Song Stories- Jason Robert Brown on What Inspired PARADE's 'The Old Red Hills of Home'

Hello, I'm Richard Ridge for Broadway World

On Tuesday evening, February 20th, Manhattan Concert Productions will present Broadway Classics in Concert

This star-studded event will feature songs from some of Broadway's most beloved

award-winning composers and writers who we caught up with here at Sardi's

right before the legendary night. And you're holding my arm

And you're stroking my neck And you're fine, my love Mr. Hayden

Mr. Hayden Mr. Hayden Have a great day If the old rain is gone

the old red hills of home We now to Praise those times For the old hills of Georgia

Those proud and valiant men Will sing Dixie once again

Who gave everything for Georgia and Parade came about because Hal Prince and Alfred Urie

had begun working on the Leo Frank story, and originally the person who was writing it with them

was Stephen Sondheim. And Steve had just finished working on Passion and I think ultimately the idea of doing another dark story after Passion was too much for him And so he said you know what this isn a project for me And so Hal I had known Hal through his daughter Daisy who had directed my first show So Hal said well there that kid that Daisy works with maybe he wants to write it with us

Which seems absurd to me now as a story, but it is in fact what happened

So he called me into his office and I met Alfred and I got a whole bunch of research material on the show

And that was how I got involved in writing Parade in the first place. On Mary an's tombstone, there's a phrase about how she died for the glory of the Red Hills of Georgia

And that was an easy starting point for me, just that phrase, the old Red Hills

So when I started writing The Old Red Hills of Home, the idea was to encompass both this sense of pride that the people of Atlanta had, that the Southerners have

What does that mean and feel like? But also this sense of having lost

There is, within all of the characters in the South, there is a keen sense of loss

And understanding that loss, I think, is key to making sure that the show is not about

some bunch of cartoons who go after some nice guy and terrible things happen I think these are people who are searching for why they feel like they lost something Why do they feel like something got taken away from them Who responsible for this And in searching

for a scapegoat, in searching for, you know, who did this, they land on Leo Frank unfairly, unjustly

cruelly, horribly. But that's, the old Red Hills of Home is what starts that journey off. There is

this thing they have such pride in and such love for, these old Red Hills. And they're watching

them be defiled. Leo is looking for where he belongs. And that sense that you can be someplace

and simply not belong there, I think that is a very, it feels like a very 20th century, 21st

century kind of struggle to me. I think that sense that this country is so big and so wide

and being an American, you'd like to think that you can go from, you know, here to Montana

and you're still an American. But in fact, it's very hard to belong

It's hard to find your people and find your tribe. And I think that relevance of Leo's quest

and the way he finds it in Lucille, the way he realizes that he's meant to be with her all along

that's very moving to me still and very relevant to me still