Video: Jason Robert Brown & Alfred Uhry Discuss the Process of Bringing PARADE to the Stage

Hello, I'm Richard Ridge for Broadway World

One of the most important groundbreaking musicals of the 20th century is Alfred Yuri and Jason Robert Brown's masterwork parade

Following a critically acclaimed sold-out run this past fall at City Senators famed encores

it has come to Broadway under the direction of Michael Arden and stars Ben Platt and Michaela Diamond

And I caught up with all of them here at the Lambs Club leading up to their opening night

I always believe the parade would come. back because it needed to and wanted to. And there have been 25 years of looking and hoping and

waiting. And I never gave up on it. And here it is. It's unbelievable. It's wonderful

Take me back to the beginning when you first wrote this with, of course, Hal Prince and Jason Robert

Brown. How did parade come about for you originally? Well, you know, I grew up in Atlanta

And my mother's uncle, my great uncle, owned the pencil factory where the tragedy happened

So I knew about it my whole wife. And when I was a kid, I remember once my parents had some friends over

and I guess I was little enough to be playing on the floor or not listening

And somebody mentioned Leo Frank, and one of the guests got up and walked out of the room

Not talking about that. And I remember asking my grandmother about it, because my grandmother had been a social friend of Lucille and Leo Frank

And she said, oh, well, don't worry about that. So as soon as I was old enough, I got on the bus and went to the library and looked stuff up

And after my play, the last night of Ballyhew opened, I think I was having lunch with Hal, who was a friend

And he said well why exactly were those Atlanta Jews so scared of being Jewish more than other people were in all over I said well I guess it the Leo Frank case He said you don want to know about that but tell me tell me what it was So I did

He put his glasses on top of his head. He said, that's a musical

And I called my mother in Atlanta and said, guess what I'm doing a show with Howard Prince

And she said, oh God, it's Leo Frank. It's now. The idea of it being a musical, at first I was a little stunned

But I realized how savvy he was to think of that because it's so highly emotional and it affects it's like a ripple in a pond and just grows and grows and grows and grows

So we were going to do it with Steve Sontan Steve had just written passion and so for about two or three weeks he was doing parade and then he said

I just can't put myself through it again and I'll say but it's okay because my daughter Daisy's friend and

is great and we're going to use him. And I thought, yeah, oh boy

We're going to go from Steve Stonheim to Daisy's friend. And I met him and he was younger than my own children

and gangly and I loved him right off. And we just talked for about six months

and I told, because he'd never been south except maybe he flew over going to Miami, I guess

but he'd never been in the South. And I told him, we just talked about what it was like

And about six months in, he called me. I remember it was kind of snowy like yesterday

And I went over to his little apartment, and he played me the old Red Hills of Home

and he played me the streetcar song. And I was just gobsmacked

I think I cried, and I'm not a cryer. And he was working on spec all this time

And I called Hal, and I said, this is the real deal

This is, and he had listened to everything. I said all the references

If you listen to the old red hills of home it talks about Marietta it talks about the Chattahoochee it talks about Cobb County You listen to me To have a collaborator that really listens is a gift I haven had many

He listened and he added his own juice and we were off to the racing

You know, Alfred knows this story obviously in his bones. And so the first time around was really, I felt like I was just downloading from Alfred, you know

and trying to bring the story he wanted to tell to life

And I was also very conscious at the time. Alfred is a wonderful lyricist, which, you know, we've forgotten because he hasn't done it

for a long time, but, you know, but I knew Alfred as a lyricist first

And so, me trying to write lyrics to Alfred's story was always a little bit like, well

ha, ha, ha, you know, and add that there's the pressure of Hal Prince around, which was

not a small thing. And then, you know, ten years later, we got back into a room with Rob Ashford

and we really tore the show apart in a lot of ways for the production at the Donmar

And that was a very different experience, because that was the two of us now coming at it

as people who'd sort of been in the trenches together, and also I had done other stuff since then

and he had done other stuff since then. And we didn't have Hal standing over us

And so I felt like there was a beautiful way to meld our experiences

and then by the time this came up, this version is very much based on the Donmar production

but it is in a lot of ways very true to Hal's vision of the piece

So I feel like I'm just, there's this constant, like there's layers on layers on layers of every line in the show

And so watching it, I just, there's, you know, I just get a little bit of, here's Brent Carver

here's Bertie Carvel, there T Knight or here Jeremy Jordan And in any given line all those people are showing up not to mention David Pitou who did the tour and you know Ewan Morton And it like all of these people all of these Leo Franks

and that's only one of the 30 roles in the show. And all the songs have different lives

and I've performed all of the songs in various places and conducted it sometimes

So I just have this whole life with this show that started when I went to a meeting with Hal when I was 24

and I'm 53 years old. And so my entire professional life has been sort of bounded by parade

An incredible cast. I mean, talk about your new cast for this

I mean, Ben Platt, Michaela, Diamond, but it's like having them as your new Franks

I will say, I mean, first of all, it's the best song production I've ever been part of

It's tremendous to hear the power of this. hear the power of those voices

But it was also very important to me that Ben and Michaela are Jewish

And honestly, I've never had a Leo and Lucille who were both Jewish in a production before

And it really counts in a lot of ways for me in terms of how the story gets told

And in terms of, you know, there's been a lot of talk, obviously, in the last five years about what is

authenticity and what is authentic casting and what does that mean. And in these past two years with Mr. Saturday Night and with the movie of 13 and now with

parade, I've had the opportunity to see these pieces that were really conceived with Jewish

characters be played by Jewish actors. And it is very affirming to me and, you know, very significant to get to sort of see

them take ownership of this story, which is in so many ways a Jewish story