PARADE | nicholaswainwright

Our production of Parade was torture theatre in its truest form. We did not shy away from dark themes, but instead brought them to the foreground. It was a theatrical experience unlike any other I have worked on before.

Amid religious intolerance, political injustice and racial tension, the stirring Tony Award-winning Parade explores the endurance of love and hope against all the odds. With a book by acclaimed playwright Alfred Uhry (Driving Miss Daisy) and a rousing, colorful and haunting score by Jason Robert Brown (Songs For a New World, The Last Five Years, Bridges of Madison County), Parade is a moving examination of the darkest corners of America's history.

In 1913, Leo Frank, a Brooklyn-raised Jew living in Georgia, is put on trial for the murder of thirteen-year-old Mary Phagan, a factory worker under his employ. Already guilty in the eyes of everyone around him, a sensationalist publisher and a janitor's false testimony seal Leo's fate. His only defenders are a governor with a conscience and, eventually, his assimilated Southern wife who finds the strength and love to become his greatest champion.