.
Which is likely what the boys would have been charged with had the authorities not also
found two white girls traveling on the train. Victoria Price and Ruby Bates, two mill
workers from Huntsville, Alabama, were traveling home after unsuccessfully looking for
6
work in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Like the boys, they were impoverished, uneducated,
and desperate—“white trash” despised by “respectable” southerners almost as much as
the destitute black population. Both girls were the primary providers for their fatherless
homes, and, with work in the poorly paying mill sporadic, they supplemented their
incomes with sex work. Both had had run-ins with the law before, so when they were
taken from the train in Paint Rock, they knew enough to be nervous. They would be
charged with vagrancy, or worse, under the Mann Act, with crossing state lines for
immoral purposes.
So, in the interest of self-preservation, they lied. As the train traveled from Steveson to
Paint Rock, they told the officers, 12 black men had held them down and their legs
apart, threatened them with knives and a pistol, and taken turns raping them. Three had
gotten away, but the authorities were currently holding nine in custody. The distraction
worked, and for the first time in their lives, the girls were not looked at as untouchable,
low-down tramps: instead they were transformed into poor but virtuous white southern
women, whose honor had been sullied and must be avenged.
Had the boys feared for their lives before, after learning what the two girls were
accusing them of, they knew they were as good as dead. Word of their most deplor- able
crime spread instantly. Their brutality was no surprise to the members of the rural
white population, who believed that black men would always rape white women when
given the chance—and that the only way to combat such savagery was to strike the fear
of mutilation and death into their hearts. A lynch mob surrounding the Scottsboro jail
grew. By evening, a mass of 300 threatened to break down the doors; inside, the
deputies were ready to turn their prisoners over. Soon the boys would be a statistic—
nine more lynchings to add to the South’s ugly ledger. And the world would think little
of it.
The Jackson County sheriff, M. L. Wann, however, would not let that happen. “I don’t
believe that story the girls told,” he comforted the nine boys, as his wife, within earshot,
attempted to persuade Price and Bates to recant. Wann tried to disperse the crowd.
Failing, he called the governor. The governor called the National Guard. The boys
survived the night, and the following day they were escorted to a prison in Gadsen. Their
arrest made headlines in the morning paper, and they were rechristened: for the
moment they were safe, but for the rest of their lives—however long that might be—
they would be known as the Scottsboro Boys.
The Trial
The Scottsboro Boys had not been lynched by the mob, but the danger, while less
immediate, was no less real. On the morning of March 26, 1931, newspapers circulated
bearing such headlines as “Threw White Boys from Freight Train and Held White Girls
Prisoners until Captured by Posse” and “Nine Negro Men Rape Two White Girls.” In the
incendiary articles that followed, Price and Bates were described as “girls,” even though
Price, at 21, was older than any of the “Negro Men” she had accused: Weems, the oldest,
and Andrew “Andy” Wright were 19; Norris and Patterson were 18; Montgomery and
Roberson were 17, the same age as Bates; Powell was 15; Williams and Leroy “Roy”
Wright, the youngest, were only 13. With no one to contradict the lurid details printed
7
by the media—locked away, the Boys certainly could not—most people believed the
grotesque fiction.
Judge A. E. Hawkins scheduled the trial to begin on April 6. It was First Monday, or
horse-swapping day—a day when farmers from Scottsboro’s neighboring counties
would come into town with their families to trade and socialize. The coalescence of this
monthly tradition with the well-publicized case attracted thousands by the 8:30 a.m.
start of the trial. By 10 a.m., the small village was overflowing with 10,000 spectators.
They were there for a lynching: if not a gruesome one, at least a legal one. Armed soldiers had to set up a perimeter around the square outside the courthouse and stationed
extra guards inside. Everyone was searched before entering.
The Boys had been held in Gadsen without bail for almost two weeks, unable to
communicate with their parents or a lawyer. In the courtroom, they met their
representa- tion for the first time. Mr. Steven Roddy had been hired by a group of black
preachers in Chattanooga, who had raised $50 for the cause. He introduced himself to
the Boys and, with liquor on his breath, told the guilty ones to confess so the innocent
ones could have a chance at survival. When Roddy appeared before the judge, however,
he balked. He requested that he be allowed to perform in an advisory role to whomever
the judge appointed from the Scottsboro bar. The 69-year-old Milo Moody—“an ancient
Scottsboro lawyer of low type and rare practice”—accepted the responsibility of the
defendants’ fates. And, without time for the defense to prepare, the first of four trials
began. The vivid testimony of the unabashed Price would have been enough to send the
Scottsboro Boys to the electric chair. (Raping a white woman was a capital offense in
Alabama.) A masterful storyteller with histrionic flare, Price retold the fabrication she
had fine-tuned for the newspapers over the last 12 days. She painted a violent scene of
black brutes driven not just by lust but also by the need to possess white women. This
hit the rawest nerve in the minds of the jurors—12 white, rural, southern men.
The incompetency and half-heartedness of the Roddy/Moody team did not help matters,
nor did Judge Hawkins’s belief that the Boys were guilty and that the trial was a waste of
time. But it was the testimonies of Norris, Patterson, and Roy Wright that encouraged
one Scottsboro editor to say that the case against the Boys was “so conclusive as to be
almost perfect.” The night before the first trial, Norris was taken from his cell,
threatened, and beaten. On the stand the following day, he swore, “I did not have my
hands on the girls at all, but I saw that one rape her,” pointing indiscriminately at one of
the other Boys. “They all raped her, every one of them.”
The first trial ended in a guilty verdict for Norris and Weems—the sentence, death. The
spectators inside the courtroom cheered and the crowd outside exploded into
thunderous celebration. A brass band played “There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town
Tonight” and “Dixie.” The next day, a hopeless Patterson, tried alone, attempted to save
himself and his three friends by pointing the finger at the other five. During Patterson’s
trial, Roy Wright—who had been jabbed in the cheek by a militiaman’s bayonet on the
night of their arrest and, during the trial, had been taken into a back room of the
courthouse, where he was whipped and threatened by a deputy sheriff and his cronies—
confirmed Patterson’s accusation. But then the terrified 13-year-old went on to echo
Norris’s des- peration: “I saw all of them have intercourse; I saw that with my own
8
eyes!” Patterson was found guilty and sentenced to death. The next day Montgomery,
Powell, Roberson, Williams, and Andy Wright, prosecuted as a group, were found guilty
and sentenced to death.
The final trial, of Roy Wright, was declared a mistrial. The jury found the boy guilty, but,
because of his youth, the prosecution had only asked for life imprisonment. Eleven
jurors held out for the electric chair.
Back in Gadsen’s jail, the condemned rioted. They cursed the guards, demanded pork
chops, and tried to escape. The guards handcuffed them together and beat them nearly
to death. They were all transferred to Jefferson County Jail in Birmingham. Roy Wright
stayed there to await his retrial; the remaining eight were taken to Montgomery’s Kilby
Prison and put on death row to await their execution, scheduled for July 10, the earliest
possible date permitted by law.
The Legal Battle That Changed the South
On July 10, Kilby prison officials told the eight boys, “You’re going to die tonight.” They
brought in eight caskets for their bodies and prepared the electric chair. At midnight,
they led a man from his cell. He shook the hands of his fellow prisoners on his way to the
room with the green door at the end of the hall. Minutes later an electric current buzzed
through the cell block. Willie Stokes was dead.
Stokes was not a Scottsboro Boy: he was a convicted murderer, and the first of many
who would pass through that green door while the Boys were held in Kilby. Despite
what the guards would have the Boys believe, their executions had been stayed due to
appeals filed by the International Labor Defense—a legal institution associated with the
Communist Party. The ILD had been watching the Scottsboro case from the very
beginning, and they were convinced that the Boys had been railroaded, innocent of any
crime other than being poor and black. The day after sentencing, the ILD voted to take
on the appeal. Their members were the first kind faces the prisoners saw in Kilby, and
they visited and comforted the Boys’ frightened parents. So when the initially hesitant
NAACP finally sent stewards to take over the Boys’ defense, they were turned away. The
NAACP, had its help been accepted, would have quietly worked within the system to try
to save the Boys. The ILD, on the other hand, made noise. It wrote and circulated
inflammatory articles about the backwards, KKK-dominated court in Scottsboro. It
hosted and encouraged protests. Letters, telegrams, and petitions flooded the offices of
local and state authorities, arriving from every state in the union and from all over the
world. By 1933, Governor Miller alone had received 50,000 telegrams. Supporters sent
the prisoners mail, gifts, and money, and the Boys were especially hated and tortured by
the Kilby guards because of their fame.
After a year and a half, the ILD won Powell v. Alabama, in which the United States
Supreme Court overturned the Scottsboro convictions on the grounds that the
defendants had been denied adequate counsel, violating their Fourteenth Amendment
rights. To lead the defense during the 1933 retrial, the ILD hired famed New York
9
lawyer Samuel Leibowitz, who was able to move the proceedings into the Decatur
courtroom of Judge James Horton. Unlike Judge Hawkins, Judge Horton had a reputation
for fairness, and the dramatic retrial of Haywood Patterson exposed all of the holes in
Victoria Price’s accusation. Leibowitz attacked Price’s character by bringing in evidence
of her past indiscretions. Ruby Bates, who had disappeared in the weeks leading up to
the trial, made a surprise appearance for the defense and admitted it had all been a lie.
As important was the testimony of Dr. R. R. Bridges, who had attended to the girls hours
after they were supposedly assaulted and had found no fresh injuries or semen.
The all-white, all-male jury found Patterson guilty. For a second time, he was sentenced
to death. The ILD and Leibowitz had underestimated southerners’ distrust of northern
interference—not to mention their anti-Semitism and hatred of Communists, which
rivaled their racial bigotry. Throughout the trial, Leibowitz received death threats.
During summation, the prosecution exploited this antagonism, highlighting the “sinister
influences” of New York and claiming the testimony of Bates had been “bought and sold
with Jew money.” The prosecutors asked the jury to base its decision on the testimony of
Price alone, which is exactly what it did.In a move that would cost him his job, Judge
Horton set aside the verdict. “The testimony of the prosecutrix [Price] in this case is not
only uncorroborated, but it alsobears on its face indications of improbability and is
contradicted by other evidence.” He ordered a new trial.
Over the next four years, Leibowitz fought for the Boys. He fought retrials before
a hostile Judge Callahan and lost. He fought appeals before the U.S. Supreme Court and
won: Norris v. Alabama found that black citizens had been intentionally kept off
Alabama’s jury rolls. During that time, all nine Boys were victims of the state’s penal
system. They were abused by guards and each other. Leaving Patterson’s fourth trial in
1936, Ozie Powell attacked a deputy with a pen knife and was shot in the head. (He
survived.) But harder than the violence was the time spent locked in small, dark cells.
The Boys who didn’t know how to read and write when they were arrested learned, and
they passed their days singing, gambling, fighting, praying, and writing letters mourning
the loss of their youth—but, mostly, just waiting.
By 1937, Leibowitz was exhausted; the state of Alabama was exhausted, too, fed up with
what the trials and appeals were costing its image and coffers. In secret New York
meetings, a compromise was arranged: Eugene Williams and Roy Wright could go free;
they had been only 13 years old at the time of their arrest. The state was also willing to
release Olen Montgomery and Willie Roberson, whose guilt it had long doubted. The rest
would get reduced sentences, but would remain in jail.
Obscurity
In 1938, outgoing Alabama Governor Bibb Graves intended to pardon the remaining
Scottsboro Boys, but when they refused to admit their guilt, he changed his mind. After
that, most of the country lost track of the Boys. In the midst of World War ii, few noticed
when Charlie Weems, Clarence Norris, Andy Wright, and Ozie Powell were paroled. Few
cared as they all struggled to adapt to life on the outside, forever burdened with their
Scottsboro Boy identities. No one knows what became of many of them. Detached from
10
the cases that had made them a cause, they became invisible.
But there were moments when the Scottsboro Boys reentered the news. In 1948,
Haywood Patterson escaped from Kilby and fled to Detroit; he was caught by the FBI,
but Michigan’s governor refused to extradite him to Alabama. He published his
autobiography, Scottsboro Boy, before dying of cancer in 1952 while imprisoned in a
Michigan penitentiary, where he had been sent for killing a man in a bar fight.
Roy Wright, who seemed to adjust to freedom better than the rest, entered vocational
school, served in the army, married, and took a job with the merchant marine. But in
1959, he became convinced that his wife had been unfaithful while he was away at sea:
he killed her, and then himself. Norris, who had violated his parole by fleeing north and
assuming his brother’s identity in 1946, enlisted the help of the NAACP to clear his
name. It launched a successful public relations campaign, and on October 25, 1976,
Norris was officially declared not guilty for the rape of Victoria Price and Ruby Bates.
Norris published The Last of the Scottsboro Boys: An Autobiography in 1979, at which
time he believed he was the only Scottsboro Boy still alive. “The lesson to black people,
to my children, to everybody,” Norris said after his pardon, “is that you should always
fight for your rights, even if it cost you your life. Stand up for your rights, even if it kills
you. That’s all that life consists of.” The last of the Scottsboro Boys died in 1989.
The original Scottsboro Boys, 1931
11
2. The people behind the characters
As appeared in the Scottsboro Boys Programme, Young Vic 2013
12
13
3. Synopsis
This synopsis first appeared in Words on Plays, the performance guide series of San
Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.).
On an early evening in December 1955, The Lady sits on a bench waiting for a bus. As
she does, she is caught up in a memory. The world around her fades away as a distant
minstrel march is heard. One by one, the minstrels greet The Lady. Finally, the
Interlocutor—the master of ceremonies—enters and, in traditional fashion, tells the
minstrels to be seated.
The Interlocutor introduces Mr. Bones and Mr. Tambo, who will lead off the night’s
entertainments about the Scottsboro Boys. The proceedings go as planned until
Haywood Patterson asks if tonight, for a change, they can tell the truth. The Interlocutor
agrees, even though Bones and Tambo confess that they have never told the truth
before.
The story begins on March 25, 1931, as the nine Scottsboro Boys hop a Memphis- bound
boxcar in Chattanooga, Tennessee. As the train slows to a stop in Scottsboro, Alabama,
the sheriff (played by Mr. Bones) accuses the nine Scottsboro Boys of instigating a fight
with a group of white boys on the train. While searching the train, the handsy sheriff’s
deputy (played by Mr. Tambo) discovers Victoria Price and Ruby Bates, two “shimeeshakee harlots,” and threatens to take them to jail. Rather than face jail time, the girls,
led by Victoria, accuse the nine black youths of rape. Almost instantly the sheriff and
deputy’s attitudes toward the women change: they are no longer common whores, but
delicate flowers of the American South, victimized by a gang of black savages. The
Scottsboro Boys are beaten and hauled off to jail. Terrified, Olen Montgomery accuses
the other boys in hopes the guards will let him go. They don’t.
Court is called to order, and the Boys are provided with a drunk, incompetent public
defender. Their trial is swiftly concluded: all nine are found guilty by an all-white jury.
Their executions are set for July 10 at Kilby Prison.
As the boys wait in prison for their execution, they bicker. But when the guards torment
12-year-old Eugene Williams with visions of the electric chair, Haywood comes to his
defense. He commandeers a guard’s gun. It is not loaded, but it is enough to deflect
attention away from the scared child. Some of the Boys celebrate his heroism; others
think he’s reckless.
As a guard leads Haywood to the electric chair, the Interlocutor announces that the U.S.
Supreme Court has granted a new trial because the Boys did not have a proper lawyer—
they’re getting a second chance at life. As the Boys celebrate, the guards take Haywood
to solitary confinement; while there, Roy Wright teaches him the alphabet.
At their retrial, the Boys are defended by a Jewish New York lawyer, Samuel Leibowitz.
On the stand, Ruby admits that she and Victoria lied about the rape. As the Boys wait for
14
a verdict, the Interlocutor delivers a cake baked by The Lady. The gift lifts the Boys’
spirits enough that they muse about what they’ll do once they are freed.
Despite the Boys’ momentary optimism, the jury is swayed by the prosecution’s
argument that northern “Jew money” bought Ruby’s testimony, and once again convicts
the Boys. The Boys begin work on a chain gang. Haywood attempts to escape to go see
his dying mother, but Olen rats on him and he is caught and returned to solitary
confinement.
The Scottsboro case drags on for nearly nine years. With each passing year, each passing
trial, and each guilty verdict, the Boys continue to languish in prison for a crime they did
not commit. In a moment of rage, Ozie Powell tries to strangle a guard with his
handcuffs and is shot in the back of the head. He survives, but with severe brain damage.
Through a deal struck with the prosecutors, Leibowitz is able to secure the freedom of
four of the Scottsboro Boys—Eugene and Roy (the two youngest), Willie Roberson, and
Olen (the rat). Leibowitz promises to continue fighting until the remaining five are free.
Leibowitz is able to get the condemned Scottsboro Boys an audience with the governor.
They’ll be released on parole—if they admit to the governor that they are guilty.
Haywood refuses. The governor returns him to prison.
The Boys briefly tell the story of the rest of their lives—Haywood spent the
remainder of his behind bars, but he writes his autobiography. To close the show, the
Interlocutor tries to get the Boys to do the cakewalk—the customary ending to their
minstrel act. This time, however, they refuse, and one by one they leave the stage.
Haywood, Bones, and Tambo set up a row of chairs in the shape of a bus. As they leave,
they reveal The Lady sitting on the bus. The Interlocutor, as the bus driver, tells her to
move to the back. “No. Not no more,” she replies. “I’m gonna sit here and rest my feet.”
15
3. Following the story
Timeline created by Madeleine Kludje
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
5. Kander and Ebb: Score and Libretto
This interview first appeared in Words on Plays, the performance guide series of San
Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.). Amy Krivohlavek is a frequent
contributor to Words on Plays and A.C.T.’s marketing writer.
Entertainment with an Edge
Kander and Ebb and the American Musical
By Amy Krivohlavek
If they were characters in a musical, John Kander and Fred Ebb wouldn’t seem destined
for friendship, much less a decades-long musical partnership. But when Ebb, the intense
lyricist from New York, and Kander, the warm-hearted composer from the Midwest,
were introduced in 1962 by their mutual music publisher, creative lightning struck. By
the time Ebb died in 2004, the duo that Kander himself dubbed “Kandernebb” had
become the longest-running composer-and-lyricist collaboration in musical theater
history, and one of the most prolific. Working together in a small room in Ebb’s New
York apartment, they wrote more than 2,000 songs, featured in 20 musicals—13 of
which appeared on Broadway—as well as in film scores, concerts, and other special
events. Cabaret and Chicago, their best-known and most-celebrated works, have enjoyed
count- less productions worldwide, with Chicago now the longest-running revival in
Broadway history. The iconic standards “New York, New York,” “Cabaret,” and “All That
Jazz” have become enduring hits of the American songbook. The recipients of numerous
honors, including three Tony Awards for their songwriting (for Cabaret, Woman of the
Year, and Kiss of the Spider Woman), Kander and Ebb were also honored with the
Kennedy Center Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Performing Arts.
Overture: A Fortuitous Introduction
John Kander was born on March 18, 1927, in Kansas City, Missouri, into a music-loving
family who actively nurtured his interest in the arts. He discovered the joys of playing
the family piano around the age of four and began taking lessons when he was six. He
remembers the thrill of making music for the first time when his Aunt Rheta put her
hands over his on the keys: “That made a chord, and as a boy, it was about the most
thrilling thing that ever happened to me.” He began composing in the second grade during an arithmetic class. Unable to answer a question posed by the teacher, he explained,
“I’m writing a Christmas carol.” She didn’t believe him, so she crossed to his desk to
discover big notes scrawled across the pages of his notebook. The school sang the song
at the school assembly that Christmas—after the teacher sought approval from Kander’s
(Jewish) family. After several stints in the military, Kander studied music composition,
earning his undergraduate degree at Oberlin Conservatory of Music, then completed a
24
master’s degree at Columbia University. The head of the Columbia music department,
Douglas Moore, confided to Kander that if he had to do it all over again, he would write
for Broadway. “That was sort of my blessing,” says Kander. “From then on, I directed
myself that way.” A chance encounter with the piano player of the Broadway production
of West Side Story led him to substitute as a pit pianist, where he met choreographer
Jerome Robbins, who brought him in to accompany auditions and write dance music.
Born in New York City on April 18, 1928—allegedly, as he was notoriously secretive
about the actual year of his birth—Fred Ebb grew up in a more austere household. His
parents never took him to the theater or to concerts, and he first discovered musicals
through cast recordings. He graduated early from high school, earning rapid-fire degrees
(a bachelor’s from New York University and a master’s in English literature from
Columbia University) by the time he was 18. He became interested in writing as an
undergraduate, but worked a variety of odd-jobs before he began selling song lyrics to
record companies at the urging of friends. Following graduation, he worked with Philip
Springer (“Santa Baby”), who taught him the nuts and bolts of songwriting. In the early
1950s he collaborated with composer Paul Klein, and the pair generated three fulllength musicals and a few popular hit songs. Eventually, Klein left show business,
freeing Ebb up for his meeting with Kander.
Both Kander and Ebb worked briefly with other collaborators before they were
introduced; after they met, they declined almost every outside request to collaborate. As
they looked for early inspiration, their music publisher, Tommy Valando, introduced the
duo to visionary director/producer Hal Prince, who was working on a play called Take
Her, She’s Mine. They wrote a song for the show. Prince didn’t end up using it, but “it
was the beginning,” Ebb remembered. “The ease with which the song came, the fun it
was to write it, and the pleasure we both took in it, despite the fact that it didn’t go
anywhere, were the clues.” Kander agreed: “Some of the shows have been hits and some
of the shows have been flops. . . . But the one thing that’s consistent is that we’ve always
had a good time writing. Everything else connected with this business can be horrifying,
but the one thing that has always been a pleasure to us is just the sheer process of
writing.” And the process often didn’t take long. To show off how fast they could work,
Kander and Ebb famously created a song between dessert and coffee during a dinner
party at Ebb’s apartment. Kander said, “Play a waltz,” and within 15 minutes they had “I
Don’t Care Much,” a simple, haunting ballad that they put into their trunk—then pulled
out ten years later for Cabaret.
Entr’acte: Form Takes Flight
Kander and Ebb grew up in the age of Rodgers and Hammerstein, the very heyday of the
Golden Era musical, when a post–World War II optimism inflected the spirit of
Broadway and songs from musicals defined American popular music. When Kander and
Ebb began writing in the early 1960s, however, the Broadway musical was in decline, as
audiences’ attention was diverted by the Cold War and Vietnam—and the rise of rock’n’
roll. The musical had become more serious, which fit Kander and Ebb’s aesthetic as they
began to experiment with new forms. As James Leve writes in the recent Kander and
Ebb vol- ume of the Yale Broadway Masters series: “Their success was due to an ability
to assimilate the past into something new. While moving away from linear narratives
25
toward more fragmented structures, they also reached back to old song styles and
theatrical venues. This approach helped to transform the musical into a more
commentative, self-reflexive, and ironic genre, and one that resonated with modern
audiences.”
The first musical they wrote together, Golden Gate, took place in San Francisco in the
after- math of the 1906 earthquake as the city was being rebuilt. Styled in the manner of
a more traditional 1950s musical, the show didn’t take off, but they used it as their
audition piece for director George Abbott when he was looking for a songwriting team
for Flora, the Red Menace, which became Kander and Ebb’s first Broadway show in
1965. It also marked their first collaboration with an up-and-coming performer named
Liza Minnelli, who, at 17, struggled to win the title role, then won a Tony Award for her
performance. Although Flora received mixed reviews, it cemented a relationship among
Minnelli, Kander, and Ebb that would endure for the duration of their careers. The team
wrote material for Minnelli’s solo variety acts, and Ebb remembered an engagement at
the Shoreham Hotel as the first standing ovation he ever saw. When people immediately
stood up following her routine, “Liza thought they were leaving, and so did I,” said Ebb.
“She sat down on the stage, she got so scared of it all. That was our first experience, and
from then on we just kept writing, and she got more and more successful.” Minnelli
would go on to star in the screen adaptation of Cabaret, for which she won an Oscar, and
continued to appear in many of their other musicals and perform original solo material,
including the famous television concert Liza with a “Z.” After Flora opened, Prince
pushed the team toward a new project. Cabaret, a dark, risqué piece set in Berlin during
the Nazis’ rise to power, became Kander and Ebb’s breakthrough show as it redefined
musical theater into a new form for the postmodern era: the “concept” musical. Moving
beyond linear storytelling, this new genre was more self-referential and presentational,
with all elements of the production tied to a central theme or metaphor. As Ebb
remembered, during the Broadway previews of Cabaret, audiences fled the theater at
intermission; after the rapturous reviews, the show played to sold-out houses.
According to Leve, Kander and Ebb were “provocateurs and arguably the most
subversive practitioners of the concept musical.” Like Bertolt Brecht, they drew
attention to the disconnect between song and story, but gave it their own spin:
Kander and Ebb developed their own sense of irony by exploring serious topics within
various forms of popular entertainment: for example, a decadent cabaret embodies
German society during Hitler’s rise to power [Cabaret]; the Hollywood musical provides
a wrongly imprisoned homosexual an escape from an oppressive society [Kiss of the
Spider Woman]; vaudeville is a metaphor for a legal system that rewards the most
dazzling courtroom performances [Chicago]; a dance marathon represents possibilities
for a better life [Steel Pier]; and a minstrel show reveals the ingrained racism of the
American criminal justice system [The Scottsboro Boys].
In this way, Kander and Ebb created musicals that mirrored and celebrated popular
culture, using bold, broad entertainment styles to illuminate darker, more serious issues
that resonated profoundly with contemporary audiences. “Good storytelling, even about
tough subjects, should always be entertaining,” says Kander. “And I don’t think there’s
anything wrong with giving people something to think about while you’re entertaining
them.”
26
As it produced both successes and flops, Kander and Ebb’s career spanned revolutionary
changes in the musical—and American history. On the landscape of musical theater,
they watched the arrival of the rock musical, the British invasion of Andrew Lloyd
Webber and Tim Rice, the rise of the mega musical, and the debut of Disney on
Broadway. Offstage, they witnessed the passage of the Civil Rights Act, the Stonewall
Riots, the Vietnam War, the push toward women’s rights, the Cold War, and the 9/11
terrorist attacks and the wars that followed them. Deftly capturing political and cultural
events, their musicals are among the most socially aware of the genre - using song and
dance not just to entertain but to ignite a consciousness.
Finale: The Scottsboro Boys
Following Ebb’s death from a heart attack in 2004, Kander was bereft. Nonetheless, he
continued working, determined to bring the projects they had already begun to the
stage. One of them, Curtains, a detective comedy play-within-a-play about murder and
musicals, hit Broadway in 2007. The Scottsboro Boys (originally titled Minstrel Show)
arrived in 2010. Scottsboro had its genesis around Ebb’s kitchen table back in 2002, as
they searched for inspiration with two of their favorite collaborators, with whom they
had worked on Steel Pier—director/choreographer Susan Stroman, who also
choreographed a successful off-Broadway revival of Flora, the Red Menace in 1987, and
bookwriter David Thompson. While sifting through famous court cases of the 20th
century, they were immediately drawn to the controversial story of the Scottsboro Boys.
In 1930s Alabama, nine young African American men were accused of raping two white
women on a train. The trial— and subsequent appeals and retrials—spanned decades,
destroying the lives of the young men as the American legal system repeatedly failed to
deliver them justice.
Musical Numbers in The Scottsboro Boys
“Minstrel March” ......................................... Orchestra
“Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey!” .............................. Company
“Commencing in Chattanooga” ...............Haywood, Scottsboro Boys
“Alabama Ladies” ..........................................Victoria Price, Ruby Bates
“Nothin’” ............................................................Haywood
“Electric Chair”.................................................Guards, Eugene, etc.
“Go Back Home” .............................................Haywood, Eugene, Scottsboro Boys
“Shout!” ...............................................................Scottsboro Boys
“Make Friends with the Truth” .................Haywood, Scottsboro Boys
“That’s Not the Way We Do Things” .......Samuel Leibowitz
“Never Too Late” ..............................................Ruby Bates, Scottsboro Boys
“Financial Advice”............................................ Attorney General
“Southern Days” ...............................................Scottsboro Boys
“Chain Gang” ......................................................Scottsboro Boys
“Alabama Ladies” (Reprise) ........................Victoria Price
“Zat So?”................................................................Governor, Leibowitz, Haywood
“You Can’t Do Me” ...........................................Haywood, Scottsboro Boys
“The Scottsboro Boys” ....................................Scottsboro Boys
“Minstrel March” (Reprise) ..........................Orchestra
27
As Thompson remembers, Ebb immediately jumped at the project:
He couldn’t work fast enough on this one. He was way ahead of me when we were
writing, which was not typical of Fred. . . . He knew immediately. This was the
embodiment of that notion, which is, we are going to entertain you, and you are going to
have fun, but at the same time we’re going to lead you to a place that is very dangerous
and controversial, and what you take out of this, where you get, you’re going to have to
sort out yourself, but in the meantime we’re going to entertain you.
Their only show based on an actual historic event, The Scottsboro Boys, according to
Leve, became Kander and Ebb’s “most direct assault on racial prejudice in America and
their most unsettling work.” The material also inspired the team to delve into yet
another historic—and taboo—theatrical form, as the segmented structure of the
minstrel show proved ideal for telling the dynamic, wide-ranging story of the Scottsboro
Boys. Several previous Broadway musicals had evoked the minstrel show, but simply to
perpetuate racist attitudes; in The Scottsboro Boys, it works subversively to advance the
central theme.
Thompson explains that in their original form, minstrel shows “made fun of all sorts of
social forms, whether it was the upper class, [political] parties, things that were fashionable, elegant, the white man, the understanding of certain things.” Race, class, gender,
and politics became ammunition with which to entertain and create a sense of
superiority over the audience. Minstrel shows are, of course, infamous for having been
extremely pejorative in their depiction of African Americans. For Kander and Ebb, this
made the minstrel show a powerful subversive structure through which to tell the
complex story of the Scottsboro Boys, once again balancing broad entertainment with an
undercur- rent of tragedy and despair—and transforming an outdated form into
something fresh, provocative, and surprisingly modern.
In many ways, Scottsboro brings the Kander and Ebb canon full circle, bringing in
familiar elements from many of their musicals and fusing them together to tell the story:
the press, the justice system, prostitution, racial politics, and gender. About the
challenge of creating Scottsboro, Kander says:
The trick here has been: How do you write a musical where the audience will respond to
the story even though it’s about some very ugly things? I never write a piece thinking
that I have to do X because the audience will like X. That’s paralyzing. But we are
entertainers, all of us, and finding great entertainment in a story like this one has been a
test, a thrilling one. There’s a kind of racism in America today that is so insidious, the
way enemies of our black president use code language to depict him as the “other,” and
that part of our world has a direct through-line back to the Scottsboro Boys. The
minstrel show elements are, I like to think, part of the entertainment, but in a way that
makes you think about how we tell stories, tell our history as Americans.
Kander and Ebb’s chief weapon for defending individuals throughout history has been
the song. Their most famous compositions, often created for the iconic divas who
debuted them—from Minelli and Chita Rivera to Lauren Bacall and Barbra Streisand—
have been described as “hyperbolic anthems of survival.” Ebb loved to perform them,
and Kander called them “screamers.” They represent perhaps the best example of the
duo’s seemingly mismatched—yet somehow divinely paired—talents: Ebb’s acerbic
28
lyrics climb relentlessly onward, buoyed by Kander’s hopeful vamps and gorgeous
melodies. Whether giving voice to a fading cabaret singer, a condemned murderess, or a
wrongly accused black teenager, Kander and Ebb give their characters a will to survive
that continues beyond the final note.
According to Minelli, one of their greatest interpreters, “You look at the work, and the
work speaks for itself. Their songs say what we’re really thinking and they expose what
lies behind the façade and behind the secrets, behind the bluster and behind everything
that society teaches you to be. They challenge and inspire you to stand up for yourself.”
SOURCES Jackson R. Bryer and Richard A. Davison, eds., The Art of the American Musical:
Conversations with the Creators (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005);
Patrick Healy, “Blackface and Bigotry, Finely Tuned,” The New York Times (October 12,
2010); John Kander and Fred Ebb (as told to Greg Lawrence), Colored Lights: Forty Years
of Words and Music, Show Biz, Collaboration, and All That Jazz (New York: Faber and
Faber, Inc., 2003); James Leve, Kander and Ebb (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009);
Jesse McKinley, “Fred Ebb, 76, Lyricist Behind Cabaret and Other Hits, Dies,” The New York
Times (September 13, 2004)
John Kander and Susan Stroman. Photo by Paul Kolnik
29
`
Part 2: A Musical with a Political
Message
The Scottsboro Boys. Young Vic 2013
30
1. Why tell this story as a musical rather than as a play?
“If you don’t make it entertaining, no one will listen”. Fred Ebb
Musical, notorious for singing, dancing, bright lights and jazz hands, is not perhaps the first
genre that one would think of for communicating dark and difficult subject matters.
However, John Kander and Fred Ebb understood the powerful potential the musical form
had for tackling serious issues, and with this they brought innovation to the form.
“Kander, and Ebb (who died in 2004 before the project was completed) were accustomed to
controversy, having tackled complex and sensitive subjects in their decades long career,
including singing Nazis in ‘Cabaret’, a Latin American prison in ‘Kiss of the Spider Woman’
and the gangster underworld in ‘Chicago’.” (Lynell George, Young Vic Programme Note)
The Scottsboro Boys tells the true and terrible story of the injustice and racism that nine
young African Americans suffered, all because of a careless lie; a lie that had devastating
consequences, and completely wrecked the lives of nine young men. Incredibly it was not
until April of this year that the remaining eight Scottsboro boys were exonerated. Their
pardons are still in process. (See the true history of the Scottsboro Boys timeline, Section
1.3) The controversy that The Scottsboro Boys musical met with in America is a clear
indication of the relevance this story has still today, and why it is necessary that their story
be heard.
In August this year, the new UK cast members, who would be performing the remount of The
Scottsboro Boys at the Young Vic, travelled to America. For one week they had the
incredible opportunity to meet and work with Susan Stroman (Director and Choreographer),
John Kander (Music and Lyrics) and David Thompson (Book). Company Stage Manager,
Alex Constantin, told me how on the first day of the trip, Stroman, Kander and Thompson,
spoke passionately about the real life events behind the story and that it was important that
Forrest McClendon, Kyle Scatliffe, Colman Domingo, Adebayo Bolaji
31
the cast understood “they have a respect to show to the people that lived through this true
event”1. On the last day in America, Alex remembered sitting in a room with John Kander,
and whilst she listened to him, she began to realise the reason “why musicals like these are
made….why he [Kander] chooses these difficult subjects, and why he thinks that musicals
are the best way of doing it”.
The musical is a brilliant form to communicate and tackle serious issues because it is such a
highly popular and entertaining art form. Big dance numbers, songs, movement and
spectacle will captivate and thrill an audience. Their catchy songs and energy are
contagious. The musical draws in an audience and it this connection that Stroman, Kander
and Ebb play with brilliantly as a means of communicating a powerful message.
The Scottsboro Boys begins in a quite jovial tone, which gives an audience a false sense of
what the production is really about. But as the performance unfolds, the darker reality of
the story reveals itself, and then it hits you that a much more serious issue is being tackled.
John Kander calls this moment, ‘kicking the safety ground from under you’. From listening
to John Kander, Alex Constantin began to appreciate that the musical, rather than a
naturalistic play for example, can be a far more effective medium to deal with grave issues
because sometimes “you can’t tackle these subjects by just being really macabre about it …
you can’t make someone sit through an hour and a half and assault them with, ‘this is
hideous’, ‘this is terrible’; you need to make someone enjoy it first, and then through doing
that, when it gets kicked out from under them, they get a realisation of how easy it is to fall
into the trap.”
The Scottsboro Boys behaves much like a piece of Brechtian performance. In contrast to the
aim of a piece of naturalism or realism, the overt theatricality of the musical consistently
reminds the audience that this is a presentation of a true story, and not reality itself. One
example from The Scottsboro Boys is a song called The Electric Chair. The number is
performed as a tap dance, with witty lyrics, and the complete opposite to how you would
expect to frame such a harrowing subject. The idea behind the number is very dark,
particularly when you remember that as a true story, the electric chair was a very real fate
that these young men were facing, for something they did not do. This unusual combination
of heavy content with dazzling musical numbers makes for unsettling viewing, and keeps the
audience in a state of flux and at a slight distance from the subject material. “That
discomfort is precisely what Kander and Ebb were after, a discomfort with how easy it is to
‘grab justice,’ to manipulate a lie into a semblance of truth.”2 The musical format gives an
audience space to observe and reflect.
Assistant Director, Jonathan O’Boyle’s explains that for him, the musical is a powerful form
because it draws an audience in; “…a really difficult true story, can be quite alienating as a
play, whereas I think a musical gives it one step away from reality, and then you go home
and realise, oh, that was actually real - these kids were in jail for thirty years!”3 He goes on
to tell me that he anticipates when an audience watches The Scottsboro Boys they will not
know how to respond, some may laugh, some won’t, but it is exciting because the audience is
not told what to think; “it’s brilliant… it’s what all theatre should be, whether it is a play or
a musical, or an opera, it gives you a chance to think without it being judgmental. It is very
clever.”
1
See Alex Constantin, Company Stage Manager, Interview, Section 5.3
Lynell George, Young Vic Programme Note
3
See Jonathon O’Boyle, Assistant Director, Interview, Section 5.2
2
32
2. Staging Techniques to tell the story
Theatrical Form and the Minstrel Show
Kander and Ebb have always been very clever about the theatrical language they choose as a
framework for their musicals; Cabaret used cabaret style staging, and Chicago was told
using the vaudeville style.
Work on the show first began in 2002, but when Ebb died in 2004, Kander and Stroman put
the project on hold, and didn’t start work again on it until 2008. When Kander, Ebb and
Stroman decided they wanted to create a musical around the true story of the Scottsboro
boys, they knew that they wanted to find a way of presenting the story that matched up to
how shocking the true events were. When they began research, they uncovered articles
where journalists referred to the trials and the boys as if they were being paraded in a
minstrel show. This gave Kander, Ebb and Stroman the inspiration to use the minstrel show
form as a framework to build the show upon, but what they wanted to do was to take the
form and turn it on its head. Using the minstrel show format was an inspired idea; on the
one hand it provided a pre-existing theatrical structure through which the story could be
told; and by breaking the form they were able to make a powerful statement: ‘It would be a
raw confrontation with one layer of America’s legacy of bigotry and racism and, at the same
time, a commentary on the perpetually shifting ground upon which the Scottsboro Nine
stood.’ (Lynell George, Young Vic programme note)
A Brief History of the Minstrel Show
The Minstrel Show grew out of carnival and mask, originating in 1830s America. By
the 1840s, the minstrel show had become a nationally recognised entertainment
form. The shows were extremely degrading towards African Americans, being
performed by white performers with ‘blackface’ makeup, to create a stereotyped
caricature that portrayed black people as foolish buffoons. The players would speak
in a mock imitation ‘plantation’ dialect, and the shows were built around stock
characters, with singing, dancing, and skits, accompanied by musical instruments,
such as the fiddle, banjo and tambourine.
Before a show, the minstrel
players would walk through
a town to rally an audience.
To echo this, at the start of
The Scottsboro Boys, the
cast enter from behind the
audience and travel through
the middle of the
auditorium, before they
enter on stage.
Traditionally, players sat in
a semicircle of chairs. In
the middle was the
‘Interlocutor’, who was the
leader of the troupe, a kind
1900 Minstrel show poster, Strobridge & Co
33
of master of ceremonies. His character was very genteel and high status, making the
minstrel players appear all the more rowdy and undisciplined. At one end sat Mr.
Tambo, who played the tambourine; at the other end sat Mr. Bones, who played the
bones4. In between skits and songs, these two would exchange jokes. It was
customary for Tambo to be slim, and Bones to be fat.
Racism was rife in America, particularly in the south, and it meant that being a
minstrel player was a dangerous profession. Whilst off stage, and after each show,
players would need to leave town quickly to avoid attack, and remained in
character, keeping their costume and make up on, in an attempt to protect
themselves.
In those days, white people kept themselves separate from black people. The
minstrel shows, therefore, became the only contact they had with African Americans
and so the shows were very detrimental in their reinforcement and perpetuation of a
racist stereotype.
Forrest McClendon and Colman Domingo as Mr Tambo and Mr Bones
4
Bones – A musical instrument made from animal bones, similar to playing the spoons.
34
The Design
The set design of The Scottsboro Boys by Beowulf Boritt takes its inspiration from the
minstrel show. Three wooden chairs and ten metal chairs define the space. The thirteen
chairs begin in a semi-circle, characteristic of minstrel show staging.
A challenge of the script is the number of locations it presents. It’s important that a
production finds a way to move swiftly between locations, in order that the energy of a
performance does not flag or get interrupted. The design choice to use thirteen chairs
provided a theatrical solution for this challenge. In The Scottsboro Boys, each chair can
interconnect. From the initial semi-circle, the performers move the chairs into new
arrangements to denote the different locations at each stage of the story. For example, they
form a line chairs to create the illusion of a train carriage. Choreographing the chairs in this
way meant that transitions between locations could be extremely fast; sometimes they
happen in a matter of seconds. In turn, the speed and energy of the transitions fuels the
performance, adding a new level of dynamism and energy to the show.
Above and across the stage, are three proscenium arches that stand one in front of each
other, each slightly smaller the more upstage they are, the third arch being the narrowest
that is furthest from the audience. The arches act as giant picture frames for the action on
stage, and give the stage space a sense of depth and perspective.
The set design for The Scottsboro Boys is stylistically minimal. It does not attempt to
present reality in its entirety, but instead inviting an audience to complete the world in their
own imaginations, thus making them more connected to the story. This simplicity of the set
also places storytelling and the performer’s physical performance at the heart the show.
The Scottsboro Boys, Young Vic 2013
35
Character Doubling in The Scottsboro Boys
The true events of the Scottsboro case involved many different people, and the minstrel show
tradition presented a theatrical solution for how actors could double up and play these many
different characters.
In the musical, the actors play a troupe of minstrel players, who are telling the true story of
the Scottsboro Boys. Just like with traditional minstrel shows, the troupe is led by the
‘Interlocutor’, who is the only white actor in the cast. There is also a ‘Mr. Bones’ and ‘Mr.
Tambo’, the two showmen which bookend the show: “There’s so many layers going on, and
layers where Stroman says ‘actually this is a point where you’re just Forest and Coleman’,
so it’s truly Forest and Coleman playing Tambo and Bones, playing all these characters”
(Forest McClendon, Interview Section 5.5). By taking on the roles of the minstrel players, it
allows the performers to step in and out of being the nine Scottsboro boys. The minstrel
frame also allows the actors to play characters they would not normally play, and the form
becomes particularly powerful when we watch African Americans playing white women,
white lawyers, white sheriffs and white judges.
A piece of realism or naturalism calls on an audience to suspend their disbelief and strives
to achieve the actor and the character they are playing as one. In contrast, the framework of
the minstrel show in The Scottsboro Boys puts a margin of distance between the actors and
the nine young men. This slight disconnect helps to mitigate the weight of the difficult
subject material to prevent an audience becoming alienated. Jonathan told me; ‘…its quite
brilliant because it allows an audience to observe and have an opinion without it being real,
… there’s that sense of detachment, which is fantastic, because if it was real, I think it
would be horrendous, it would be impossible to watch.’
The Scotssboro Boys, Young Vic 2013
36
Character and Caricature
The show is very physical and the performer’s body is central to distinguishing between the
different races, ages and classes of the various people from the true events. In the musical
production, all characters, other than the Scottsboro Boys, are performed larger than life,
like a caricature or parody. This echoes with the set of stock characters typical of the
traditional minstrel show. Each character is denoted through physicality, voice, and just one
or two bits of costume, such as a huge cigar, or a pair of glasses. Assistant Director,
Jonathan, shared with me that “the actors that play the young girls, that accuse the boys of
rape, all they have is a clutch bag and a hat, and the character is formed... it is brilliant
because you have a six foot three black actor playing a white girl.”
Switching between characters is made clear for the audience, because all characters have
their own entrances. A new character will enter from off stage, or enter from behind the
semi-circle of chairs, or from behind another performer. Their piece of costume is put on
before they enter, so that when they are in full view of the audience the character
transformation is complete. Each prop or piece of costume was carefully chosen to capture
the essence of a character. For the actors, the additional bit of costume helps to unlock the
physicality of a character, allowing them to switch quickly and efficiently between
characters. Out of context, these characterisations may appear extreme, but set against the
intensity of the story they act as a clever counterpoint that bring both light relief and
emphasis to poignant moments.
Breaking the Minstrel Show Form
The Scottsboro Boys musical was met with some criticism in America from people who
considered the production was racist for using the minstrel show. However, often, this
criticism was from people who had not seen the show.
In the finale the nine Scottsboro boys enter, wearing top hat and tails, and reveal
themselves to be wearing ‘traditional minstrel blackface’.5 When Assistant Director,
Jonathan, first read the script he told me he was confused by the end, ‘I didn’t understand
what was going on. [I thought] why are black actors doing that?’
In order to break a form, you first have to establish it. What Jonathan realised was that the
choice to use the minstrel show by Kander, Ebb and Stroman, was in fact all about this
moment. The performers had to put on the makeup, so that they could take it off, and the
action of removing the ‘blackface’, which would never have been removed onstage
traditionally, broke the form of minstrel show. It demonstrates onstage that underneath the
‘blackface’ the performers are more than their staged caricatures. The gesture is symbolic of
shedding a long and degrading history. It is an act of pride, ownership and freedom.
5
The script has a note that reads ‘In the original production, the eight Scottsboro boys performing the
finale wear traditional minstrel blackface. The choice of whether or not to use the makeup is left to the
discretion of each company and its members.’
37
‘The problem in America was that some people thought the production was racist…. [but
they] didn’t watch the show, and they weren’t aware that actually doing that enabled the
actors to take the make-up off and make a statement’ Jonathan O’Boyle, Assistant Director
There is another significant distinction to make about the The Scottsboro Boys in regards to
its use of the minstrel show format. In the production, while audience enter the auditorium,
the thirteen chairs are pre-set on stage in a tangled heap. At the top of the show, the actors
dissemble the chairs, and place them into the semi-circle. They then move and arrange the
chairs for every new scene. In contrast to players in the historical minstrel shows, the actors
here create and are in control of the theatrical structure; crucially, they are in charge of the
space.
Light and Location
In theatre productions, light is used to visually bring focus to a particular part of the stage,
and to change mood and atmosphere. The timing of how the lighting changes from one state
to another is used by directors to punctuate specific moments they wish to bring attention to.
In The Scottsboro Boys, lighting is an essential element in the storytelling. A key function of
the lighting is to indicate location, for example, a cell, court room, or train yard.
Additionally, Stroman views the lighting as part of the choreography. This means that the
timing of a lighting cue is crucial, and musically, all cues must be in time with the action on
stage. The Deputy Stage Manager6, therefore, has to be very accurate in cueing the lights,
they cannot be a beat late!
Lighting is also fundamental for the creation of a stage picture, which as can be seen below
is a big part of the style of this show.
Picture Perfect
When Stroman is directing and choreographing action, she is always keeping an eye on the
stage pictures being made. Composition, balance and the spatial relationship between
performer, chair, and light, are all framed by the three proscenium arches. Each sequence
of choreography is set very precisely, requiring the whole company of actors, stage
management, and technical crew, to be extremely disciplined and working together as one.
Anything that falls slightly out of place breaks the stage picture, risking setting everything
else out that follows. This level of accuracy is a big physical and mental challenge for the
performers, particularly when working at speed during complex musical numbers. To
practice spatial precision, the performers and dancers in rehearsals follow numbers along
the front of the playing space so that they can keep a track of where they are. This means
‘that no matter what, the picture remains the same, [it’s about] symmetry, it is really
technical… dancers love it, they expect it, because they know that they are not out of place.’
Jonathan O’Boyle, Assistant Director (see Part 3, staging a Musical, for more about the
rehearsal room and an image of the numbers used by the cast)
6
The Deputy Stage Manager (DSM) on a production is responsible for calling all cues for the
performance, including lights, sound, actor entrances, and scene changes.
38
Jumping Time, from 1931 to 1955
Sadly, the true events of the Scottsboro case chronicled many years. Therefore, in the script,
there are sections where time needs to pass, sometimes several years in just a few seconds.
To signal a jump in time, a theatrical solution the musical uses is the Brechtian technique of
using placards. At several points in the show the two lead characters walk across the stage
with a placard with a year written across it, for example ‘1932’. Using the placard in this
way, reinforces for the audience that the show is not attempting to be real, but is a
theatrical presentation of the true events.
In reality, the Scottsboro boys went through many years of trials. During part of the show,
there is a sequence that charts the time between trial number three, and trial number eight.
The effect of time passing at this point is achieved physically and visually, using
choreography and rhythm. Rather than show the trials in the court room, Stroman chose to
show the journeys to and from the court room. Chairs are arranged in a line to represent the
bus which would have taken the young men back and forth from the trials. The performers
sit in a chair, as if on a bus. They face one direction to go to the court, and the opposite to
go back to prison. To symbolise each trial, the narrators shout ‘Guilty!’, until they reach trial
number eight where they say ‘You’re God Damn Guilty’. The choice to not show the trials,
but focus instead on the bus journeys makes a powerful comment on injustice of their cases.
It undermines the worth of the trials, and the simplicity of the single word ‘Guilty’,
communicates a message that their outcomes were prejudicially predetermined.
The Scottsboro Boys in rehearsal, London 2013
39
3. Activities
Ask everyone to choose one piece of costume or a prop. What kind of character
does this costume or prop belong to? Ask them to create a physical character
around a single prop or piece of costume, using the prop top transition from
themselves to the character onstage.
Explore in small groups different ways a character can enter a playing space, for
example, from behind a piece of furniture, or stepping out of a box, or suitcase, or
from behind another person.
Explore making perfect pictures - tell the story of the Scottsboro Boys in 3, 5 and
10 stage pictures. Focus on precision in the pictures, ensuring they are placed in
exactly the same way during the transitions. You could experiment with using
numbered gridlines.
Use chairs to create different locations from the Scottsboro Boys – for example, a
court room, a prison cell, a train, a bus, a train yard. What are the different ways
the chairs can be used to denote location? Encourage the use of detail, even if it is
imagined.
As an extension of this exercise, explore how to journey from one location to
another and play with making transitions without words, using music and
movement.
Time passing - in small groups create a physical sequence that plays with time
passing in the story. See if you can travel 5 years in 20 seconds!
40
4. Other musicals that communicate a political message
Assassins: About assassins who have attempted to kill the President of the United States,
and attempts to dramatize the unpopular idea that the most notorious killers are as much a
product of culture as the famous leaders they attempt to murder. (Stephen Sondheim)
Cabaret: Also by Kander and Ebb, Cabaret is set in the context of 1931 and the Nazi rise to
power in Berlin.
Chess: Set in the context of a Cold War struggle between the United States and
the Soviet Union, during which both countries wanted to win international chess
tournaments for propaganda purposes. (Benny Andersson, Bjorn Ulvaeus, Tim Rice)
Elegies for Angels, Punks and Raging Queens: Written from the perspective of characters
that have died from AIDS. The songs represent the feelings of friends and family members
dealing with the loss. (Bill Russell)
Evita: The story follows Argentine political leader Eva Perón, her early life, rise to power,
charity work, and eventual death. (Andrew Lloyd-Webber, Tim Rice)
Girlfriends: Is a female-led musical set during World War II. (Howard Goodall)
Hair: An anti-Vietnam rock musical that debuted in 1968, touching on modern issues,
including war, the power of young people, the importance of voting, and making your voice
heard. (Gerome Ragni, James Rado)
Miss Saigon: Set in 1970s Saigon during the Vietnam War, it follows the romance
between an American GI and a Vietnamese bar girl. (Claude-Michel Schonberg, Alain
Boubil)
Parade: Based on the 1913 trial of a Jewish factory manager who was accused and
convicted of raping and murdering a thirteen-year-old girl. The musical deals with themes
of prejudice and anti-Semitism. (Alfred Uhry, Jason Robert Brown)
Show Boat: From 1887 to 1927, the musical follows the lives of performers, stagehands,
and dock workers a Mississippi River show boat. A central theme is racial prejudice. (Oscar
Hammerstein II, P.G. Wodehouse)
The Beautiful Game: About a local football teams attempt to overcome the violence that
engulfs their community, and chronicles the protagonist’s journey from political ambivalence
to IRA volunteer. (Andrew Lloyd-Webber, Ben Elton)
The Civil War: Based on the American Civil War. (Frank Wildhorn, Kim Scharnberg)
Oh, What a Lovely War!: A satirical look at the First World War. The songs work to ‘send
up’ military decisions that sent thousands to their deaths. (Joan Littlewood)
41
42
One of the challenges of rehearsing a musical is that there are so many different disciplines
that need to be learnt and practiced, dance numbers, songs and harmony, scene work, and
transitions. Therefore rehearsals follow a well-structured plan to make sure everything is
covered evenly. Assistant Director, Jonathan, says it is a bit like ‘putting together a jigsaw’.
Coordination of all of these elements means that the process must be very technical, even
down to how the rehearsal room is laid out.
1. The Rehearsal Room Floor
Mark Up
The rehearsal space is prepared by stage management before rehearsals begin. Similarly to
how a room is set up when rehearsing a play, stage management map out the outline of the
set design and stage space on the floor with coloured electrical tape (LX tape). This means
that everyone can see how big the playing space is and where things are, such as exits and
entrances. When a cast moves into the theatre for the technical and dress rehearsals, it can
be quite disorientating for the actors. There are a lot of new things to take on board all at
once, costume, set, lights, and sound. So it is important to limit as many of these surprises
as possible, and the floor markings are an important part of helping with this transition
between rehearsal room and theatre. (See the photo on page 44 for an image of the floor)
When the some of the original US cast came to London to begin rehearsals with the UK
cast, they were surprised by how small the playing space felt in the rehearsal room. They
had been used to a large stage in Los Angeles with an audience of four thousand seats!
Because of the rehearsal room floor markings, the US cast could immediately see how much
closer to the audience they would be, than they were used to in America. They quickly
understood that particular moves and sequences needed to adapt to the smaller playing area
of the Young Vic stage. Had the floor markings not been there, the US cast would have only
discovered this in the theatre at technical rehearsals and would have caused chaos at such a
late stage in the process.
10, 8, 6, 4, 2, 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10
Particular to a musical rehearsal room, the stage management team also label the front of
the stage with numbers. They start with zero in stage centre, and then every foot towards
stage right and left, they mark in increasing multiples of 2, i.e. 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, and so on.
These numbers are there are for the performers to orientate themselves during the musical
numbers. The numbers give a visual
mark so they can see at a quick
glance where they need to be.
Symmetry is very important in this
kind of ensemble work, because if
one person is slightly out, it pulls
attention and ruins the stage picture.
In some rehearsal rooms the
numbers may be replaced by lights,
but they are used for the same
purpose.
Numbered gridlines in the rehearsal room
43
Spikes and Transitions
In the early days of first creating The
Scottsboro Boys, Susan Stroman (Director
and Choreographer) and Eric Santagata
(Assistant Choreographer) spent a week in a
rehearsal room, just the two of them, with
lots of chairs, just working out the routes of
the chairs in the scene transitions.
In rehearsals, to help map the transitions
between scenes, the stage management
marked coloured ‘spikes’ on the rehearsal
room floor. These were so that the
performers could see where they needed to
place their chair to be ready for the next
scene. One of Jonathan’s (Assistant Director)
A spike in the rehearsal room
responsibilities during rehearsals was to call
out the colour of the spike for the next scene, so the performers knew where they were
heading for in the transition: ‘So I would say ‘this scene is blue, this scene is pink and green
.... I have to make sure I know what everyone is doing, and where they are.’ This was really
important because some of these transitions happen in less than twenty seconds, so there is
no time for uncertainty. In this production they used twenty-seven different colours –
Jonathan said to me it looked a like a tube map!
The rehearsal room. Photos courtesy of the stage management team.
44
2. A day in the life of rehearsals – the ‘jigsaw’ of rehearsing
choreography, voice, scene work, transitions
The day before any rehearsal, stage management release a ‘rehearsal call’ which is sent to
all creatives and cast members, so that everybody knows who is required and what will be
worked on. A typical day in The Scottsboro Boys rehearsal schedule would look something
like this:
10:00am
Rehearsal begins
10:00 -10:15am
Warm Up – Vocal or Physical
10:15 – 11:45am
1.5 hours vocal session, which includes learning songs and
harmony*
11:45 – 12:00pm
Break
12:00 – 13:30
1.5 hours movement session on choreography and dance numbers*
13:30 – 14:30
Lunch
14:30 – 18:00
Scene work and transitions: The Company work chronologically
through the show. Scenes and transitions are rehearsed separately.
Once learnt separately, the cast practice running scenes and
transitions together. Finally the vocals (songs) are added in.
* The morning would begin with the vocal session followed by a movement session, or vice
versa.
The warm up may only be fifteen minutes but it is an important way to start the day,
particularly on a musical. Whether the morning contains 1.5 hours of vocal or physical will
indicate whether they do a vocal or physical warm up. Jonathan said that the warm up is
‘about the cast getting into the right head space… that they are together as a company and
ready to work. Because they are quite a young company, they have a fantastic energy and
generosity, but the subject matter is quite focused, so it’s good for them to come together,
as a team, and know that what they have got to achieve is quite tricky.’
Rehearsing a musical is quite different from the process of rehearsing a play. Whereas in
play rehearsals, the director is likely to allow a lot of time in the first few weeks to
discovery and experimentation, when rehearsing a musical, it is much more about the
learning and repetition of musical numbers and songs, and this will take up a large
proportion of the rehearsal time. Because the performers are dancers and singers, as well as
actors, they are used to learning by muscle memory.7 Practicing the numbers over and over
again in the correct positions is a big part of the process.
7
Muscle memory: involves consolidating a specific task into memory through physical repetition
45
3. The Scottsboro Boys ‘bible’ – the touring document that is 3-4 inches
thick!
Susan Stroman’s process is very precise. With the exception of the scenes, every single
move, action, and bit of dialogue, is timed to music.
Stroman is one of the world’s leading musical theatre directors and choreographers, and has
an extremely busy work schedule. She will often be developing new shows whilst other shows
are remounted for touring. When The Scottsboro Boys was originally conceived at the
Vineyard Theatre in New York, before moving to Broadway, every single move that
everybody did in the show was noted down in a large document called the ‘bible’. This was
produced by the original assistant director and choreographer, Eric Santaganta, and is an
accurate log of exactly what happens. Then when the associates and assistants come back to
remount the show, maybe a year later, they watch videos of the original performances, with
the bible in front of them, and from there, they are able to rebuild the show, without having
to ask Stroman to come and work it out with them.
For copyright reasons, only very few people are allowed access to the bible. There are only
three copies; Susan Stroman has one in her office in America, which stays there
permanently, and the associate director has one, and the assistant choreographer has one.
The bible is the document that the team used here in London to recreate The Scottsboro
Boys, led by Associate Director, Nigel West and Assistant Choreographer, Eric Santaganta.
Assistant Director, Jonathan, who saw the bible whilst in rehearsals, told me it is about four
inches thick, and at first, it is like looking at another language. ‘Each page has every single
note of music written down as a dot, and underneath it, what every single person is doing,
where they are, where they have come from, what they are wearing… Susan Stroman is
really specific and when you watch what’s happening … every single move is thought about,
nothing is free.’
An example of Jonathan O’Boyle’s personal ‘Bible’
46
4. The challenges of this musical
‘It’s a true event - this is really about the horror through which people were put because of
something they did not do.’ Alex Constantin, Company Stage Manager
Probably the greatest challenge of this musical is that the story being told is true, and that
it is such a terrible story of great injustices and obscene prejudice. In the making of the
show, and in its remounting, these difficult issues and subject matters can affect the
performers and creatives. Alex told me how in rehearsal they may be working on one of the
musical numbers; ‘… we’ll be laughing and dancing, and the next minute we are talking
about something … and you’re just in tears… it is such a powerful piece in that respect …
me and the Assistant Musical Director the other day had to walk out of rehearsals because
we were just crying.’ A lot of care, therefore, is taken to be sensitive to those working on the
show, and to show respect to those who lived through the true events.
When Alex travelled to America with the UK cast, she told me that on the first day John
Kander, Susan Stroman and David Thompson talked to the UK company about their
American history and the context of this true story. One of their main concerns for bringing
the show to the UK, was how the British would associate with their American history. So, in
the first few days of the trip, the three creatives spent a lot of time talking with the UK cast
about the production’s historical context and discussing sensitive issues that the show
confronts.
As described earlier, a particularly difficult moment is the finale, where the performers
wear ‘blackface’ minstrel makeup. When the show was originally rehearsed, and during this
remount process, the company dealt very sensitively with the actors as they tackled the
scene for the first time. Stage management created a ‘closed rehearsal room’, where the
actors could work in private, and only people directly involved in the scene were allowed
into the room. The actors, with the support of the director, worked for an hour, learning how
to put the makeup on and take it off. Because of the degradation associated with the
makeup historically, this was quite a distressing process for the actors, as they got used to
applying the makeup. The closed rehearsal room gave the actors a protected space to deal
with any unsettling or uncomfortable feelings. During this time, the actors were excellent at
supporting each other, and I imagine that their passion for telling this story would have
really helped them at this stage of the process.
Because this show is so precise and technically complex, each show demands a lot, both
physically and mentally, from the performers, stage management team and crew. For stage
management and crew, everything they do backstage is crucially important. On a play, if
something goes wrong backstage the actors will ‘act’ their way out of it, they can improvise
on stage to solve the problem, and sometimes an audience never knows something’s gone
wrong. But with a musical, particularly this one because everything is so precise, stage
management are very much part of the choreography. Backstage, everything stage
management does must be timed and co-ordinated. If a stage manager forgets to set a prop,
it can have serious implications. For the performers, of course, probably one of their
biggest challenges is what they put their bodies through; ‘…their bodies are the machines…
the show asks them to completely deconstruct themselves of their race, their character, who
they are… and additionally they are being asked to perform numbers, whilst singing, and …
they are being asked to do this eight times a week.’ Alex Constantin, Company Stage
Manager
47
Part 4: From Broadway to London –
The Transfer
The Scottsboro Boys in New York with Susan Stroman, Paul Kolnik, 2013
48
Part 4: From Broadway to London – The Transfer
1. Create versus Recreate
‘If this was a new show, we could reinvent how we might do something to make it easier and
faster. But we are working with people who have been doing this for eight years… Even if
we find a different way of doing it, it might not actually be relevant, because they might
have already tried it.’ Alex Constantin, Company Stage Manager
Remounting a show that has been performed before is a very unique process and very
different to making a new show. For the new UK cast members they had to learn how to
perform and tell this story, but they were not finding it for themselves. Instead, they have
had to recreate an already existing performance, but equally they need to find a way of
making it theirs, so that in performance it looks completely natural to them. This is a very
particular skill, but it is one that musical performers are very used to, because musicals will
often run for a long time, or be remounted, and new performers tend to get recast into
productions all the time. In rehearsal the performers will be told where they need to stand,
or what they need to do, and they will accept the direction, and then find a reason
themselves for why they are doing something. This is very different to working on a new
show, where the actor will question motivations in a scene, in order that they understand
why their character is doing something, and therefore be able to give a more truthful
performance as a result.
‘…an actor may ask ‘why’, but the nature of this is that they can’t, and they understand that
they can’t. It’s a different sort of vehicle. But … they do have to find their own energy, a
creative energy … otherwise there is no point doing it.’ Jonathan O’Boyle, Assistant
Director
49
Because the subject matter of this particular show is very sensitive and can be hard hitting
in rehearsals, it is very important that as a company the performers are very open and
accepting of what the process is. Patience is key, as is being able to support each other.
Company Stage Manager, Alex Constantin puts a lot of energy into making sure the whole
company feel connected to each other creatively, and creates a place where experienced
industry actors can impart their knowledge to younger actors recently out of college.
As can be seen in the interviews with Alex Constantin and Catherine Kodicek (See Part 5:
Meet the Company), one of the biggest challenges of a remount is recreating something that
is pre-existing. Every single prop and piece of costume needs to be exactly replicated, and
facilitated within a budget.
‘… it’s like making a carbon copy whilst re-making it here.... Normally you try and adapt
things to make them work, and now we are just trying to adapt ourselves to make it work.
… They have done all the work beforehand and so all we need to do is work to make sure
that is happening here. It’s fun, it’s really fun.’ Alex Constantin, Company Stage Manager
One of the biggest challenges for a Director, Associate Director or Assistant Director on a
remount is that they have to be thoroughly prepared. It is of course important to prepare for
any process, but when you are remounting a production, there is very little time for
discovery. Because the performers know that the production has been on before, when they
ask a question, about a scene, character, or backstory, the performers expect the directors
to know the answer. If you are a new director on a show, then you need to know the material
very well, in order that you are prepared and ready for any questions as they arise. It is a
very different vehicle to directing a new show.
Swing and Dance Captain Jordan Shaw
50
2. The role of the ‘Associate’ and ‘Assistant’
On a touring musical, the creative team in the rehearsal room is a little different to a new
show. In the Young Vic rehearsals room for The Scottsboro Boys there were the following
people in the room:
Associate Director – Nigel West
Assistant Choreographer - Eric Santagata
Musical Director - Robert Scott
Assistant Director – Jonathan O’Boyle
Stage Management Team
In Week 4 Director and Choreographer Susan Stroman joined.
When the show was originally conceived, Director and Choreographer, Susan Stroman led
rehearsals. Once a musical show starts its tour, the production company employs ‘Associates’
and ‘Assistants’, for example an Associate Director, Associate Designer, and Assistant
Choreographer. This allows Stroman to be free to create and rehearse new shows whilst
other shows tour nationally and internationally. It is important that the show an audience
sees on tour is to the exact same standard as when it was originally produced, even if it has
been running for several years. The job of the Associates and Assistants is to manage the
production whilst it tours - they are responsible for rehearsing and remounting the show.
Nigel West is the Associate Director for the Young Vic’s run of The Scottsboro Boys. Nigel
knows the show well because he was the Associate Director for the recent run in Los
Angeles, and he is familiar with working with Stroman, having worked with her as Associate
Director on Crazy for You and The Producers.
In week four of rehearsals Stroman travelled from America to rehearsals in London to work
with the new company for four days. She worked systematically through the show,
correcting any bits that weren’t quite right, and refining and tweaking the show ready for
performance. (See Jonathan O’Boyle’s diary entry for week four of rehearsals and Susan
Stroman’s visit, Part 3.4).
51
3. An original and new cast
For the Young Vic run of The Scottsboro Boys there are five original cast members from the
US, and twelve new cast members from the UK. To transfer the show from the US to the
UK, and assimilate new and original cast members requires a highly structured schedule.
Creatives and cast members are introduced to the process at different times. To ensure that
milestones are kept to, every single element of the process is planned in detail.
A Trip to America . . .
For the twelve new UK cast members, the process began with trip to America in August this
year, where they had the fantastic opportunity to meet and work with Susan Stroman, John
Kander and David Thompson for five days. Because Stroman was only able to be in London
for four days of the rehearsal process at the Young Vic, it was important that the new cast
members had an opportunity to connect with Stroman, to understand why the show was
made and learn more about the historical context of the show.
‘The reason we went out to the US was because our cultures are so separate and so
different. If you look at anywhere you go now, and you see Starbucks, Nero’s, Pret A
Manger, they’re everywhere, but the way people interact with each other in the UK and US
is so different. This is a story about American history, and I think it would be really
interesting to see how it happens here, because although our history is different, maybe
some of our approaches to life aren’t…’ Alex Constantin, Company Stage Manager
Stroman was rehearsing Big Fish the same week the UK company were visiting, and so The
Scottsboro Boys would be rehearsed from 2pm to 10pm. Stroman would rehearse Big Fish
from 10am in the morning, and then join The Scottsboro Boys rehearsals in the evenings,
making for a very long working day!
The five days were structured as follows:
2:00 – 6:00pm
Choreography and basic blocking of the main numbers and scenes,
with the US and UK cast, Nigel West, Eric Santagata and Alex
Constantin
6:30 – 10:00pm
Susan Stroman joined to work on scenes and talk actors about why
the show was made
London Rehearsals
In London, the new UK cast began work a week and a half earlier than the original US cast
members. This was to give them a head start, so that they had time to learn as many of the
musical numbers and routines as possible. During these initial eight days the UK cast
worked on all the vocals and choreography in the show. The original US cast members
joined half way through week two, and because they had done the show many times before,
they were able to get back into it quite quickly.
During the first morning of the UK and US cast rehearsing together, the whole cast sung
together the musical numbers from start to finish through the show. In the afternoon they
then went back to the top of the show, and worked through physically and vocally, bit by bit.
52
Because a lot of the US members were in most of the scenes, very little work had been done
on them in the first eight days. When the cast arrived at a scene, they would pause and
rehearse each scene in much the same way as you would a play. They talked through the
scene, and discussed where each character had just come from. Everybody had to work to a
very tight schedule, and they did not have a great deal of discovery time on each section,
perhaps only half an hour, before they were on their feet and moving the scene.
Having the US cast members join was an important step forward in the process. They
brought a whole new energy into the room and invaluable insights from earlier production
runs in America. One of the US actors had even been a part of the show at the very
beginning, when the musical was first conceived and workshopped. That kind of knowledge
was invaluable to the new people working on the show. The original cast members were able
to support and inspire new members with their passion for the story. Some of them even
brought actual images and pictures that had been on the walls of the rehearsal room for the
first ever rehearsals of the show in the US years before.
When rehearsing a musical, there are two levels of performance that need to be achieved,
the intimacy of scenes, and the spectacle of the musical numbers. In her interview, Alex
Constantin (Company Stage Manager) makes the point that with this musical in particular,
the scenes have to land in order for the songs to work, and that the songs need to work so
that the scenes land. Both aspects of the show are vitally important for the show to happen
as a whole. Once the US cast joined, it became an even more industrious rehearsal process,
with often two sets of rehearsals running at the same time. Scene work would be happening
in the main rehearsal room, whilst vocals and musical dance numbers were practiced in a
separate room. By week 3 the full company had come together and began running the show
from start to finish.
The next section is an excerpt from Jonathan O’Boyle’s rehearsal room diary which gives
insight to perhaps one of the most exiting stages in the process, Susan Stroman’s visit to the
London rehearsal.
Coleman Domigo in rehearsal, London 2013
53
4. Rehearsals – Susan Stroman Arrives
Jonathan O’Boyle’s Rehearsal Room Diary for The Scottsboro Boys – Week 4
Week four of the rehearsals for The Scottsboro Boys has been the busiest yet. We’ve had the
American cast for just over a week and a half and we are already in a position to run the
show. The British cast and the American cast have blended really well and each has upped
their game to get the show in excellent shape for the week ahead.
We began the week with vocal and physical warm-ups. This helps the cast focus for the
rehearsal day and particularly helps focus their minds – the show is almost two hours with
no interval so the level of concentration needed is extraordinary. This idea of the warm up is
not unusual. We have started each day this way and it has really helped with company focus
and moral.
Each morning throughout the week we looked at different areas of the show that needed
extra time to work on and areas which needed polishing. This included cleaning dance
routines and working on vocal sections of the show. It also included working on specific
areas of the text and scene work. As we have only had the full company together for a week
and a half, there is still quite a bit of work to do on the acting areas of the piece. The
musical numbers have been worked on extensively, especially as the American members of
the company have been in the show on Broadway – but some areas of text and scenes
needed completely reworking as the dynamics of the company have obviously changed here
at the Young Vic. This however is all positive, as the work being produced is alive and fresh.
On Monday afternoon we put the entire
show on its feet for the first time. Running
a show is always scary as you often find
areas of the piece that are under rehearsed
or, in extreme cases, areas that have yet to
be looked over at all! Luckily, we had no
such problem. The show fitted together
really well and for the beginning of week
four, was in excellent shape. I find this
part of the rehearsal process the most
exciting. You can begin to see the show in
its entirety. It’s also a huge step forward
for the actors as they can finally start to
see what their complete journey is through
the show – for some this can be
overwhelming as the show has no interval
and the level of stamina and concentration
needed to sustain the whole two hours is
huge.
After each run we would have a notes
session where the director and myself
would hand out cards to individual actors
Susan Stroman, Photo by Paul Kolnik
54
with their individual notes written on them. This is a new way of handing out notes for me. I
am used to verbal notes sessions – but what this method facilitates is the actors being able
to take the note away with them and work on the section of the show in their own time
before the next rehearsal.
The morning after each run we would have a working notes session. This entailed working on
any specific areas of the show that were highlighted in the run that needed extra rehearsal
or clarification before we had did another run in the afternoon. With each day came a more
polished and more rounded run-through. The actors were discovering smoother ways through
their journeys and character transitions, stage management were perfecting their props
tables and the music department was perfecting the band’s relationship with the company.
All in all, we were heading in the right direction!
This week was also a very special week for the team. Our Director, Susan Stroman – who
has until now been in New York directing Big Fish on Broadway – joined us for the latter
half of the week and the beginning of our technical rehearsal period. Until now we have
been in the capable hands of Susan’s Associate Director Nigel West. This for me has been
the most intense, inspiring and exciting four days of the rehearsal process, and intense in an
excellent way. Susan, lovingly nicknamed ‘Stro’, has the most amazing gravitas and
presence of any director I have every worked with. With grace and intelligence, she worked
through the show and ‘tweaked’ every element that wasn’t quite right. She gave a wonderful
speech (with David ‘Tommy’ Thompson, the book writer) about the show’s conception and
their relationship with the composers Kander and Ebb. They also spoke extensively about the
real ‘Scottsboro Boys’ and how their story is as relevant today as it was when the show was
originally written. Stro then worked on cleaning certain dance numbers which needed that
extra lift to make them go from being excellent to outstanding – something I think only she
could have done. We ended the week with an excellent run.
The presence of Stro in the room has lifted the entire production and the entire team. She
galvanized the company and the piece. For want of a better phrase, she sprinkled us with
her magic dust that only she could. This show, after all, is a project she cares about and a
project she has worked on for many years – she knows the piece inside out. It was an honour
to observe her work.
We head into tech on Friday, where we start to see the show take on the new life of being in
the theatre. I can’t wait!
55
Forrest McClendon, Kyle Scatliffe , Colman Domingo , Adebayo Bolaji
56
1. Susan Stroman, Director
This interview first appeared in Words on Plays, the performance guide series of San
Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.). Dan Rubin is the editor of Words on
Plays and A.C.T.’s publications manager.
The Moving Subtext of an American Tragedy
An Interview with Director/Choreographer Susan Stroman
By Dan Rubin
Five-time Tony Award winner Susan Stroman believes the success of any musical comes
from great collaboration, and the team she has collaborated with most frequently is
Kander and Ebb. Her first big break in New York came when she choreographed the
1987 off-Broadway revival of Kander and Ebb’s Flora, the Red Menace. She reunited
with them in 1991 for the off-Broadway revue And the World Goes ’Round (which she
also co-conceived) and again in 1997 for the Broadway musical Steel Pier. Not only did
they become great collaborators, but they also became great friends. As she explains:
“To have that kind of freedom and joy with close collaborators is rare in this business.”
In 2002, Stroman, Kander, Ebb, and book writer David Thompson began collaborating
on The Scottsboro Boys by seeking out an American story. The project was put on hold
after Ebb’s death in 2004, but the remaining three began working on the project again in
2008 and produced it at New York’s Vineyard Theatre in early 2010. Later that year the
show moved to Broadway, where it was nominated for 12 Tony Awards. After the first
leg of A.C.T.’s 2012 coproduction of The Scottsboro Boys with The Old Globe opened to
rave reviews in San Diego, Stroman was kind enough to speak with us by phone about
creating the musical and why it is essential that the story of the Scottsboro Boys is never
forgotten.
How did the process of creating The Scottsboro Boys begin?
It started around Fred Ebb’s kitchen table—a very famous kitchen table because it’s
where Chicago was written and Cabaret was written and the song “New York, New
York.” That kitchen table should be in the Smithsonian.
We had done an off-Broadway production of Flora, the Red Menace, where we met, and
we then went on to do a retrospective of Kander and Ebb’s work called And the World
Goes ’Round, and then we did the Broadway show Steel Pier, so we love working with
each other. It’s interesting how musicals come to be: sometimes someone will hand you
a script to turn into a musical, sometimes people will hand you a novel to turn into a
musical, sometimes you’ll have a vision of a girl in a yellow dress and you make that into
a musical. Scottsboro came about because we loved collaborating together. The slate
was open to do whatever we wanted, so long as we did it together.
We started talking about doing something true. Real. Something based on a piece of
57
history. Usually when you are doing a musical (at least for me) you are in a more
fantastical situation—make-believe. We thought, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful to do
something that was based on a true story?” So we decided to start by looking at the ten
greatest trials in American history.
Not necessarily trials associated with African American history?
No, but of course the Scottsboro Boys is one of the most famous groups of trials in our
collective history. It immediately jumped out at us. It was about nine innocent boys who
were accused of a horrific crime. It was about a dark time in our history, when so many
things happened to spawn the beginning of the civil rights movement. The case was
about the North against the South, black against white, Communists, the NAACP. It was
filled with big characters, like Samuel Leibowitz, a New York lawyer some considered to
be the next Clarence Darrow. He went down to Scottsboro and thought he could get
these boys out right away, because it was clear from the evidence that they didn’t do it.
When he got down there, the prejudice that he found against a northern, Jewish lawyer
was as great as the prejudice against the nine African American boys.
As we delved more into the research, everything about it struck us: they were locked up
together and called the Scottsboro Boys as if they were a theatrical troupe. People knew
the names of all the lawyers, all the judges, the names of all the men on the jury, but they
never knew the names of the boys. They were always lumped together as the Scottsboro
Boys.
Kander and Ebb are known for writing for the underdog, writing songs like “Maybe This
Time.” They are known for writing about ordinary people in extraordinary situations,
like Nazi Germany or a Latin prison, so they were attracted to this story right away,
because it is about how one lie destroyed the lives of nine young men.
How do you balance accuracy and theatricality when adapting history into a
musical?
What was most important to us was making the boys individuals. We didn’t want it to be
an after-school special or a documentary, and the minute you decide to make something
theatrical, you give yourself license not to be linear.
So we focused on the individuals as real people. One of the boys, Haywood Patterson,
learned how to write while he was in jail. Eventually he wrote a book called Scottsboro
Boy, and we based a lot on his story. He is the character who comes out as the leader of
the nine. He was always put in the front, because he was said to have looked the
meanest and the strongest, and he was the most trouble.
In the end the show is about the phrase, “I matter.” You can lump these people together,
but when you pull one character out, it’s a whole different story. “I matter” is a huge part
of it because we remember each of them at the end of the show. A lot of people don’t
remember this part of history, and it is still relevant today.
Kander and Ebb were both young boys in the 1930s. Did they bring any of their
own memories into the creative process?
John Kander remembers it very well. He remembers being a little boy in Kansas City and
reading about the Scottsboro Boys in the paper every week. And then, all of a sudden,
they were gone. No one was talking about them anymore. He remembers that moment:
one minute they were very popular, and then they disappeared.
58
When was the decision made to incorporate the structure of a minstrel show into
The Scottsboro Boys?
In doing the research, we came across journalists who, several times, referred to the
trials as a minstrel show— saying the boys were paraded around as if they were in a
minstrel show. Kander and Ebb used a cabaret device for the show Cabaret and a
vaudeville device for the show Chicago. So they thought that minstrel would be a great
way to bring music into the Scottsboro story. Fred always used to say, “If we don’t make
it entertaining, nobody will listen.”
That device, which is thought of as racist, actually helped us, because we decided to take
the form and turn it on its head. Usually minstrel was white people portraying blacks in
a disrespectful way, but we asked ourselves, “What if it were a group of African
Americans playing white people?” It allows these nine actors to portray two white
women, white guards, white sheriffs, white judges: it allows them to play parts that they
would not otherwise be able to play. Also, the way the show is structured . . . It is typical
for a minstrel show to have a semicircle of chairs, and as our show unfolds, the actors
take those chairs and they tell the story with them: they make them into a train, they
make them into a holding room, they make them into a cell. So the actors become in
charge of the structure: they build the set. And at the very end, they deconstruct the
minstrel form and they walk away from it. The very last thing the audience sees is a
semicircle of chairs completely tipped over.
Were you nervous about working with a form that is taboo?
It was the perfect way for the actors to tell this story. In the minstrel format, there was
always a story told (it was a silly story—a farmer’s wife and a traveling salesman, or
something), and here we are telling the story of the Scottsboro Boys. Flipped on its head,
using the device in a way to show the tragedy of it all, we thought it was a good idea.
When people see the show, they understand it and they’re with us. Admittedly, when
they hear this out of context, it doesn’t sound like a swell idea. I read about the protests
of the Broadway production, and about how some of those protesters traveled to see the
Philadelphia production and, afterwards, came backstage and apologized for protesting.
They did. The actors were overwhelmed by that. When that happened on Broadway,
because the protesters refused to see the show (we offered them tickets, of course), it
was hard to have a conversation about it—there was no way to engage them.
The Scottsboro Boys really does make people think, and when audiences leave they have
a conversation about it—unlike some musicals, after which you go to dinner and don’t
discuss it. When you leave The Scottsboro Boys, it inspires a conversation about your
own thoughts and opinions about race, your own family, your own history. When you
inspire that, as creators of theater, you feel like you’ve accomplished a great deal.
What was the first Scottsboro Boys rehearsal room like?
It was wonderful. We got together for the first reading the day after Obama was elected
president, and we were wondering if the idea of race would change in America. It was
exciting. The actors saw this piece and the way we were using the minstrel form as a
great challenge. Never once was there any consternation about race in the room. I was
waiting to see if anyone would be uncomfortable, but it never happened. If anything, the
cast rallied together and invested in telling that story. Because of the device, they
became storytellers. Of all the shows I’ve ever done, I’ve never been with a group of
actors who invested so much in telling a story.
59
Do you think that, in part, that passion stems from the fact that this story has been
forgotten?
I’m sure, because it’s been erased from history. It’s not taught. Most people aren’t aware
of how the Scottsboro Boys helped redefine the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of
equal protection under the law for all Americans and ensured that no race or ethnic
group could be excluded from serving on a jury. Rosa Parks’s husband marched for the
Scottsboro Boys, and she writes about them, and you want to believe that when she
made that courageous decision on the bus, that her knowledge of the Scottsboro Boys
was a part of what made her say, “No, I’m not going to move this time.”
How was it different for you to choreograph for a real story as opposed to a
fantastical world?
Because I am a choreographer for the theater, I have to adhere to a decade and a geographical area for every show. So for Scottsboro Boys, I’m in the ’20s and ’30s. My
choreography is interspersed with real steps that are indicative of that time period—as
well as elements that were very popular at that time, like the shadow play. The shadow
play was especially popular in the ’20s, and we have a song “Make Friends with the
Truth” during which the guys put up a sheet and do a little shadow play behind it. It’s
something you would often find in minstrel shows or in vaudeville.
Scottsboro actor James T. Lane has said that when you are choreographing, you
give not only the steps but the history of the steps. Why is it important that
dancers understand where the steps come from?
When you dance, it has to be motivated, and the more information you can give on a
dance step, the greater it will become because it will become rich—it will be danced
with subtext. For example, we do the cakewalk, which really came from the levee down
south, where African Americans would mock the white master. They would hold their
hand high and have their chest erect and lift up their knees in mocking the upper class.
But it became so popular that it became a dance step.
Your first collaboration with Kander and Ebb was on a revival of Flora, the Red
Menace, but one of your early jobs was dancing in Chicago.
Yes, I did the national tour with Gwen [Verdon] and Chita [Rivera] and Jerry Orbach. I
had known Kander and Ebb from afar, and Scott Ellis had done [Kander and Ebb’s] The
Rink, and one day we were both lamenting how we would love to do what we came to
New York to do, which was to create theater. And Scott said, “Let’s ask Kander and Ebb if
we can work on Flora, the Red Menace. The worst thing that could happen is they will
say, ‘No.’”
I think that’s good advice for young people today: the worst thing that can happen is
they can say, “No,” but you should go ask the question. So we asked them, and they said,
“Yes.” So we took it down to the Vineyard Theatre and had a wonderful production. It
had a little bit of a cult following, and, in fact, it launched our careers to the other side of
the table. And we became very good friends with Kander and Ebb.
You’ve worked with them on a number of shows, and with Scottsboro’s book
writer, David Thompson.
Yes, we’re all very close. In fact, David and Kander and I are meeting to start something
new.
60
Will you start again by sitting around the table and asking, “What are we going to
do this time?”
Yeah. Same thing. That’s the best way!
Will you look for a true story again?
We’re talking about it. We just started getting together again. We’ve come close to
choosing something, but not yet to speak about.
What were the disadvantages of starting with historical material in creating a
musical?
I don’t think there were any. We always had research to fall back on. It was very
fulfilling. The whole thing. For all of us, of all the shows we’ve ever done, this is the show
that is most dear to us.
How did Ebb’s death in 2004 influence The Scottsboro Boys?
When Fred died, it was put on the shelf. I didn’t know that we would go back to it. Then
about three years ago, Kander said, “Let’s look at this again.” And I said, “Of course,” and
we realized how much had already been done. Kander finished the rest of the lyrics and
the music, what needed to be done. We thought, “What would Freddy do here? What
would Freddy say?” Kander said he would channel Freddy when he was at the piano. So
he was always with us. We would talk about him at every rehearsal and reading. We
miss him. He would be so pleased: we were always chasing him, because he was so
excited about The Scottsboro Boys.
61
2. Jonathan O’Boyle, Assistant Director
An extract from Laura Farnworth’s meetings
with Jonathan…
Who is in the rehearsal room at the moment?
Me (Assistant Director), Nigel West, who is the
Associate Director, who has directed it most
recently in LA a few months ago and he has
worked with Susan Stroman the director before
on Crazy For You in the West End and on The
Producers, so they’ve got a good relationship.
And I think she uses him as her Associate for
things that are in Europe and Britain. She’s got
an Associate who is working with her now on
Big Fish on Broadway, that’s why she is not
here, because she is directing a different show
on Broadway. She is with us for three days and
that’s it.
Do you know what will happen in those three
days?
They will be the last three days so we will be
doing runs, and I imagine that, what I think will
happen is that she’ll probably tweak, she will
mould what has been set, if it’s not exactly what
she wants, she will tweak it and adjust. There’s
also been a week in America already, where the
British cast flew to America for a week to work
with Stroman on scenes.
Can you tell us about the trip to America?
The British cast all went and met with the Americans, they did lots of background work on
where the show came from and its history. They spent time on a few numbers, just so they
could get in the head space of the way Stroman works, because she is very specific. Every
single move or action or bit of dialogue is timed to music - when you watch what’s
happening, even the small bits that we are doing at the moment, every single move is
thought about, nothing is free. It’s good that the cast went to New York to spend time with
her and to understand where she comes from, her process.
To me it isn’t the same creative process that you might normally have. The cast are learning
and shaping a story, but they are not finding things for themselves. They have to find how to
recreate things, and that is actually quite a difficult skill for a performer. It is about
repetition, because they are dancers and they are performers and singers, they learn by
muscle memory. If they are told to stand somewhere, they accept it, and they find a reason
for it - whereas I know that an actor may ask ‘why’, the nature of this is that they can’t, and
they understand that they can’t. It’s a different sort of vehicle. Having said that, they do
62
have to find their own energy, and creative energy to get through otherwise there is no point
doing it.
What is the challenge for an assistant director when doing a remount of a musical?
Preparation, as always, but even more so because you are not given any time in rehearsal to
‘discover’. You have to be on it so you know exactly what is going on, what the scene is,
where the people are, what are the people talking about - because obviously questions come
up, for example ‘what’s the backstory to this?’ Or; ‘who is this character?’, and the
performers expect you to know.
What’s your role during rehearsals?
At the minute, because I have been through the transitions with the associate director, I help
facilitate the transitions of the chairs. So I will say for example; ‘Olen, you are moving chair
1 and 2 to these marks on the floor.’ There are twenty-seven different sets of colours, it
looks like a tube map! So I will say ‘this scene is blue, this scene is pink and green’.
I am also reading in for people. Because I have to maintain the show when we open, and
rehearse four understudies, I have to make sure I know what everyone is doing, and where
they are. Even though the ‘bible’ exists, that document to me at the moment is a bit like a
foreign language, because I don’t know the show as well as the person who wrote it, so I
have my own way of noting where people are, so I am working my way through it as we go,
and making my own notes.
When will you start working with the understudies?
It began today! There are two swings, who learn everybody. Some of the smaller parts have
learnt the big parts, as normal, so we have started to teach those. Because it is a dance
piece we have to be ready to go on first preview in case someone breaks a leg, which is
tricky because at the moment everyone is in everything - so we have to try and grab half an
hour. One of the swings is the dance captain, so he will be monitoring the choreography once
the choreographer leaves.
We will start full time rehearsals for understudies after the first preview. So in the
afternoons, we will be rehearsing understudies. That will continue probably once we have
opened after press night and will probably take about three or four weeks, and then we will
do a couple of runs before we close. Me and the associate director will be doing this
together, which is great because it’s a big jump for me, with only two understudies.
Can you tell me a little about the style of this show?
Kander and Ebb are very clever. They wrote Cabaret, and when it was originally produced it
was set in a cabaret, so the style of the piece facilitated the style of the performance. With
Chicago, it’s about vaudeville, so again, it is set within a Vaudeville world. This show is
about injustice and the black community, so the director, with Kander and Ebb, said why
don’t we invert the minstrel show. So they perform as minstrels, which is why there is the
semi-circle of chairs with an Interlocutor chair, because that is the format of every minstrel
show ever made. And that sort of unlocked everything, they went this is amazing we, we can
have the performers in the town, where ever it may be, playing the Scottsboro Boys, so
there is a sort of detachment from the actor/performer.
For me, as someone new to the process, it’s quite brilliant because it allows an audience to
observe and have an opinion without it being real, even though it is real story, there’s that
sense of detachment, which is fantastic, because if it was a real, I think it would be
63
horrendous, it would be impossible to watch. So they have just taken that one step away
from it - so we can access it.
It sounds quite Brechtian in style?
Yes it is. And there are placards. It is quite presentational. There are two characters called
Tambo and Bones, who are the classic bookends of the minstrel show, they play all the
different characters. And the Interlocutor, who is the only white character, he runs the
troupe. And then towards the end, they put on ‘blackface’, which when I first read the script,
I didn’t understand what was going on. Why are black actors doing that? And I sat there for
a long time and then I thought, oh my God, they are inverting it, because they take it off.
They are playing white people, putting on black make up, but they are black actors putting
black make up on… and then the Interlocutor goes ‘”come on! It’s a happy ending”. But it’s
not because they all died - one shot himself, one drank himself to death. It is a tragic story,
and they were only exonerated two months ago. So it is not a happy ending. They stand there
and wipe the makeup off in front of him, after singing this amazing song about the
Scottsboro Boys, and it sort of inverts the format - which is the opposite of racist, which is
brilliant, it’s a brilliant style, very clever.
This is a musical dealing with a very tragic true story. How do the cast and company seem
to deal with that?
I know that they are aware of what the end is. Originally it was done as a closed rehearsal,
meaning only creatives who are directly involved are in the room. They have an hour in a
rehearsal where they learn how to put the makeup on, and take it off. In America that was
very traumatic, it took people a long time to get over that. I don’t know how it will happen
here. That will happen in week four. I think they are sensitive to each other and they support
each other. Particularly the older actors, they are quite passionate about this story being
told, which is great, that is the point of it.
And what do you think is particularly brilliant about telling this story in the form of a
musical rather than a play?
I think a musical gives it one step away from reality, and then you go home and think, ‘oh,
that’s actually real! ...these kids were in jail for thirty years!’ There is one song in it about
the electric chair which is a tap dance, and they are tapping around the electric chair, so in
one sense it is actually quite funny, but when you watch it you don’t quite know how to
respond, and I think that is exciting, some people will be laughing, some people won’t be
laughing, because it is quite sensitive. I think that discourse is exactly what the point is, and
it is not frivolous, and it allows you to go away and think about it. This isn’t happy, happy,
happy. It starts off jovial, with numbers where it gives you a false sense of what it is about.
You know it is a difficult subject, but then it sort of deteriorates into this dark reality of
what is going on, interspersed with a tap dance, or a song about a reprieve, which is a
brilliant uplifting song. So it’s brilliant, it is I think what all theatre should be, whether it is
a play, or a musical, or an opera - it gives you a chance to think without being judgmental.
It is very clever.
Can you tell us about the use of caricature?
Tambo and Bones play caricatures of the characters really. There is the lawyer, a guard, a
judge, a governor, all these characters are extreme and they have one or two bits of costume
or a prop to indicate character, so for example, a massive cigar, or glasses, or a policeman’s
hat, and nothing else indicates the character apart from that. So they might put on a jacket
and within that picture you are taken into their world. Once you then juxtaposition what is
going on with the seriousness of what is going on with the boys, it sort of allows you to take
64
it. You are thinking, ‘oh my goodness, this is quite horrific’, but then you can have a moment
of lightness where it is quite funny. It is quite clever like that. Because they are black actors
playing white characters they are sort of parodying everybody, not just white sheriffs, but
Jewish lawyers, young white girls, it’s like a caricature of the whole world, and when that
form is broken at the end it gives you a real sense of what the characters have gone through.
One thing that is really good is just having one prop, a glass, or a cup, that just changes the
character. For instance, the actors that play the young white girls that accuse the boys of
rape, all they have is a clutch bag and a hat, and the character is formed. And it is brilliant
because you have this six foot three black actor, playing a young white girl.
When they are actors in the minstrel show, they are almost themselves as actors, and then
they become the boys, and then they become characters, so there are three levels to it.
Playing at these three levels it has to be caricature, it is really physical and it’s all about the
way their bodies are used to indicate class, race and age.
What are the challenges with the script?
If you read the script out of context it can come across as racist. They have a go at the
Jewish lawyer from New York, which is interesting because in the South of America in that
time, it was ‘worse' to be a Jewish person than a Black person - so in real life the Jewish
lawyer had to have body guards. The way he is spoken about in the musical is not very good,
but that is because we are being shown, as the audience, that at the time it was not
acceptable. But to read it without context, it is quite close to the bone. On stage you can see
it is black actors, performing people being racist about black people, it’s in context. But on
paper it is just Tambo, and you might not know Tambo is black. There is some context on the
front page of the script from the author. I think that it is a comment on that world rather
than reality - it is actually the opposite of racist.
What has it been like with the Americans joining?
It’s brilliant, because they know the show, and it’s part of their history. The actors playing
Tambo and Bones brought in images that they had up on the original rehearsal room wall.
The images were not very nice- they are of lynchings, and public hangings, and two young
black men hanging from a tree and white people laughing and pointing at them. Their
passion for the story is different to why British people are passionate about it. I think the
British are passionate is because it’s a good musical and it’s a brilliant story, but it is not
about us. Whereas it is about the Americans, it’s about their history. So to have their
passion and their energy is brilliant. Coleman has been a part of the show for five or six
years since the original workshops. They care about it and they talk about it passionately
and that is rubbing off on people which is great, because you can’t buy that, and I can’t
research that. Also, having native American speakers in the room is brilliant, and it helps
the British cast with their accents, with rhythm, with energy.
65
3. Alex Constantin, Company Stage Manager
What is your role on The Scottsboro Boys and at the Young Vic?
I am the Company Stage Manager. Normally the Young Vic has a Company Manager, which
is me full time, and then a Stage Manager on particular shows, but this show I’m doing
both. As a Stage Manager, my job is to look at the day to day running of the show - the
budget for props and in rehearsals, making sure there is tea and coffee for example. The
Stage Manager will make sure that the show runs smoothly - that the ASMs [Assistant
Stage Managers] are doing what they need to, if they have cues, that they do their cues
correctly, that everyone is covered. And just the day to day maintenance of the show and
keeping to what the director and the designer want - I will often work very closely with the
director or designer in rehearsals, to make sure their brief is fitted.
Then as a Company Manager, my job is pastoral. I guess making sure everyone is happy.
Making sure the cast are happy, that the director is comfortable and if they have problems
they can call me at any point. Someone will call me often at 3am in the morning with
certain troubles, or someone will text me about tickets at 5am in the morning, which has
happened! It’s not really a scheduled job, it’s sort of like being a friend, or an agony aunt,
someone who’s impartial and making sure that everyone working on that show feels valued
for what they are doing. The Young Vic works so hard to make sure that everyone is getting
the most possible while they’re working on a show; we make sure the company are not
lacking or left wanting for anything.
Is the first time that you have done those two roles?
No, since I have been at the Young Vic (I joined January 2013) I have only been the
Company Manager. I have helped out on most shows, and I’ve been around to make sure the
Stage Management aren’t wanting for anything. Before that I spent three and a half years
Company Stage Managing, as I am on this show. Last Christmas I was doing another
Kander and Ebb musical, Cabaret, so I was on stage doing cues. The only difference is that
here I also the building stuff to do - planning for the new shows, looking after the companies
that are in the studios, whether it is our show or not, but it keeps me busy! It’s quite nice to
spend another Christmas with a Kander and Ebb musical.
Can you tell me about the trip to America in August?
So it was one of the most incredible weeks of my life. I got to meet Susan Stroman, John
Kander, and David Thompson, who are the people that created The Scottsboro Boys. It was
interesting because I had already worked on a previous show of Kander’s, and it was
interesting because he spoke about Ebb. They put on this meal for us on the last night, which
was gorgeous, but sitting in a room with Kander and realising why musicals like these are
made, and why he chooses these difficult subjects, and why he thinks that musicals are the
best way of doing it… You know he says things like, in Cabaret, ‘Tomorrow Belongs To Me’
is this beautiful ballad - you sit there and you are enraptured and then you fall for it, and
then you realise he’s actually a Nazi. Kander talks about it, I think he calls it, ‘kicking the
safety ground from under you’. So with The Scottsboro Boys you are sitting there and you
are listening to these songs and this entertainment, and then you realise, at the end of the
day he is making a social comment, with this music. To get you comfortable, you know you
can’t tackle these subjects by just being really macabre about it sometimes, because at the
end of the day you can’t make someone sit through an hour and a half and just assault them
66
with it, this is hideous, this happened, this is terrible, you have to sit there and make
someone enjoy it, and then through doing that, when it gets kicked out from under them,
they get a realisation of how easy it is to fall into the trap. They are really tricky subjects.
The reason we went out to the US was because our cultures are so separate and so different.
If you look at anywhere you go now, you see Starbucks, Nero’s, Pret A Manger, they are
everywhere, but the way people interact with each other in the UK and US is so different.
This is a story about American history, and I think it would be really interesting to see how
it happens here, because although our history is different, maybe some of our approaches to
life aren’t, and people are the same everywhere, no matter whether we carried out those
acts or not. I think it’s really interesting.
It was truly inspirational being in New York. The three creatives that created the piece are
just completely inspired by the story - they told the cast that at the end of the day, they own
this story, and they have a respect to show to the people that lived through this true event.
You know we sit there, we’re doing the music and sometimes we’ll be laughing and dancing,
and the next minute we are talking about something that will blow your head off and you’re
just in tears. It is such a powerful piece in that respect, for example, me and the Assistant
Musical Director the other day had to walk out of rehearsals because we were just crying.
It’s a true event - this is really about the horror through which people were put because of
something they did not do. New York was about building a bond with Stroman because she
couldn’t be here for a couple of weeks and making sure that the people who were working on
it realised where the piece came from. It was incredible.
What are the differences for working on a musical versus working on a play, and what are
the challenges of the musical form in respect to your role?
I find the hardest thing about this musical is that it is so close to a play and that the scenes
have to land, otherwise the music doesn’t work. Equally the music has to land, or the scenes
won’t work. From my point of view the hardest thing about it is, is that the Stage
Management team are an integral part of the choreography, we cannot miss a prop because
otherwise they cannot do that jump, which leads to something else, which in the end leads to
another scene - It all ties in. On a play, if you forget a prop, you feel really bad, but they can
act their way out of it, but on a musical it can have serious physical implications, everything
is so technically choreographed.
I am dealing with bigger numbers, I am dealing with more people, I am dealing with
musicians, as well as actors, I am dealing with understudies, as well as the swings, as well
as the cast, I am dealing with a massive age range - on plays you have a few ages ranges,
but on this musical you are dealing with a lot of different characters, from a lot of different
backgrounds, who sometimes have nothing in common. For example, on this show I am
working with someone who is 17 years old, up to someone who is ‘undisclosed age’ and
older! And they each deserve the same amount of respect, but their needs are completely
different; someone needs privacy; someone needs help working their computer; someone
needs helping getting from A to B to do a costume fitting.
On a musical, the hardest thing is that their bodies are the machines, that is the same with
any type of show but in musicals they are pushing their bodies even more. They are doing a
show which them to completely deconstruct themselves of their race, their character, who
they are, because it’s so close to who they are, and additionally they are being asked to
perform numbers whilst singing - and at the same time, they are being asked to do this eight
times a week. Some people think ‘well it’s only for an hour and forty five minutes’, but the
67
cast are essentially doing a gym workout for an hour and forty five minutes, sometimes
twice a day, and they have to look like it’s the first time - as a Company Stage Manager you
have to make sure they feel comfortable doing that.
For the Deputy Stage Manager (DSM) as well, Stroman is a big fan of lighting being part
of the choreography, it can’t be a beat late. On certain straight plays a DSM will have to
judge, because you never want to box someone into performing the same thing every night you have to be organic and move the performance with them and that takes a different skill.
I think in terms of musicals the hardest thing is the health and safety, because they’re
physical, everything has to be bang on.
What are some of the challenges bringing a pre-existing production from Broadway to the
Young Vic?
My biggest problem at the moment is that guns aren’t legal in England, and they are in
America, and I had to get three guns that look like police guns, and holsters that fit those
guns, and that’s actually really tricky.
It is a sensitive story, I am interested how you and the rehearsal room are responding to
the form of the minstrel show.
We haven’t tackled that completely yet, and tomorrow afternoon that is about to happen, as
in they will practice with the makeup. So I am making sure it is a closed rehearsal room
tomorrow.
In terms of how we are responding to it as a company, and how I am responding to it as
stage management; I am making sure that every member of my stage management team
spends enough time in that room, so that people are familiar. It is really important that we
are all there for each other and sometimes it’s just that we make sure we all take a tea
break together. Sometimes on a break, stage management will be busy doing things but on
this show it’s really important that we get that moment together, even if it is just once a
week.
It’s also difficult because the stage management team are English, and the US cast don’t
have that much to identify with us on certain things. So I ask people about their culture,
about where they have come from, getting them to share, and sharing ours. I think it’s the
only way of doing it; it’s like making new friends I guess, or making new family. It’s just
about being open enough that people know they can trust you when they are not feeling
great. Everyone has had those moments in rehearsals, I have, stage management has, the
actors will be up and down, especially when we get to technical rehearsals. But at the
moment it’s still a very new and exciting thing for everyone because half of them are in a
new city and the other half are doing something that they have probably dreamed about
doing since they were children. At the moment it is a really exciting and creative place - I
think a lot of the cast are feeling a bit burdened because they did a few scenes today that
are really hard hitting, and a few of the cast came up to me and were like, ‘I need to just get
some fresh air’ - you just need to give them a hug, and not pretend you empathise because
that’s the worst thing because no one really knows what you are going through.
68
4. Catherine Kodicek, Head of Costume at the Young Vic
What is your role here at the Young Vic and what is your role on The Scottsboro Boys?
I am Head of Costume for the Young Vic so I look after shows that are being currently
rehearsed and created for performance. I also look after shows that are already in
performance and make sure there are dressing people and laundry people and whoever needs
to work on it. And I look after things that are on tour, things that are in the West End,
basically anything costume related that the Young Vic does, I’m the person that looks after
it.
What is the difference between working on a pre–existing show such as The Scottsboro
Boys, to a completely new show?
A completely new show the designer is creating it as you go along. The set tends to be
bashed out really far in advance but the costumes are more fluid. There will be an idea,
there will be a design, images and things they want to represent. Then once they are working
on the show things will change, rehearsal notes will come out, we may be changing things
according to character, or how a certain person wants to play something. The actor will say
‘oh I really think I should be wearing this’, then there is a discussion, it’s kind of a two way
street of evolving ideas.
In the past people worked in a much more regimented way where they have designed the
costumes on day one. They have made the costumes and the actors are told ‘this is what you
will be wearing’ - when I first started working that was what it was like. You would say to
the actor, ‘this is your costume, here is the designer, talk it through with them’. Now it is
much more about, ‘what do you think you would be wearing? We think it looks like this, this
is the aesthetic of the play, what will you be like within that?’ The actors have much more
involvement and it is better because they do better performances, it feels real, the costumes
feel like real clothing rather than just a kind of fakery. So when it is a show that we are
creating from scratch, that’s what happens. There is lots of conversation and there is lots of
changing ideas and ideas being batted around. Sometimes you end up looking at something
on press night that is so different, completely different to what you started out with, because
it has moved around so much, and it is all for the good.
When you are doing a show that has been done eight times before you are following a rigid
plan. The plan is - this is what they are wearing! The people in the show do not have any say
in what they wear. It is much more like it used to be, you are saying to them, ‘this is what
the Interlocutor looks like, this is what they wear at that point’. I know they had an actor in
the past who decided at some point to wear glasses, that was not part of the original design
and he is not wearing them now. It’s kind of fixed - it has to look exactly like the one in
America. There is no room for, this looks nicer, or this is made out of better fabric, it’s that
expectation to see the thing that you have had before. So it’s a recreation, rather than any
of kind of creation. What is interesting about it is we have done shows at the Young Vic that
we have remounted, or we have brought back, we did Vernon God Little twice, Beauty
Queen of Leenane twice, we did Dolls House three times. Every time it’s changed a bit, the
direction has changed, the set has changed, the actors have changed, some of the costumes
have changed. But this show is like an archeological dig, you are digging stuff out and you
are recreating it. And so it brings all new challenges, because what you are trying to do is
make something that sometimes there is little information for. So we’re looking at whatever
69
is in the public domain, photographs of the show, and the information that we are being
given from the Associate Costume Designer. At first we did not see the original designs, the
original imagery, all we saw was the photographs of the show as it existed on Broadway and
in various places. It wasn’t until the Associate Designer arrived here with her ‘bible’ that we
actually got access to that information - then it was full throttle forward because now we
had the information. Certain things that did not make much sense, suddenly made more
sense. For example, the judge’s robe, it’s this giant eight foot oversized judge’s robe. So we
made a judge’s robe, we got information, we looked at all the judge’s robes in America, they
are all the same, have been for hundreds of years, we did all the things that make a judge’s
robe look like a judge’s robe, and then we scaled it up. So it was very long in the arm, it was
very long in the body, and they said it’s not quite right, the last time it looked like this. So
then we kept modifying, but we did not have a design for it, there was no drawing, we were
working from the premise that it is a judge’s robe, when really it was something slightly
different.
What might be some of the differences or challenges of working on a musical versus a
play?
When people are dancing they get hot and they sweat. When they are singing most of the
time, unless it’s an opera for instance, they have a radio mic because they’ve got to balance
the people out with the band. Radio mics always pose a problem because you have to
position them somewhere on the body that allows movement, and doesn’t interfere with the
sound. Most sound people like to have the microphone right at the top of the forehead
because it is the best place to catch it. In this show the boys have very closely cropped hair,
they’ve got hats, that are on/off all the time - if you had something on the forehead then
when the hat hits it, it’s going to make a sound that a sound person can’t control. So now
we’re having to have what they call an ‘ear rig’, it’s just round their ear, but it’s not the ideal
place for most sound people so there is a balancing between that because we have got to try
and put the mic pack somewhere on their body that it can be taped up and through their
clothing. And then you get people that don’t want to wear a mic pack around their waist,
they might want to wear it somewhere else, so we are customizing all these mic
accoutrements in order to fit the costume properly.
And in terms of dancing, they are tap dancing, they are doing all kinds of movement, and
bouncing around, and jumping and forward rolls and it’s so physical that the costumes are
going to take a real battering, and they are going to sweat through so many things. Every
single thing is going to need washing every single day. Normally with a straight play it’s like
your own clothes – you wash anything that is closest to the body every day. But cardigans
and jackets, sometimes even trousers, you might do trousers every other day, but you
wouldn’t expect to wash every single garment every day, unless you have to. So if you have a
matinee you need double, you need two of everything, because the amount of laundry to time
between the matinee finishing and the evening performance starting, you’ve got maybe three
hours, well a laundry call is six hours, for a show like this, six, seven hours - so you haven’t
got time. That’s makes a big difference to the budget - having doubles of costumes, and
staff time. You have got people working on the show like dressers, sometimes in a straight
play they might also do the laundry, but on a show this big they can’t because there are not
enough hours for one person to do it. So we end up with four dressers and a laundry person,
who comes in the morning, who do all of that.
Then it’s the longevity of the clothes. Our run has been extended by four weeks, and so
certain things, because you are looking at an era where they were wearing old clothes and
gowns, they were worn out. So we are taking brand new denim, brand new jackets and brand
70
new shirts and we are then breaking them down to a certain level so they look old and nice
and weathered. Then we are trying to keep them looking at that level of old, but washing
them and drying them, and washing them and drying them. So you also need replacements
during the run because at some point your worn out jumper is going to become a threadbare,
non-existent jumper, so you need a second jumper. So anything like that where you are
trying to maintain a certain level of distress is hard over a long period of time. And when
they are sweating, because sweat destroys clothes and washing destroys clothes. That is our
biggest challenge on this show in terms of it being a musical and a dance show.
71
5. Colman Domingo and Forrest McClendon - Mr Bones and Mr Tambo
What has been the biggest challenge in transferring the show from the US to the Young
Vic? Has there being anything that’s been exciting or difficult?
Colman: The biggest challenge is really the show - I think is exceptional in every single way.
It’s unlike any other show as it is so incredibly detailed - there are details on top of those
details and then a few more. There’s such detailed work between Forest and I. This show
strives to be completely exceptional, so good is never good enough for any of us. Right now
we believe the show is good but not only do we want it to be great, we want it to be
exceptional - that’s always a challenge coming back into it and revisiting it with fresh eyes,
with fresh bodies, to hear things a new. So it’s a challenge for everyone - for the guys who
originated it, these walls were built in our bodies and then for us to see it in a new light, in a
new space and with new audiences. All of it is a great challenge, but a challenge in my eyes
and my ears is always a great opportunity.
Forrest: One thing that I think we thought would be a challenge, that isn’t as much of a
challenge as we expected is the dialect, in a nutshell. I’ve seen Sizwe Banzi here in thick
South African and King Lear in Belarusian, and these are audiences who are just really
accustomed to hearing different sounds - so that level of sophistication in the audience
makes that particular thing less challenging.
Have you noticed the response being different in terms of them being a British audience
and maybe different things resonating?
Forrest: Yes, everything is just so much funnier! [Laughs] Because they have less baggage
about the history of it, they have less baggage about the form and so I think it’s infinitely
funnier coming right out of the gate!
Colman: The tricky thing is that a lot of time our characters, Forest and I, we look directly
out to the audience - I’ve been having a little challenge to not look as directly into the
audience because what a British audience gives back with the body language and face is not
exactly… expressive. Usually they’re looking very much like this [pulls a straight face] and I
cant really read what that is, and then you hear like thunderous applause and your like, ‘Oh I
had no idea, I had no idea you were actually into it because your just like [pulls a straight
face]’!
And so in the US is that very different, are people much more responsive?
Colman: Yeah, there’s a joke that I always say, I’m like, “Did you like it? Did you think it
was funny? …Tell your face!” [Everyone laughs]. I respect that it’s just a different way of
experiencing it, that’s just my common joke for myself!
Actually it’s really good for young people to know that that their response as an audience is
important. I think they’re told so much that they have to sit still and not react, but actually
we really like it when they’re really honest with their responses.
Colman: That’s why we loved the students last night, because students are so honest, they
don’t have that veneer or any set of rules in their mind of how they should behave in this
72
environment. They were just open. When we walked out last night they were just looking
excited like ‘OH MY GOD! Are you talking to me!?’ ...some of the other audience members
were looking like [straight faced] “What’s happening? Why are they speaking to me - what’s
going on?”
Does the show feel different in a much smaller space?
Forrest: Absolutely. I think that this is closer to where we originated the show at the
Vineyard in New York, so it’s much smaller. There’s an intimacy. I think that when the
audience is quite large you feel like you’re playing to them and when it’s this intimate you
feel like your playing with them.
Why do you think the story is told best as a musical rather than a straight play?
Colman: We always say that if it was told as a straight play you couldn’t sit through it. You
couldn’t sit through 15 minutes of it, because it was so dastardly horrific. All of the events
everything about it, you could not bear the deep deep ugliness of exactly what happened. So
I think they were very smart in its form, to tell the story, to flip it on its head and tell it with
a really racially charged formula of entertainment colliding with a racially charged event. I
think with that we make some really brilliant high art, I think. We elevate this story
imminently.
Forrest: Especially in the way that music is used - I mean the construct is stunning because
there is this minstrel show, in a musical, in a memory play. So music is utilised in two
different ways, both to comment on the story as well as to move action forward the way it
does in a traditional musical. So we have the full use of music as a tool in the piece that
allows you moments where you can emotionally experience what they’re going through - I
don’t think without music we could go inside people’s hearts as easily.
How have you found the process, in terms of dealing with the subject matter? I imagine it's
quite emotionally draining?
Forrest: It can be and I think sometimes it sneaks up on you and you don’t even realise. We
always talk about letting some of the themes of the play go… I went home and I felt like I
was carrying a lot of this play with me, but I didn’t realise because you think, ‘oh you know
Colman and Forest they’re the funny guys in the play’. But what we have to do in the play
are really ugly things and I forget that it takes a toll on us as well.
Colman: The agreement to feel all of that is what we signed on for. Someone asked me
about all of the history today and if it’s quite sad? ‘Sad’ certainly is amongst the things you
feel, but the blessing of the play is that it allows me my real sadness, my real anger, my real
joy to experience all of it – and then to balance and to let that love come on through
because I absolutely do feel that, that hate. The raw, raw pure anger.
Forrest: And the idea that you had to find that place in your heart, in your spirit where you
can feel those ugly things and to find a way to let you release that stuff, it’s really
interesting. It’s working on so many levels - I think the entire company, we’re all working on
this performance level and there’s so many layers going on. Layers where Stroman says
‘actually this is a point where you’re just Forest and Coleman’, you know so it’s truly Forest
and Coleman playing Tambo and Bones, playing all these characters, and then there’s our
relationship as colleagues and friends, supporting each other in the scenes, so there are
many levels that are sort of trippy.
73
What are you most looking forward to about the rest of this run?
Coleman: The thing I really look forward to is talking to more and more people about it - to
really talk about the issues and about this ugly chapter in history.
74
6. James T Lane, Emile Ruddock, Kyle Scatliffe, and Carl Spencer –
Ruby/Ozie, Willie, Haywood and Andy
Why do you think this story is best told as a musical rather than a straight play?
Emile: I would say that if you told this story straight an audience won’t be able to listen to
it, they won’t be able to cope with it, it’s just too real. People know it’s real and that’s what
hits them. So the reason it’s a musical is not to dumb it down to make it easier on people,
but to make it more palatable.
James: And music, you know, it cuts right to your heart, it cuts right to the emotions, it’s
like a universal language. You can tell a great story through music.
Have you been curious to learn if an English audience will respond differently to an
American audience?
Kyle: There were certain jokes that they weren’t sure an English audience would get, but
so far they’ve gotten them!
Any in particular?
Carl?: George Wallace [All agree]
James: He was a judge in one of the trials and the reference is so within the US history that
we didn’t feel it would land with a British audience.
Kyle: But a lot of people have laughed at it! You can hear it, it’ll be scattered at first and
then start to grow as others realise what we’re talking about. It’s really cool that they’ve got
the reference.
Emile: In terms of contextual references, things like the song Jew Money, the Jewish
population in America is higher than it is in say London, especially in New York where the
show was performed. I think Nigel West was saying sometimes British people like taking the
mick out of Americans, it can be quite humorous to a British audience to do that. So a
number like Jew Money British audiences can find more funny than the Americans, who can
find it almost offensive sometimes I think.
And does the response feel different?
James: No it doesn’t – this show just beats you over the head, wherever you are! [They
laugh] And we are getting the same type of feeling from the audiences here and there. They
love it, they walk out in tears, they want to hug you, they want to talk about it and get into
it. They are very very passionate about this work, and the response feels the same.
How is it emotionally representing this story time after time onstage every night? You’ve
said that when it comes to the applause you’re just standing there…
Kyle: For me and I think for the whole company we have the same mind-set where the
audience may be applauding us, but they’re not applauding us. We’ve told our story and it’s
for them, for those nine boys and what they went through. So at the end of the show, it’s
almost militaristic the way we react to it because we all get up together, we go to the front
together, we are a company, no one’s better than anyone, we came to tell the story together.
And when we get the applause I’m like this isn’t for me, this is for him. And when I bow this
is Haywood’s bow. It’s not for me.
James: The story was in obscurity before this musical kinda came along. There was
Scottsboro Boys Museum, but no one had really heard of it, it wasn’t doing well, we didn’t
know the story from our childhood history or anything. So now this story is being told all the
75
way around the world and so many people are getting to hear this for the first time, and it’s
an honour to bring this story back. You feel like you’re honouring what happened and
honouring their voices.
How’s it feel working with a mixed British and US cast – are you learning things from each
other?
[They laugh]
Kyle: It’s a lot of fun, I love it! It’s so much fun!
Carl: We’re having a good time!
Kyle: Especially since the UK guys came to New York for a week and they got to see where
we are and now we get to see them, we see how the show fits.
Carl: We’ve found differences more through conversation than actually what we’re doing it’s more like individual processes are different than the process of making musical theatre.
Kyle: Every had their own process of getting where they need to get to, but when we’re all
there together it’s very humbling, everyone is there to do the same thing.
76
7. Clinton Roane - Roy White
What has been the biggest challenge in transferring the show from the US to the Young
Vic?
I’m not sure there is a challenge – it’s the same show, great new cast members and
everything’s flowed pretty easily. Maybe having to make sure the audience really hears
everything we’re saying as we’re using a southern dialect, that’s been the only weird thing
about it. I feel that it’s translated pretty great.
Have you found the audiences to be different?
They’re pretty much the same – maybe there’s a few they don’t get. In America there were a
few lines I’d have to hold for like ten seconds while people laughed and here I’m like, no
one’s laughing!
Why do you think this story is best told as a musical rather than a straight play?
As a straight play it would just be so depressing and everyone would cry ten times more than
they already do. Music has a great way of lightening a feeling and a way of touching people
more.
How has it been to work on a production that’s about such a difficult and distressing true
story?
I guess it’s hard emotionally, especially to tell it over and over again. But the thing for me is
that I’m doing something much bigger than myself, I’m giving someone a voice when they
never had a chance to be heard. At the end of the day, everyone goes home knowing who
Roy Wright was, and that’s the biggest pay off.
Can you tell us a bit about the stuff you worked on before you worked on The Scottsboro
Boys?
I was in college! I got this literally four months after graduation, but in between the
Broadway production I did a show called Hello My Baby, and then we toured Scottsboro
Boys in America, and now I’m here.
The concept of a Minstrel show is not so well known in the UK, is that something you knew
much about before this show?
Actually yes, it’s so funny the way the universe brings things up. My senior year at college
we had to write papers on different subjects for theatre history and for some reason my
topic was Minstrelsy. I didn’t delve as deep as this show does but I discovered lots about the
history. Then hearing John Kander talk about it I was like ‘oh, this is how it really is’,
because he was there. It makes it great a musical because you have a vehicle, if you didn’t
have a format to put it in it might not be as powerful and it takes this message to the next
generation.
Is this the smallest theatre you’ve done the show in?
This is the smallest I’ve done it in, all of the theatres on the tour were bigger than this.
Coleman, Forest and Christian did it Off-Broadway at the Vineyard Theatre, which is the
same size, maybe a little bit bigger. The is the smallest I’ve ever done so it was weird during
the preview because the theatre is already small enough as it is, but when you have people
77
actually sitting in the seats and they are like right here [gestures in front of face], it’s like
‘Wow, you’re really right here!’ [Laughs]. I really prefer this because everyone’s right there
with you, there’s nowhere you can hide – we see your faces, we see all of your reactions,
your coughs, your laughs…
How difficult was the show to learn?
Well, that’s what my training was for! What I learn at school was that with every class you
take the easier it becomes to pick things up. Even when I couldn’t afford classes after
graduation I would make sure I read plays or watch a music video and try to learn the
choreography. It would really help like in an audition room where you have to be able to
change things up very quickly. Also getting sleep and eating healthy makes a big difference
in retention and brain activity.
When you first heard The Scottsboro Boys was transferring to London, what did you think?
When the producer first called me I actually cried! Because I was like praying since I was in
college I just wanted to go to London and do a show in London so bad. And I was just so
happy, they spoke about it a bit during Broadway but talk is talk in theatre and you never
know what’s going to happen, so when she said it was actually happening and they wanted to
take me over I was very happy. And I’m happy that the show is coming over here and we get
to tell the story over here.
78
8. The Company, Biographies
As appeared in the Young Vic Programme, October 2013
79
80
81
John Kander & Fred Ebb /
Music and Lyrics
Susan Stroman /
Direction & Choreography
The John Kander and Fred Ebb collaboration of
four decades has created what many would consider
Broadway standards and contemporary classics.
One of their first collaborations became a hit song
for Barbra Streisand, My Coloring Book, which
earned John and Fred a Grammy nomination.
In 1965 the pair worked on their first Broadway
show, Flora the Red Menace, produced by Hal
Prince and directed by George Abbott. Flora also
introduced rising new star Liza Minnelli. Following
were: Cabaret (Tony Award music and lyrics), The
Happy Time, Zorba, 70 Girls 70, Chicago, The
Act, Woman of the Year (Tony Award music and
lyrics), The Rink, Kiss of the Spider Woman (Tony
Award music and lyrics) and Steel Pier. Their
collaboration also transferred itself to movies and
television as they wrote original material for the
Academy Awards, Liza with a Z and HBO’s Liza
Minnelli’s Steppin Out (both Emmy winners),
Baryshnikov on Broadway, Goldie and Liza
Together, Funny Lady, Lucky Lady, New York,
New York, Steppin’ Out, and Chicago, the film.
In 1985 the song New York, New York became
the official anthem of New York City.
At the time of Mr Ebb’s death in 2004, Kander
and Ebb had several projects in different stages of
completion waiting in the wings, Tony-nominated
Curtains which played at the Al Hirschfeld Theater
on Broadway in 2007; twelve-time Tony-nominated
The Scottsboro Boys which opened on Broadway
in 2010; All About Us (an adaptation of Thornton
Wilder’s The Skin of our Teeth); and The Visit
which had a successful run at the Goodman Theater
in Chicago and The Signature Theatre in Fairfax,
VA starring Chita Rivera. Mr Kander is currently
collaborating with author/playwright Greg Pierce
on two new projects, The Landing and Kid Victory.
Broadway theatre includes: The Producers,
Contact, Crazy for You, Show Boat, Oklahoma!,
Young Frankenstein, Big, Picnic, The Music Man,
Thou Shalt Not, The Frogs, Steel Pier, Big Fish.
Off-Broadway theatre includes: The Scottsboro
Boys, Happiness, Flora, The Red Menace, And the
World Goes ‘Round, MSG’s A Christmas Carol.
New York City Opera includes: A Little Night
Music,110 in the Shade, Don Giovanni.
Ballet includes: Double Feature, For the Love of
Duke (New York City Ballet); But Not For Me
(Martha Graham Company); Take Five... More
or Less (Pacific Northwest Ballet).
Film includes: Center Stage (American
Choreography Award), The Producers: The Movie
Musical (Four Golden Globe nominations).
A five-time Tony Award-winner, her work has
been honoured with Olivier, Drama Desk, Outer
Critics Circle, Lucille Lortel, a record five Astaire
Awards, and the George Abbott Award for
Lifetime Achievement in the American Theatre.
Beowulf Boritt / Set Design
Broadway theatre includes: The Scottsboro Boys
(Tony Nomination), Chaplin, Grace, Rock Of Ages,
Sondheim On Sondheim, Spelling Bee, LoveMusik,
The Two And Only.
Off-Broadway theatre includes: The Last Five
Years, Toxic Avenger, Miss Julie, Roundabout,
Public, MTC, 2nd Stage, Vineyard, MCC, Primary
Stages, and the New Group.
Other Designs: The Seven Deadly Sins (New York
City Ballet), Paradise Found (Menier), Reel to
Real (Beijing), Chaplin (Russia), Rock of Ages
(West End, Toronto, Australia, Las Vegas)
and the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey
Circus. He received a 2007 OBIE Award.
David Thompson / Book
Broadway theatre includes: Scottsboro Boys (Tony
and Drama Desk Award nominations, HullWarriner Award, Outer Critics Circle and Lucille
Lortel Awards for Best Musical); Steel Pier
(Tony nomination); Chicago (script adaptation for
current revival); Lincoln Center’s Thou Shalt Not.
Off-Broadway theatre includes: And the World
Goes ‘Round (Drama Desk and Outer Circle
Critics Awards); Flora, the Red Menace (Drama
Desk Nomination). McCarter Theater: A
Christmas Carol (now in its twenty-second year).
Television includes: Sondheim – A Celebration
at Carnegie Hall (Emmy nomination); PBS
specials – Razzle Dazzle, Bernstein on Broadway,
The Music of Richard Rodgers and “Great
Performances” My Favorite Broadway.
Toni-Leslie James /
Costume Design
Broadway theatre includes: Lucky Guy, The
Scottsboro Boys, Finian’s Rainbow, Chita Rivera:
The Dancer’s Life, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,
King Hedley II, One Mo’ Time, The Wild Party,
Marie Christine, Footloose, The Tempest, Twilight…
Los Angeles 1992, Angels in America: Millennium
Approaches & Perestroika, Chronicle of a Death
Foretold, and Jelly’s Last Jam.
Off-Broadway theatre includes: multiple
productions at New York Theatre Workshop,
Lincoln Center Theater, the Public Theater, the
Vineyard Theatre, Second Stage, Playwrights
Horizons.
Toni-Leslie James dedicates this production to
the memory of her son, Jett Gerald Higham.
82
Ken Billington / Lighting Design
Jill Green CDG / UK Casting
Theatre includes: 97 Broadway productions
including Hugh Jackman Back on Broadway,
Chicago, The Scottsboro Boys, Sondheim on
Sondheim, White Christmas, Title of Show,
The Drowsy Chaperone, Footloose, Sweeney
Todd and revivals of Dreamgirls and Sunday
in the Park with George.
Theatre for West End includes: Sweeney Todd,
What the Butler Saw, Chicago, Annie, The Drowsy
Chaperone, High School Musical.
UK Tours include: High School Musical 2, Dolly
Parton’s 9 to 5 and the seasonal tour of White
Christmas.
Other projects: Disneyland’s Fantasmic!, Jubilee
at Ballys Las Vegas and Shamu Rocks at the
Seaworld Parks.
Awards include: Tony Award for Best Lighting
Design of a Musical for Chicago.
Previous Young Vic: The Human Comedy.
Other theatre includes: I Can’t Sing! – The X
Factor Musical, Rock of Ages, Jersey Boys, The
Producers, Contact, Sinatra at the Palladium,
The Vagina Monologues, Thoroughly Modern
Millie, Fosse (West End); West Side Story (UK
tour); Singin’ In The Rain (UK tour); Aladdin (Old
Vic); Jack and the Beanstalk (Barbican); Finding
Neverland (Leicester Curve); She Loves Me, 42nd
Street, Oklahoma!, Music Man, Babes in Arms,
Carousel (Chichester Festival Theatre); Spike
Milligan’s Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall
(Bristol Old Vic/Hampstead/UK tour); Wuthering
Heights (Bollywood adaptation, Tamasha Theatre
Company); The Producers (UK tour); The Three
Musketeers (Bristol Old Vic); Much Ado About
Nothing (Liverpool Everyman); Promises Promises
(Sheffield Crucible); My One and Only (Chichester
Festival Theatre/Piccadilly Theatre); Cats (UK
tour); Fosse (European/International tour).
Workshops include: Around The World In 80 Days,
X Factor the Musical, Made in Dagenham, Finding
Neverland, Queer as Folk, Silk.
Feature films include: Beyond the Sea (co casting).
Jill’s Casting Assistant is Gordon Cowell.
Paul Arditti / Sound Design
Previous Young Vic: Feast, Three Sisters,
The Changeling, The Beauty Queen of
Leenane, Been So Long, The Member of the
Wedding,Vernon God Little, The Respectable
Wedding, generations, The Skin of Our Teeth.
Forthcoming productions include: American
Psycho (Headlong & Almeida); NT 50th,
King Lear (National); Red Velvet (New York).
Recent designs include: Edward II, The
Magistrate, London Road, Collaborators,
The Veil (National);Charlie and the Chocolate
Factory (West End);The Audience (West
End); Red Velvet (Tricycle); Jumpy (West
End); In the Republic of Happiness, In
Basildon, Jumpy (Royal Court); One Man, Two
Guvnors (National, West End, Broadway, World
Tour); Doctor Dee (ENO); The Bee (New York);
Company (Sheffield Crucible); The Most Incredible
Thing (Sadler’s Wells); Billy Elliot the Musical
(West End, Broadway, Australia, US Tour).
Awards include: One Man, Two Guvnors: Tony
Award Nomination 2012; Billy Elliot The
Musical: Tony Award 2009, Drama Desk Award
2009, Olivier Award 2006; Mary Stuart: Tony
Award Nomination 2009; Saint Joan: Olivier
Award 2008; Festen: Evening Standard Award
2005; The Pillowman: Drama Desk Award 2005.
Stephen Kopel CSA / US Casting
Broadway theatre includes: Beautiful – The
Carole King Musical, The Winslow Boy, The Glass
Menagerie, The Mystery Of Edwin Drood, Harvey,
Don’t Dress For Dinner, Once (also tour), The
Road To Mecca, On A Clear Day You Can See
Forever, Anything Goes (also tour), The People
In The Picture, Brief Encounter, The Scottsboro
Boys, Sondheim On Sondheim, Hedda Gabler.
Off-Broadway theatre includes: Violet, The
Cradle Will Rock, I’m Getting My Act Together…
Regional theatre includes: productions for
Williamstown Theatre Festival, the American
Repertory Theatre, North Carolina Theatre,
Denver Center Theatre, Ford’s Theatre, Chicago
Shakes, Hartford Stage, Old Globe, Marriott
Lincolnshire and Bay Street Theatre.
Jim Carnahan CSA / US Casting
Jim serves as Roundabout’s Director of Artistic
Development.
Theatre for the Roundabout includes: The Winslow
Boy, Big Knife, Talley’s Folly, Drood, If There Is
I Haven’t Found it Yet, Harvey, Anything Goes,
Sondheim on Sondheim, Hedda Gabler, Liaisons
Dangereuses, Sunday in the Park, The Ritz, 110
in the Shade, The Pajama Game, 12 Angry Men,
After the Fall, Assassins, Twentieth Century,
Big River, Nine, Joe Egg, Cabaret, Follies,
Other Broadway theatre includes: Matilda,
Once, Peter and the Starcatcher, Clear Day, The
Scottsboro Boys, American Idiot, Mountaintop,
Jerusalem, Arcadia, Boeing-Boeing, Spring
Awakening, Curtains, Faith Healer, Festen,
The Woman in White, The Pillowman, Chitty,
Democracy, La Cage aux Folles, Thoroughly
Modern Millie, Noises Off, Into The Woods,
True West, Copenhagen.
Film includes: Home At The End Of The World,
Flicka.
Television includes: Glee (Emmy nomination)
Robert Scott / Musical Direction
Robert has supervised and conducted many major
musicals both in the West End and in the United
States.
Theatre includes: Singin’ in the Rain (Chichester
Festival Theatre and the Palace Theatre);
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (London Palladium and
Broadway); the critically acclaimed 2008 revival
of Funny Girl (Chichester Festival Theatre); Annie,
Cabaret, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, White
Christmas, The Wizard of Oz, Oliver!, Me and My
Girl, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the
Forum, Crazy For You, the award-winning revival
of She Loves Me (the Savoy Theatre); Carousel
(Chichester Festival Theatre).
Robert trained at the Royal Scottish Academy
of Music and Drama.
83
Nigel West/ Associate Director
Credits include: Me and My Girl (West End,
UK Tour, Sweden, Australia,New Zealand,
Canada); Crazy For You (West End, UK Tour,
Australia,South Africa); Beauty And The Beast
(West End); Chicago (West End, UK Tour, Korea,
Australia, Mexico City, Argentina, Germany, Spain,
Singapore); The Producers (US tour, Austria,
Germany); Disney and Cameron Mackintosh’s
Mary Poppins (Canada); She Loves Me (Canada);
Closer Than Ever (Holland); The Wizard Of Oz
(Southampton, US tour and Maddison Square
Gardens New York City); Stephen Kings’ Misery
(UK tour); Just For Joe (Edinburgh Festival /
Kings Theatre Glasgow); Blue Remembered Hills
(Belgrade Coventry).
Eric Santagata /
Assistant Choreographer
Theatre includes: The Scottsboro Boys (original
Broadway production and all other productions
since the show’s conception).
Other Broadway and New York credits include: The
Apple Tree, Chaplin, Happiness (Lincoln Center);
Face the Music and Stairway to Paradise (City Center
Encores!); The Boy Friend and Casper (on tour).
Upcoming theatre: this spring Eric can be seen onstage
in the new Broadway musical Bullets Over Broadway.
Emma Woodvine / Dialect Coach
Previous Young Vic: A Season in the Congo, The
Changeling, A Doll’s House, After Miss Julie,
Beloved, I Am Yussef and This Is My Brother.
Theatre includes: Hitchcock Blond (Hull Truck);
Carousel (Opera North/Barbican); Pitchfork
Disney (Arcola); ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore,
Macbeth (Cheek by Jowl); Noises Off (Old Vic);
Othello (Sheffield Crucible); GHOST the musical
(Piccadilly Theatre); The School for Scandal
(Barbican); Breakfast at Tiffany’s (Theatre
Royal Haymarket); 11 and 12 (Peter Brook at
the Barbican); The Fastest Clock in the Universe
(Hampstead Theatre); As You Like It (Watford
Palace Theatre).
Television includes: Christopher and his Kind.
Jonathan O’Boyle / Assistant Director
Jonathan trained as an actor at The Central School
of Speech and Drama and on the MFA Theatre
Directing course at Birkbeck, University of London.
Most recently, he was the Resident Director at
Sheffield Theatres.
Directing credits include: Last Online Today,
Guinea Pigs (Sheffield Crucible Studio, New
Writers’ Project).
Assistant Director credits include: My Fair Lady,
This is My Family, The Village Bike (Sheffield
Crucible); Bull (Sheffield Crucible/Brits Off
Broadway, New York); Someone Who’ll Watch
Over Me (Southwark Playhouse).
Next Spring, Jonathan will direct Neil LaBute’s
trilogy Bash: The Latter-Day Plays at the Old
Red Lion Theatre.
Jonathan is supported through the Jerwood
Assistant Directors Programme at the Young Vic.
Alison de Burgh / Fight Director
Theatre includes: A Little Hotel On The Side
(Theatre Royal, Bath); The Prince of Denmark
(National Youth Theatre); It’s A Mad World My
Masters (RSC); Macbeth (Lyric, Belfast); What
The Butler Saw (West End); The Changeling
(Young Vic); The Ladykillers (West End and
tour); Private Lives, Speaking In Tongues, The
Dumb Waiter, Peter Pan, Bent, The Play’s The
Thing, Donkey’s Years, The Anniversary, As You
Like It (all West End); The Black Album, Harper
Regan, Therese Raquin, Coram Boy, Pillars of
the Community, Tales from the Vienna Woods
(all National Theatre); Romeo and Juliet, The
Penelopiad, As You Like It, A Midsummer Night’s
Dream (RSC); Macbeth (Lyric Belfast); Sons
Without Fathers (Belgrade Coventry & Arcola).
Opera includes: Cavalleria Rusticana & Pagliacci
(Holland Park Opera Carousel (Opera North) Don
Giovanni, Knight Crew, Euryanthe (Glyndebourne
Festival Opera); Florentine Tragedy / Gianni Schicci
(Greek National Opera); Varjak Paw (The Opera
Group); The Trojans at Carthage, The Handmaid’s
Tale, Lulu, Morning to Midnight (English National
Opera).
Film includes: Being Othello, Mine, The Dark
Room, Ghost Story, Stubborn and Spite, Four,
Respect, Promises Promises.
Television Includes: Maestro, The Hour,
The Eleventh Hour.
84
Appendix
85
Further Information on The Scottsboro Boys
From Words on Plays, the performance guide series of San Francisco’s American
Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.).
Acker, James R. Scottsboro and Its Legacy. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2008.
Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow. New York: The New Press, 2010.
Carter, Dan T. Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State,
University Press, 1969.
Davis, Angela Y. Women, Race, and Class. New York: Vintage Books, 1981.
Goodman, James. Stories of Scottsboro: The Rape Case That Shocked 1930’s America and Revived
the Struggle for Equality. New York: Pantheon Books, 1994.
Leve, James. Kander and Ebb. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009.
Miller, James A. Remembering Scottsboro: The Legacy of an Infamous Trial. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2009.
Norris, Clarence, and Sybil D. Washington. The Last of the Scottsboro Boys: An Autobiography. New
York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1979.
Patterson, Haywood, and Earl Conrad. Scottsboro Boy. New York: Doubleday & Company, 1950.
Ransdell, Hollace. “Report on the Scottsboro, Ala. Case.” May 27, 1931.
Strausbaugh, John. Black Like You: Blackface, Whiteface, Insult & Imitation in American Popular
Culture. New York: Jeremy P. Tracher/Penguin, 2006.
Toll, Robert C. Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth-Century America. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1974.
Other Information and Press
Scottsboro: An American Tragedy
(An excellent film and website with resources)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCBV-GhyINY
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/scottsboro/index.html
BBC: The real story behind the Scottsboro Boys musical
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-24551844
Young Vic Blog
http://youngviclondon.wordpress.com/category/2013-season/the-scottsboro-boys/
86
Taking Part at the Young Vic is supported by:
95.8 Capital FM's Help a Capital Child
The Austin and Hope Pilkington Charitable Trust
The Newcomen Collet Foundation and
The Red Hill Charitable Trust
87
The Noë
No ë l Coward Foundation was set up in 2000 to award grants to educational and
development projects across the arts. It is proud
to support a diverse range of organisations
working in theatre, music, playwriting and many
other areas, and is delighted to be part of The
Young Vic’s work with schools and students. The
Foundation is supporting the subsidised ticket
scheme for THE SCOTTSBORO BOYS as it is keen
to help introduce young people to excellent and
innovative productions, encouraging them to
develop as theatregoers and become audiences for
musical theatre in the future. For further
information, see www.noelcoward.org
Noël Coward (1899(1899 -1973)
Noël Peirce Coward was born in 1899 and made his
professional stage debut as Prince Mussel in The Goldfish at
the age of 12, leading to many child actor appearances over
the next few years. His breakthrough in playwriting was the
controversial THE VORTEX (1924) which featured themes
of drugs and adultery and made his name as both actor and
playwright in the West End and on Broadway. During the
frenzied 1920s and the more sedate 1930s, Coward wrote a
string of successful plays and musicals including HAY
FEVER (1925), EASY VIRTUE (1926) and BITTER
SWEET (1929). His enduring professional partnership
with childhood friend Gertrude Lawrence, started with
PRIVATE LIVES (1931), and continued with TONIGHT AT
8.30 (1936)
During World War II, he remained a successful playwright, screenwriter and director, as
well as entertaining the troops and even acting as an unofficial spy for the Foreign Office!
However, the post-war years were more difficult. Austerity Britain – the London critics
determined – was out of tune with the brittle Coward wit. In response, Coward re-invented
himself as a cabaret and TV star, particularly in America, and in 1955 he played a sell-out
season in Las Vegas featuring many of his most famous songs, including Mad About the
Boy, I’ll See You Again and Mad Dogs and Englishmen. In the mid-1950s he settled in
Jamaica and Switzerland, and enjoyed a renaissance in the early 1960s becoming the first
living playwright to be performed by the National Theatre, when he directed HAY FEVER
there starring Maggie Smith. Late in his career he was lauded for his roles in a number of
films including Our Man In Havana (1959) and his role as the iconic Mr. Bridger alongside
Michael Caine in The Italian Job (1968).
Writer, actor, director, film producer, painter, songwriter, cabaret artist as well as an
author of verse, essays and autobiographies, he was called by close friends ‘The Master’, a
title of which he was secretly proud. He was knighted in 1970 and died peacefully in 1973
in his beloved Jamaica. For further information on Noël Coward, please see
www.noelcoward.com.
88

Inside: The Scottsboro Boys

Transcription

Similar documents

May-June 2012 - Youth with A Purpose Boys Home, Inc.

Glasser lists four basic needs

Appliance - The Clarion

Workshop 1C

Boys` Art Symposium flyer

Georgy-Porgy

McDade Park, Scranton, PA

McDade Park, Scranton, PA