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‘Parade’ Story and Characters | The Box Seat Babes Podcast · The BSB Podcast

• 0:01
  Welcome to another episode of the Box Seat Babes podcast.
• 0:05
  Today we're discussing the latest show to arrive on Broadway in Detroit, Parade.
• 0:09
  But before we discuss what you can expect from this musical, like, follow, and subscribe to Box Seat Babes on all social media platforms at Box Seat Babes.
• 0:17
  And obviously, spoiler warning, if you have not seen Parade, if you have not heard of it since its inception of what, like the 1970s, if you've not seen the revival, 1998, it's
• 0:29
  not that old.
• 0:31
  Obviously scroll on past and come back to it.
• 0:35
  Joining me as always is my fellow box seat babe RJ.
• 0:38
  How you doing today sir?
• 0:41
  Thrivin'.
• 0:43
  thriving.
• 0:45
  How did you like, yesterday we saw Parade.
• 0:51
  General thoughts, like just right off the bat, I'm gonna start off real real fast.
• 0:54
  Like what did you think going into the show when the curtains were open and the stage was already set?
• 1:02
  I thought that was such an interesting beginning.
• 1:06
  Yeah, I mean, having never seen the show and ultimately not knowing anything about it, except for the fact that the stage is exposed for the entirety of the show, I was really
• 1:22
  intrigued how that transferred from the Broadway scene to a national tour.
• 1:28
  But I thought it was very, the setup was really cool.
• 1:32
  Okay.
• 1:34
  I didn't know anything about the show either.
• 1:35
  Again, clearly, because I thought it was began in the 1970s, but it was 1998.
• 1:41
  Did you know about the show in general before before going to the one of the Fisher Theater?
• 1:51
  I did not, I mean, I've seen, obviously, like, we're in the Broadway scene enough to know when the shows roll through.
• 1:58
  And so the PR from the show, I'd seen some little snippets.
• 2:08
  having heard a few of the more so like title songs, but really didn't know a ton about its actual, well, first of all, I didn't know that it was based on a true events.
• 2:28
  And so obviously, basically immediately I figured that out pretty much even just from the stage, but
• 2:39
  Yeah, aside from that, found it to be interesting.
• 2:45
  It gave me, it gave me, the moment I saw it, it gave me To Kill a Mockingbird vibes.
• 2:52
  100%, like very real Southern story of prejudice and injustice and all those different pieces that really are inherent to Kill a Mockingbird were present here in Parade.
• 3:10
  It's interesting how the book came first for To Kill a Mockingbird, Parade came before the show, and then we have To Kill a Mockingbird, the play and like.
• 3:19
  how that interaction kind of came to be, they were, I got the same thing, very similar vibes.
• 3:23
  Lots of wood, lots of period pieces.
• 3:28
  It was interesting, because I didn't know much about this show either prior to doing the interview with Griffin Binnicker, who plays Tom Watson.
• 3:41
  And I was doing my research for that, and that's when I realized that it was not about an actual parade.
• 3:48
  It's actually a sad, sad story.
• 3:52
  and it was based on real events, which I thought was interesting because you don't, like we see a lot of biopic or biopic shows now, but you don't see a lot of shows in this vein.
• 4:02
  Would you agree with that?
• 4:05
  Yeah, I think the historical storytelling, I mean, we've definitely seen an uptick in general historical storytelling.
• 4:14
  We have, you know, like big ones like Hamilton.
• 4:19
  But those ones, I feel like take way more liberty than this show seemed to take, which I could be wrong.
• 4:30
  Again, I actually want to do some additional research on.
• 4:33
  the history behind the show, but it seemed to be a little more, well, a lot more down to earth and a lot more like we are drawing direct parallels from history, even in the way
• 4:47
  that, again, the staging was presented and the projections that were involved in the staging were kind of presented.
• 4:58
  I do think it's interesting that this is described both by, you know, Griffin described it this way, if you look on the Wikipedia, they describe it, but it's considered a
• 5:06
  dramatization of real life events, which means that somewhere along the lines, they elaborated, they, what sort I'm looking for, they...
• 5:17
  elaborated against it, like they added stuff to it.
• 5:21
  So I'm wondering like what pieces like what pieces were added, what was dramatized, where it went possibly some of the aspects of like seeing Leo Frank play out the other parts of
• 5:34
  the story.
• 5:34
  Because again, nobody was there but the person who ever killed the young girl.
• 5:42
  So I am interested in kind of wondering what parts were dramatized and what parts actually were
• 5:48
  about history, there was a lot of projections with pictures and names and dates and locations.
• 5:53
  And in the end, you find out that the case reopened in 2019.
• 5:57
  So there's so much history here.
• 5:59
  And it's not usually presented in this way.
• 6:01
  If you're talking about Hamilton or Six, which are much more modernizing the story, this was 100 % a living, reenactment of that story.
• 6:15
  Yeah, and with even the dramatization piece, I would be curious to see where that breakdown is because, I mean, obviously it didn't happen in musical form in real life.
• 6:29
  So you have the dramatization of the musicality of it, where I think probably a lot of liberties are taken because you have to have lyrics that...
• 6:40
  makes sense to the story, but also maybe you're kind of spinning them to be a little tad more dramatic because that's the way music runs.
• 6:51
  Whereas the literal speaking, if you were able to historically find it, you know, it could be word for word if you wanted it to be.
• 7:04
  So yeah, I'd definitely be interested in kind of looking at that and analyzing
• 7:10
  what, where those liberties were taken.
• 7:14
  Absolutely.
• 7:14
  And so when you go to the core of the story, we're telling the story of a real life murder case of a young girl back in Georgia in 1913.
• 7:24
  And even though that's such an important piece of it, really the whole story is kind of like the trial and eventual lynching of Leo Frank, was a Jewish man who was accused of
• 7:34
  murdering the young girl.
• 7:38
  While we both didn't really know a lot about the story going into it, did you like?
• 7:44
  What was your impression of kind of that?
• 7:46
  Because this is a very dark story and a very timely story at that.
• 7:52
  Yeah, I mean, when the opening number began, I immediately cringed due to the staging and the fact that, you know, basically I'm looking at a stage full of, you know, Confederate
• 8:09
  flags and seemingly a town of folks who are celebrating
• 8:21
  And you know, that's just without knowing where the story was going, I was almost, I think, a little bit shocked because I was like, like, where is this going?
• 8:32
  Like, what are we doing?
• 8:34
  Where are we and what are we doing here?
• 8:37
  I don't think I realized how like kind of highly political it was going to be right off the right off the bat, even though politics is not something that they talked about.
• 8:52
  out loud a ton, just the representation and the mindset was so clear that you knew what the story was trying to portray.
• 9:07
  Going back to that first scene, yeah, I think I actually gasped a little bit.
• 9:10
  I was just like, what is this show going to be?
• 9:14
  It's like Confederate flags.
• 9:17
  You're seeing soldiers.
• 9:19
  I'm just like, man, what are we doing?
• 9:23
  What did we just sit down to watch?
• 9:27
  Probably rightfully so.
• 9:28
  It is very shocking.
• 9:30
  It's supposed that's make people stop and think.
• 9:34
  Yeah, it's mean, it's it's put in a light that.
• 9:40
  is almost, it's like borderline neutral.
• 9:44
  think
• 9:47
  Because it's so hard to say, because we didn't live in that time, right?
• 9:51
  So the way that each of us perceive the history of that time, I think really affects how the show immediately kind of hits you.
• 10:06
  But the celebratory nature of it all amidst, and I think there's even a couple lines about, right, right.
• 10:17
  I think in the first couple scenes where he's talking about celebrating a loss, know, celebrating losing the war.
• 10:27
  Just such an interesting, I just would have never thought that that is how that would be portrayed and or how that, you know, if that was truly happening, but also I shouldn't be
• 10:42
  shocked, right?
• 10:43
  Because we still have folks who
• 10:47
  carry the Confederate flag today.
• 10:52
  and not in a historical sense, you know, more so in a malicious kind of way, I think.
• 11:04
  And so I think that's actually what caught me off guard is my experience with what that symbol means to people versus what it meant to people back then.
• 11:16
  for sure.
• 11:16
  And I think that it definitely sets the tone very quickly of reminding people that patterns in history will repeat.
• 11:25
  And here we are, something that maybe people are starting to experience again.
• 11:31
  That's the parallels I drew right away of you're starting to see more extremism.
• 11:35
  You're starting to see more of those severe situations possibly crop up.
• 11:42
  And so to just start it off that way.
• 11:44
  And I will say this too.
• 11:45
  don't, at first I was confused as how does that connect to the rest of the story?
• 11:51
  Because it felt like it did feel kind of disjointed at first of being like, we're telling the story.
• 11:55
  There's clearly two people who are, they're kind of making love and stuff like that.
• 12:01
  And it's a soldier.
• 12:02
  And then the story jumps years.
• 12:06
  And I was just like, interesting.
• 12:08
  How does this connect?
• 12:09
  What are we setting up here?
• 12:11
  I think it took a while to get back to that first scene to realize how it was connecting and really kind of ties to that deep-rooted the South, you know, of just kind of what they
• 12:22
  stood for and stuff like that and how that led ultimately to Leo Frank's death.
• 12:31
  Yeah, the layer of, as we discover, the layer of pride, think I also was like, okay, I know that this is not what this is about in general.
• 12:42
  So how do we, how does this pull into his story?
• 12:47
  But it is very much, I mean, you have to set the precedent on, it's kind of like trying to set up people to understand why things happened.
• 13:00
  you have to understand why how people thought and what they celebrated and what they were their fears were.
• 13:09
  And obviously, that's weaved throughout the story.
• 13:11
  But I think from the beginning and the end, obviously, as we know, kind of coming together in regards to celebrating their state, right, there's a lot of pride in in Georgia, and
• 13:25
  there's a lot of pride in those Red Hills and
• 13:30
  I think all of us have probably experienced being proud of something before and just the highlighting the extremism of even when something has been lost, you're still proud.
• 13:49
  Yeah, it was it's a really interesting sentiment.
• 13:54
  I do like in the show that they even do it in small ways, such as like Leo Frank being proud of being from New York.
• 14:00
  And like that's weaved through the narrative quite a few times of being like the, never quite leave where you come from.
• 14:09
  And it also kind of speaks to this, feeling different, because not only was he kind of sought after because he was more different than persecuting a black man.
• 14:21
  There's like that line, there's been like the,
• 14:23
  We've seen people prosecuting a black man multiple times.
• 14:28
  This doesn't have the impact that you want.
• 14:30
  Let's go after Leo Frank.
• 14:32
  they kind of, you know, for those who haven't seen it or, you know, Leo Frank is falsely accused of killing this girl.
• 14:40
  And there's the government that kind of takes the story and completely the narrative and completely changes it to make it sound like it's him.
• 14:49
  And so you have the from the very beginning, he's different because he's from New York and then
• 14:53
  By the end of it, he's different because he's Jewish, and he's different because he didn't do it, somebody wants him to pay.
• 15:00
  So there's like, know, the differences and the pride and all of that is really weaved together through this whole narrative.
• 15:07
  Well, yeah, and then, of course, in the very last few moments when you talk about Pride and you talk about Leo specifically and how he also kept his story straight the entire
• 15:20
  time and even in a moment where he could have changed his story just for a moment to change the outcome.
• 15:31
  Not that he was too proud, but he was proud enough to say, no, I'm not going to lie to you and change my story now.
• 15:37
  I'm going to tell you the truth, even if it costs me everything.
• 15:42
  That moment alone, well, first off, I cried through multiple times of this show, but that moment was really powerful in the fact of having your conviction.
• 15:52
  And I think that there's so many of us, no matter what you believe in, so many of us are very strong in our convictions.
• 15:59
  And seeing somebody who's willing to die for that and willing to be like, of all the things I can do, you know, and I'm sorry to my wife and I'm sorry to God and I'm sorry
• 16:09
  that I can't finish my story.
• 16:11
  but I cannot give you this piece of me because that's not fair to myself.
• 16:17
  And that is so beautiful.
• 16:19
  And it was done so well by the end of it.
• 16:22
  And it shows you kind of like the positive side of being prideful, even though ultimately resulted in his death.
• 16:31
  Yeah, yeah, think especially when I, I don't know, I think in the moment I thought of myself and I thought, you know, would I be the same, would I respond the same?
• 16:49
  And that's, so when you feel so powerfully about something, I mean, in today's world, I'm not sure that many people would.
• 16:59
  I'm not sure that many people would stay true to themselves because we're so worried about ourselves, of course, and like who doesn't want to keep living.
• 17:14
  yeah, just a different perspective and a very passionate and like you said, powerful moment.
• 17:26
  100%.
• 17:26
  There's also this theme though of love.
• 17:30
  And I think if you're looking at the story of love, there's a few different kinds of love.
• 17:35
  But the one that I want to talk about first is that between Leo and his wife, Lucille, which at the beginning, almost felt like there was, it was like a marriage of duty almost
• 17:48
  at first.
• 17:49
  It was almost like business.
• 17:50
  It felt very business-like.
• 17:52
  And by the end of it, by the time...
• 17:56
  his life was nearing its end, there was like a real love for each other.
• 18:02
  And there was like her being like, you're not, don't like, you're not, you're coming home.
• 18:06
  And like, that's, that's just a given.
• 18:08
  And I can't wait to see you and hug you and be with you once more.
• 18:14
  Which it felt like a very beautiful, real, raw love.
• 18:19
  Not like just like romance, ha ha, we're gonna like, you know.
• 18:23
  Like a lot of the romances that we've been seeing recently in a lot of Broadway shows, which is like believe in love, like love is great and stuff like this.
• 18:31
  But this was like, this was the moment of like love is great, but love is real, you know, and there's the rawness that comes with that.
• 18:37
  What did you think of their relationship and that message of love?
• 18:42
  Yeah, I I agree.
• 18:43
  think at the beginning, intentionally or, you know, depending on historically so, it did feel like you knew that in order for them to be together, there had to be some type of
• 18:56
  connection, right?
• 18:57
  But it did feel like
• 19:01
  You know, we're doing this thing.
• 19:03
  We're checking these boxes, you know, and then there was talk of, you know, the jokes kind of around procreating.
• 19:12
  and.
• 19:14
  You know, him moving down there for the job and her, her and her family.
• 19:20
  And then as that timeline develops.
• 19:27
  I think we see him recognize maybe things that he had lost sight of in regards to the fact that she wasn't just the housewife, right?
• 19:41
  She wasn't just making the coffee and cooking the meals and fixing the bed.
• 19:46
  She was actually very smart and would go, you know, really put herself on the line.
• 19:56
  for him and that was, you know, all that it really took towards the end there for him to.
• 20:10
  appreciate her in those, you know, final, final few, I'm trying to remember what the timeline was, but really probably months.
• 20:20
  Sure, absolutely.
• 20:22
  So why do you feel like Parade is more relevant now than it has ever been?
• 20:29
  Like why was it important for this show to visit Detroit and tell its story?
• 20:35
  Why did it win the Tony?
• 20:36
  Like why is the story so powerful?
• 20:41
  Yeah, I mean, there's always just something way more powerful when the story is true, right?
• 20:46
  Like when it's based on something historical, because these are the stories that we don't always hear about.
• 21:00
  in the history books, right?
• 21:02
  Like moments that were maybe not our proudest are the ones that sometimes we really need to learn from.
• 21:12
  And so I think especially, yeah, especially in this time, like we mentioned, this is a highly political show.
• 21:20
  It's woven throughout the entire show.
• 21:25
  Not even directly because of
• 21:29
  politics, but just because of the rhetoric behind us versus them.
• 21:36
  And again, in today's time, I think we have a ton of polarization.
• 21:42
  And I think that just adds another layer to it as you sit and you watch this show.
• 21:50
  And unfortunately, in recent years as well, the, you know, the rhetoric again, around this exact thing.
• 21:58
  the anti-Semitism, it's real.
• 22:02
  Hatred is real.
• 22:04
  And the power of, once again, we think about media played a massive role in this.
• 22:11
  people with influence instilling that influence in others who maybe don't have the resources or the time to be able to look into the truth.
• 22:24
  Yeah, it really makes you think about
• 22:28
  even the judicial system in general, the justice system, and how desperate people will say and do desperate things, and that can cause catastrophic events to occur.
• 22:46
  100%, 100%.
• 22:49
  I was blown away by the message.
• 22:55
  And this is a story that took place over 100 years ago, and it still has weight and importance today.
• 23:03
  Otherwise, you wouldn't have seen Georgia open up the case again come 2019.
• 23:09
  There is...
• 23:12
  This is something that people are still experiencing.
• 23:14
  This is hatred.
• 23:15
  I mean, we see hatred from all sides, from all parties.
• 23:19
  It feels like more now than ever we're seeing this.
• 23:22
  And so like, this is the time to have a story like this that is just...
• 23:29
  Beautiful and beautifully tragic like the beauty and the tragedy and we've talked about it with a few different shows But like this is that show like it is so much trauma and so
• 23:39
  much tragedy But Parade doesn't just highlight that it highlights the parts of it that are beautiful And so that's one of the things that really stuck out to me Other with the
• 23:53
  exception of I think that's there are some great performances in the show to some of these actors
• 23:58
  are at the top of their game.
• 24:00
  And I think we have to start with Leo Frank himself.
• 24:04
  What did you think of Max's portrayal of Leo Frank?
• 24:14
  Yeah, wow.
• 24:18
  just, I mean, obviously having never seen the show, I don't have anything to particularly compare him to, but everything that he did was so, it seems meticulously thought out and
• 24:35
  even kind of the shift in character from kind of this, seemingly socially timid, but then,
• 24:47
  confident kind of in the in between and then towards the end.
• 24:57
  little bit humbled.
• 24:58
  There was just, yeah, there was so much growth, so much development.
• 25:03
  And again, with it being based on a true story, it makes me wonder how deep he really had to get to know Leo Frank as a person based on the history books.
• 25:17
  And I'm sure that that also, like, what an experience to have for many of these folks to be able to read up
• 25:26
  on the person that they are portraying and really dig into the character.
• 25:31
  just, you can tell it adds a whole other level because it is a real person.
• 25:37
  Absolutely.
• 25:38
  There's, again, that realness.
• 25:40
  I mean, I pulled up the cast list.
• 25:42
  I'm like, every single person, I'm like, god, they did a great job.
• 25:44
  They did a great job.
• 25:45
  I could run down the list of people.
• 25:48
  But they really, again, not knowing much about the story, those didn't feel like characters on stage.
• 25:57
  They felt like real people on stage.
• 25:58
  So I feel like there is a level of homework that these actors did to really bringing these
• 26:06
  historical people to life on stage.
• 26:11
  At least I would assume so.
• 26:12
  I mean, that's what it feels like watching it from our side of the curtain.
• 26:20
  Yeah, yeah, I would agree.
• 26:22
  And I think it has to be exhausting knowing and maybe even a little bit terrifying.
• 26:31
  mean, obviously these are all professionals.
• 26:34
  They've worked to be where they are and be in these roles.
• 26:38
  But to constantly be storytelling, like every night, such a intense...
• 26:46
  and just emotionally kind of berating show.
• 26:50
  Like I can only imagine going through that every single day, sometimes multiple times a day.
• 26:56
  And then not even knowing the impact that you're making because of this exact thing we're talking about, know, wanting to then go back after the show and read up on these people,
• 27:10
  on their lives.
• 27:11
  Like that's a massive undertaking for anyone.
• 27:16
  And I think that it speaks to the show itself because while we were in intermission, people were looking up the story on their phone.
• 27:24
  mean, Marti, who we brought to the show with us, was scrolling through the Wikipedia page, was looking up Leo's story, was like exploring this.
• 27:34
  so like if we're doing that as the audience, there's no way that these individuals on stage also did that.
• 27:41
  And again, there's so many people I want to call out.
• 27:44
  I wish we had more time.
• 27:46
  But like Talia Suskauer who played Lucille, fantastic.
• 27:51
  Griffin who played Tom Watson, fantastic.
• 27:55
  mean like, I'm just, there's, you can scroll, there's like 30 people in the show and every person feels important at some point.
• 28:03
  Everybody has a role that is important and everybody is feeding off of each other to give this best performance.
• 28:10
  That's really hard.
• 28:11
  Like Leo Frank, you know, Max Chenrin is a
• 28:18
  it's just a standout because the show is so much about him and he has to play so many different roles of so many different Leos, but everybody's just excels, in parade, at
• 28:30
  least in my opinion.
• 28:31
  Would you agree?
• 28:33
  Yeah, I mean, when that opening number occurred and again, like people started coming, more people started coming on stage.
• 28:40
  Like I had no idea that the cast for the show was so large and just so intent.
• 28:49
  Like everyone was so spot on and every move was intentional.
• 28:55
  Like every choreographed moment was just on the beat.
• 29:01
  And so.
• 29:03
  I think that again, it speaks to their talent, but it speaks to their intentionality behind telling this story and telling it right.
• 29:12
  For sure, for sure.
• 29:14
  And so with that, we are running out of time, but be on the lookout for part two of our parade discussion, where we will be breaking down the music, technical aspects of the
• 29:22
  show, and giving our final verdict.
• 29:24
  Thank you again for joining us here in our box seats.
• 29:26
  Till next curtain call.