PARADE Warts

One has to produce the play THE PLAYWRIGHT WROTE,

not the play the director wishes the playwright wrote.

Dramatic:
Most importantly, what does the play mean and what do we want the audience
to glean from it?
The initial impetus behind mounting the production has to do with sounding a
warning call about prejudice and bigotry. Having stated that:
o The conflict in the play is far more simplified than historical
circumstances lead us to believe.
o How specific is the play to Leo Frank in particular?
Uhry and Brown both Jewish
In this case, the director is Jewish
Turning it into a play about prejudice in general (a la Rodney
King, Cant we all just get along?) dilutes the issue at hand
However, the issues dramatized are indeed complex:
North v. South
White v. Black
Christian v. Jew
Male v. Southern Womanhood
Industry v. agriculture
Slave v. free
o Is the play serviced to its best potential in light of the directors personal
preferences in this case? What is gained? What is lost? Can a
production of the play bear all that the history brings with it?
Anti-Semitism
As experienced at Geneseo
As experienced in my own life, pre-Geneseo
As Jews experience it in the United States (see Jeffrey
Melnick, Black-Jewish Relations on Trial: Leo Frank and Jim
Conley in the New South); 1915 a turning point, esp. for
German Jews who thought they were included in the
 melting pot of America up to this point

The image above says it all to the director. Sorry, folks.

As an ongoing global movement since Constantine (see
James Carroll, Constantines Sword [print and dvd])
o 1915 is exactly 20 years prior to enactment of
Nuremberg Laws.
o Nazis look to the US for practices relative to racial
purity; see Charles Patterson, Eternal Treblinka
Historical outcomes of African American-Jewish relations are not addressed at
all by the plays pessimistic ending (see Melnicks Black-Jewish Relations on
Trial)
o Anti-Defamation League
o Ku Klux Klan
o Crown Heights Riots
o Louis Farrakhan/Nation of Islam

Theatrical:
Large cast
o To double or not to double
o Impact on costuming:
Separate chorus, or do actor/singers show up in numbers they are
not in? (e.g., Is Rosser in Old Red Hills? We likely need his
voice there. Or, is he not there and are even MORE actors
needed?)
Specificity in ethnic casting is absolutely required
No time for a 1913-1915 costume build
Dialect(s): required to underline North-South conflict/contrast
 o Note: Nasally, stereotypical Brooklyn accent for Leo in British
production is offensive; the accent didnt even exist in 1913, and it is
derivative of Irish, not Eastern European Jewish, dialect
Plays close to the edge in terms of stereotyping:
o Southerners
o Leo as the bookworm nebbish Jew versus
o Jim Conley who actually played on stereotypes (see Jeffrey Melnick,
Black-Jewish Relations on Trial: Leo Frank and Jim Conley in the New
South) to literally get away with murder
o See http://www.examiner.com/article/auditions-parade-at-the-4th-wall-
theatre; even audition announcements run this risk across the boards
Adding slides is creating a wart of our own; script does not ask for them;
connecting slides (theatrical/visual) to implications of action (dramatic; see
above) is crucial
o Slides can reveal what costumes cant and wont
o Slides can clarify historical figures and action
o Slides can transport audience through history
o But most important, slides need to JOLT audience into considering the
parallels, issues, we put before them and just what are those going to
be?
Blacks and Jews should be friends?
Who is a real American?
After weeks of research, the conclusion is the prevalence and
persistence of American anti-Semitism
 (scroll down to next page!)PARADE
LIST OF WARTS

DRAMATIC WARTS Distinguishing between levels of time and reality:

a. Actual time; historical material reality
b. Simultaneous action results in double or split focus
a. I-3 Leo at Work; Leo with Mary/Lucille at Home
b. I-6; Newt at interrogation; Leo at factory
c. Cinematic shifts
a. e.g. I-3:
Gov. Slatons speech
Leos internal monologue
Frankie and Mary
Leo at work
d. Fast forwards
a. Fast forward time shift (51 years within I-i)
e. Flashbacks
a. Young Soldier, first scene flashes from 1862 to 1913
Who are these guys? Fast forward time shift (51 years
within two pages, Act I, Scene i)
f. Highly theatricalized use of time: Watsons Lullaby brackets
a scene between Dorsey, Slaton, and Sally; just when IS all
this happening?

Imaginary action/expressionism
a. The Factory Girls
b. Come on Up to My Office

Awkward book scenes that are short and dont hold up to the scenes
wherein plot moves forward via music and singing (e.g.,1-2 1-5)

Use of the n- word in the Courtroom Scene; formerly an issue, is

now absent on insistence of MTI/Uhry/Brown

Necessity of reconciling artistic license taken with some historical

facts.

Second act is a different show from the first act, essentially (common
to musicals; see Fiddler on the Roof).
THEATRICAL WARTS More of an opera than a musical

25 roles with lines + chorus

Warts created by incorporation of slides and potential resultant split

focus

Southern accents

Casting in this particular production:

a. Actors who play parts who move in and out of chorus
 b. Actors who do not play parts and remain in chorus, shifting
choral identities

Small roles that require intense distinctions:

a. Young Soldier/Old Soldier
b. Mary
c. Essie
d. Monteen
e. Iola
f. Peavy
g. Starnes
h. Ivey
i. Guards ad infinitum
Outcome is a foregone conclusion: whats to keep audience coming
back?
Old Soldier: one leg; really? He only has his left leg, according to
lyrics, I-i. Complicates staging in Act 2. Have him limp and use a
crutch.

Leo: an historically unsympathetic man for whom we must feel real

empathy

Marys funeral: how does the coffin get on and off? Where does it
go? Who carries it?

Ending of 1-11 is dialogue that is actually recitative timing.

Portrayal of Jim Conley. According to Steve Oneys definitive study of

the Frank case, Conley knew how to play oppositional stereotypes to
his best advantage: See Spike Lees Blackface Montage from
BAMBOOZLED at 2 hours, 4 minutes http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=KhnsaMLtQM8&feature=related
which you cannot watch without crying (editorial footnote: Terence
Blanchards score is CRUCIAL, take a lesson, students!)

Hammer of Justice laid over dialogue opening of trial scene

Expressionism in the middle of an otherwise real trial with no time for

Leo to exit or re-enter; actor transition (major) to be made onstage
and visible to audience

Lucille disappears to go to Savannah: WHEN DOES SHE RE-

ENTER TRIAL? UNCLEAR.

The Tea Dance: timing out choreography with dialogue laid over it.

What is happening elsewhere onstage when Riley and Angela sing in

Act 2?

The Glory a song in which time and action stand still to allow for a
costume change we no longer need.
Lucille and Leo cannot touch once he is in jail until All the Wasted
Time staging of the two of them up until that moment a major
challenge.
a. Do It Alone, Leo
b. This Is Not Over Yet sung at each other from great
distances and great time lapses

Abduction in Milledgeville State Prison Farm and shift of action to the

oak in Marietta within a matter of lines on p. 92

Awkward staging of hanging scene, end of Act 2 (Leo covering himself

with a croaker sack); Oh, we just so happen to have a croak sack
nearby

Gerry Floriano has pointed out the tension between the Broadway-
ness of the score versus the Brechtian quality of the concept. This
is going to require overt departures from traditional staging in which
we are merely telling an historical story.

Where am I going to get a chain gang?