Before I even started rehearsals of Parade at New York City Center, I knew I needed to go to Georgia and pay homage to Leo Frank. I traveled to Atlanta, rented a car, and drove to Marietta. I looked at the path he would have taken in his final hours after his jail cell was raided by men on that fateful night. I spent an entire day filming, taking photos, and reflecting at Leo Frank’s lynching site, which today is a plaque standing between a Waffle House and a taco shack – a small but significant marker of a monumental life and lesson. It is incredibly important to me to have a real connection physically to the place and the people whose stories I’m helping to tell. By being there, I was asking for both permission and blessing from the spirit of this man whose personal story we were going share to thousands of people. After my visit to Marietta, I felt a newfound charge to tell the larger story of Parade. This is one man who was party to such inequity, but how many countless people in similar circumstances do not have plaques, do not have monuments erected to them, do not have musicals written about them? We can’t even begin to count.

As we put together this production, I came to increasingly see how Leo’s story is just a piece of a much broader one. This musical is ultimately a story of injustice, something we are now inundated with every day in a way we simply weren’t when the piece originally premiered in 1998. The immediacy of today’s news cycle, and how it reflects our reality back to us on a constant feed, has forced all of us to reckon with our complicity in ever-present and unfolding tragedy. The unresolved traumas of the American past have led to the abuses of our present, and unfortunately to the legacy that could be our future. And so in telling this story every night, it is my greatest hope that it inspires critical thinking for an audience to actually re-examine the idea that even the most well-intentioned, forward-thinkers can get caught up in great injustice and that the mob has the possibility to form around us, or within us, at any moment. And perhaps by examining that, and being reminded of our own recent history, we might begin to change that narrative for future generations.

Musical theater is, to me, the great American art form. It combines visual art, poetry, music, architecture, dance, and technologies through collaboration. It takes all of these pieces of artistic expression and combines them in a way that is so unique that hopefully you forget that you’re even watching a piece of art – ultimately, the story takes over. What I have tried to do with our production of Parade is to bring our audiences on an epic and emotional experience, which can lead to great catharsis and deep introspection long after the final bow of our incredible cast. I have been overwhelmed by the response to our show, and it is a privilege to share it with you. Thank you for being a part of that conversation and reflection.

– Michael Arden