I'm currently playing in the pit of a musical called Parade. The plot dramatizes real life events that took place in Atlanta, GA, in the year 1913. Leo Frank, a Jewish factory manager, is wrongly accused of the rape and murder of a 13 year old employee. He's thrown into jail, declared guilty at trial, and sentenced to death. After several attempts at appeal, his sentence is reduced to life in prison. However, some citizens felt that justice had not been upheld and Leo is abducted in the middle of the night. The musical ends with Leo's lynching.
Brutal stuff, right? The musical deals with a lot of heavy issues: anti-semitism, prejudice, the justice system, and the influence of the media. Once you get around all that though, the music is wonderful, if not just a bit difficult to coordinate. The book was written by Alfred Urhy and the music is by Jason Robert Brown. The show was first produced on Broadway in December of 1998 and in 1999, it won two Tony Awards for best book and best original score.
Historically speaking, it was never made clear who actually killed the girl, the trial was sensationalized, with the frightened citizens and government looking for someone-anyone-to blame, but the musical leads us to believe that the murderer was Jim Conley, the janitor at Leo's factory.
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