It is common to base a work of art on a historical event. The audience understands that what it is seeing is a version of the event, often an idealized or highly edited one. What is important is the story being told. The event and characters being portrayed may not be absolutely historically accurate. With the story of PARADE, however, the question, "What really happened back then?" burns and exerts a horrified fascination. It is difficult to merely digest the story of this musical without wanting to know more about the actual events behind it.

PARADE is based on the 1913 murder of thirteen-year-old Mary Phagan at the Atlanta factory where she worked, and the subsequent trial, conviction and eventual lynching of Leo Frank, a Jewish man recently transplanted from New York and superintendent of that factory. The murder and trial struck multiple nerves in the society of the day. Atlanta, the "Gateway to the South" was in the midst of a huge cultural change. Rural Georgia was turning overnight into a landscape of factories. Children, boys and girls, were employed in these factories, and this tore at the fabric of family and society. Many of the owners of these factories were northerners, resented as carpetbaggers who descended on the South to brand it in shame and exploit it for their wealth. Many of these factory owners were Jewish. When Leo Frank became a suspect in the murder, he became a lightning rod for these antagonisms. And all of this was interwoven with the complexity of Black-White relations and Black-Jewish relations when Jim Conley, a Black man, testified as chief witness.

The trial of Leo Frank was indeed a parade of the whole society: southern and northern, Gentile and Jew, White and Black, rich and poor. Uhry and Brown leave room for some ambiguity, but ultimately deliver their own verdict. One cannot possibly present a version of the story without some bias. As dramaturge, I have felt it my duty to encourage everyone involved with this production, including the audience, to explore the history of this controversial case beyond what’s presented in PARADE. My purpose has not been to contradict the authors’ version, but to foster an informed dialogue about this complex subject.

In that spirit, the entire cast and design team have been asked to read And the Dead Shall Rise, by Steve Oney. Published in 2003, it is the most recent and most comprehensive account of (as it is subtitled) "the murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank." I invite you to read it, too. The more one learns about this event, the more amazed one is at its complexity. I also invite you to visit our website, www.ucfparade.com, for more related material. On a personal note, as a Jew myself, I first came to my research with the idea that the Frank trial was a clear case of anti-Semitism, only to be confronted with my own prejudices in weighing the evidence. Certainly, the expression of virulent anti-Semitism surrounded the trial and lynching, but ultimately I found the question of Frank’s guilt or innocence and the factor of anti-Semitism in his conviction and lynching hard to conclusively assess. And in reading the welter of testimony, each person involved is colored one minute with guilt, the next with innocence. But whatever conclusions we may draw, the story of PARADE teaches us that as individuals and as a society, we must constantly guard against our own prejudices and our need for a scapegoat, and that, especially when fears and passions run high, it is our sacred duty to make painstakingly sure that the due process of law for those who stand accused is not compromised.

Andrew Clateman
Dramaturge