Parade

Parade

This story tells the heart-wrenching, true story of Leo Frank: a Brooklyn-raised Jewish man living in Atlanta who was wrongfully convicted of the rape and murder of his thirteen-year-old employee, Mary Phagan, in 1913. Because Frank’s trial was replete with faulty testimony and lacked any clear evidence, Georgia’s governor eventually commuted his sentence from death to life imprisonment. Despite this ruling, a lynch mob hanged Frank in Mary Phagan’s hometown of Marietta, Georgia. The momentous case drew national attention to Anti-Semitism, and was pivotal to the founding of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) as well as the reviving of the Ku Klux Klan in the South. With a characteristically rich, intricate, and wide-ranging score penned by Jason Robert Brown, and a bold willingness to dive into the complexities of early 20th century social relationships in the South, Parade is a sophisticated, dark tale with endless depths for a highly skilled company of actors and musicians to plumb.

BIG NEWS ABOUT THIS PRODUCTION~

This production features the University Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Roger Zahab playing a version of the score for full orchestra that has only been heard in a single performance prior to this production. The orchestration was created by Tony award winner Don Sebesky in 2015 for Manhattan Concert Production’s Parade In Concert, which was presented at Avery Fisher Hall on the evening of February 16, 2015, starring Laura Bonanti and Jeremy Jordan, with composer Jason Robert Brown on the podium.

University of Pittsburgh Stages is thrilled to present the first fully-staged production using this orchestration.