Summing Up "Parade"

Parade marched on to the Galvin stage in early October with the ground-breaking story of the trial and various injustices of Leo Frank, which was also part of the University's annual project series, Justice.

While this show is set in 1913 in Georgia, students found parallels between the injustices that were taken against Leo Frank and the injustices that are present now against outsiders in our community, showing that this performance did more than just entertain.

Directed by Dan Rairdin-Hale '04 on the Allaert stage, Parade pulled from all classes and majors to fill the cast, even SAU staff and members of the community. Junior Sam Jones played the role of Leo Frank alongside sophomore Kayla Jones who portrayed his wife, Lucille. They were supported by SAU theatre veterans and seniors Jonathan (J.J) Johnson, Jordan McGinnis, and Amelia Fischer.

There were many new faces on the SAU stage this year, including First Year students Evan Wood, Rebecca Moews, Sarah Goodall, and Emily Mitchell. This was a large cast, which lent itself to the "mob-mentality" needed to convince the audience that humans can be responsible for such injustices. The large cast easily simulated a community with strong and unfailing values and showed what those communities do to outsiders.

"It was powerful every time I saw it," said Stage Manager and senior Shannon Rourke. "It was the hardest show I've ever stage managed because it was the largest cast I've ever worked with. We also ran into a lot of technical problems but everything was worth it once performances started."

The aforementioned technical problems could have easily sent the show into a tail-slide, but the theatre department proved, once again, that it works as hard as it plays. Many of the actors played double-duty by helping to build sets, hang lights, and rehearsing extra on their own to make this a truly spectacular show.

Another potential problem was the music. Anyone working in the theatre world knows that Jason Robert Brown is a notoriously difficult composer to pull off, but the SAU company of Parade pulled it off beautifully, with the help of music director Thea Engleson.

While everything for the production of Parade came together, the story of the real trial of Leo Frank did not. Frank was hung for a crime he did not commit, and the audience is left with many questions as to what happened and no answers. There is still controversy as to what happened, and the audiences of Parade left every night thinking about what they saw and what they can do to stop injustice in the world.