Parade

Drew Klingner directed Parade for his senior distinction project. With a book by Alfred Uhry and music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown, the musical dramatizes the 1913 trial of Jewish factory manager Leo Frank, who was accused and convicted of raping and murdering a thirteen-year-old employee, Mary Phagan. The plot of the musical dramatizes the historical story and does not shy away from the conclusion of some that the likely killer was the factory janitor Jim Conley, the key witness against Frank at the trial. The true villains of the piece are portrayed as the prosecutor Hugh Dorsey (later the governor of Georgia and then a judge) and the rabid publisher Tom Watson (later elected a U.S. senator).