[MUSIC- Luscious Jackson: Citysong]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart, live from the WNYC studios in SoHo. Thank you for sharing part of your day with us. Whether you're listening on the radio, live streaming, or on demand, I'm really grateful you are here. As you know, the great Tina Turner passed away yesterday, and for the next two hours, we'll be taking your memories of her. Maybe there's a song that meant a lot to you, or you saw her perform, did your impressions of her change after you read her memoir, or saw the 1993 biopic version of it called, What's Love Got to Do With It? Let us know.

We have this great new old way to communicate. You can now text us here at WNYC. You can text us at 212-433-9692, and later in the show we'll read your texts and we'll play some classic Tina Tunes. Text us 212-433-9692 with your remembrances of Tina Turner. That's part of today's show.

Here's what else is coming up. We have a live and studio performance with singer-songwriter Prateek Kuhad. We'll have a listening party with poet and musician Aja Monet, and we'll mark the end of the series, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. That is our plan today, so let's get this started with Parade.

[music]

The musical Parade is challenging, and the best sense of the word is a challenge to sensitively stage a musical about a 1915 mob lynching of a Jewish man accused of murder. After all, it is based on a true story. Leo Frank was a New Yorker who moved to Atlanta with his wife Lucille, and he ran a pencil factory, but one day, a 13-year-old girl, an employee, was found dead. Despite little evidence and thanks in part to press coverage that whipped up anti-semitism lurking beneath Atlanta's Gentile Southern surface, Frank was sentenced to death. His wife fought mightily for an appeal, and it was announced that Frank's death sentence would be commuted.

A mob took Leo Frank from the jail and hanged him. The case in subsequent lynching helped lead to the formation of the Anti-Defamation League. With its dynamic performances and inventive direction, Parade is also challenging to an audience member where one can find themselves applauding the riveting staging and performance of a song about white supremacy. That's what good theater can do, challenge us, and it is good theater, very good. Parade is up for six Tony Awards, including for our next guests, Ben Platt, who is now Tony-nominated for his role as Frank, and director Michael Arden, also Tony-nominated.

Let's listen to a bit of Ben Platt starring alongside Tony nominee Michael Diamond as Leo and Lucille Frank, here's a bit of Platt's emotional performance. This is, It’s Hard To Speak My Heart from the Parade cast album.

[MUSIC- Ben Platt and Parade Cast: It’s Hard To Speak My Heart]

Ben Platt: I never touched that girl. I think I'd hurt a child yet. I'd hardly seen her face before. I swear, I swore we'd barely met. These people tried to scare you with things I've never said. I know it makes no sense.

Alison Stewart: Joining us now is Ben Platt. Hi, Ben.

Ben Platt: Hello there. How are you?

Alison Stewart: I'm well, thank you. Thank you for asking. Director Michael Arden. Hi, Michael.

Michael Arden: Hi there. So happy to be here.

Alison Stewart: Michael, this is a revival. It had its first run 25 years ago. When did talks begin to bring it back?

Michael Arden: A few years back, we put together a reading that Ben starred in along with Michaela, and that was pre-pandemic and so there was some interest in seeing if this was something that wanted to find its way back to a stage. It really came together in a more real way when City Center of New York contacted me and said, is there something you'd like to revisit? This was at the top of my list. That was last summer, I suppose. It's come together pretty quick. We started last summer putting this together. It had a short run at City Center in the fall and then transferred to Broadway this spring.

Alison Stewart: Ben, you were just a tot when this was first staged. When were you first exposed to Parade?

Ben Platt: I grew up with a lot of exposure to musical theater. My family loves musical theater, and so very much part of the canon is, of course, Jason Robert Brown, and several of the songs from Parade are very beloved in the theater community. I think I was exposed to bits and pieces as a child and songs from the show. Then when I was in high school, there was a production in Los Angeles that came from the Donmar Warehouse in London. I got to see a full staging when I was about 14, and of course, was immediately taken with the story both as a theater nerd and as a Jew. Immediately Leo went on my list of dream roles.

Alison Stewart: That Don Moore staging, Michael, was in 2007 and you think about everything that has happened since then. Think about 25 years ago, just think about the past five years, all of the cultural shifts and the awareness and the racial and reckoning and the way we think about the theater cannon, the way we think about presentation on stage. What were some of the things in the book that needed to be addressed given the cultural shifts of the past even five years?

Michael Arden: Oh, well, it's an incredibly complex story. If you look at when it was written, it premiered on Broadway in '98, '99, and it was during the Clinton administration. I think that especially audiences for a show like Parade were thinking, oh, we're patting ourselves on the back. We dealt with a lot of these issues, and therefore it seemed like more of a period piece but when looking at it now, we've been examining our own culture and society in ways that's a bit more critical than I think we once did, for the better.

We're looking at a lot of different parts of society in Parade and some of which there could be a whole musical written about the Black experience and perspective on Parade. We're choosing to focus on Leo and Lucille Frank and their journey through this. We really wanted to make sure that we were telling the central story, but also taking care to make sure that all perspectives from different people at this time were being recognized and told, even if they weren't the central thrust.

Alison Stewart: Ben, even intellectually I was locked in, but as a Black woman, seeing all those confederate flags, I felt a chill at certain points, especially during that big opening number. I'm curious what's been challenging for you as a person? I know you're a professional. I know this is what you do for a living, but as a human being, what's been challenging about being in this role?

Ben Platt: Certainly. It's very difficult subject matter and of course, playing Leo and having the experience of where the story goes each night is a challenging thing. It's what hangs over my days at all times. I feel that any piece of theater worth doing is going to come with some sacrifices and some bleed into your life experience. I welcome that challenge. Thankfully, Michael has created such an incredible environment for me and Michaela and for the whole company where there's incredible sensitivity and care for us as people and as human beings even before us as artists.

I think we were really set up for success in terms of any time some triggering material or piece of music or prop or imagery was introduced, there was a lot of caretaking to make sure that everyone was prepared for it. We certainly are all holding each other very closely, particularly Michaela and I thanks to the structure of the story. We're very much the two of us against the world in terms of this show. To have a partner on that island going through all of this and receiving this oppressive language and this story together has been really the saving grace for me of the experience. She's become a life friend for sure.

Alison Stewart: Michael, there's a very smart decision was made. I don't know if it was your decision. I'd be curious how it came about that Senator Rafael Warnock of Georgia, this play takes place in Georgia, introduces us, welcomes the audience, which I just thought was really, really a smart choice given that there's some tension between pitting minority groups against one another in the play, the disdain for the confederate supporters Leo has, and these men belong in zoos. Rafael Warnock is such a calming presence. How did that come about?

Michael Arden: It was an idea that I had. We have to remind the audience to turn their cell phones off, unfortunately. I knew we wanted to do so in a way that let the audience know where they were going to be spending the next few hours.

The senator immediately came to mind. We reached out to his office and he agreed, and I wrote the script that he says every night through recording in the house. Like you said, this is a time when minorities were pitted against each other. There was infighting that was constructed and puppeteered by white supremacy. I do believe that the Black community of his time and the Jewish community are inextricably tied because they were both trying in vain in some moments to fight this huge adversary of white supremacy and the old ways as the South was grappling with its trauma from the Civil War and not in the best of ways.

It was a way to welcome the audience to look at how incredibly far we've come that there is this Black man elected to the highest station of the state. I think it's a wonderful entrance into our world. We hear his beautiful accent, his Georgia accent. He lets us know that he is a senator from the great state of Georgia and invites us into a world that is his. It's an exciting thing, and I'm so grateful that he said yes. He's come to see the show since then, and it was lovely to get to meet him.

Alison Stewart: We're having a conversation about Parade running now at the Bernard B Jacobs Theater. It is nominated for best musical revival. We're speaking with Ben Platt, the actor, and Michael Arden, the director. Ben, when we first meet Leo, he's really unhappy with this life in Georgia. What's really bothering him?

Ben Platt: He's a fish out of water, which tends to be the characters that I am drawn to for some reason are these isolated characters. What I love about Leo is that his isolation is due entirely to his locale. He is from Brooklyn, and if you were to put him among his own people, I think he's someone who would fit in very beautifully. He's not necessarily the kind of man who no matter where he is, wants to be living an isolated life. I think he just doesn't gel with the society that he's a part of and is very headstrong and even aggressive against this southern culture and this disappearance and assimilation of loud and proud Judaism as per New York and the North. He certainly starts in a place of isolation.

I think what I love most about the character is obviously he's this symbol and has become this martyr and stands for all of these very big things. In the way that he's been written by Alfred Erie, our book writer, and by Jason Robert Brown composer, he is a difficult character and a very flawed character and has a snobbishness and a chip on his shoulder. To play somebody so imperfect and so flawed and still assert that they are deserving of due process and of justice, I think is a far more compelling story and character as an actor than a perfectly, lovable martyr, if that makes sense.

Alison Stewart: Let's hear a bit of the song, How Can I Call This Home? This is Ben Platt as Leo Frank in Parade.

[MUSIC- Ben Platt and Parade Cast: How Can I Call This Home]

These people make me tense

I live in fear they'll start a conversation

These people make no sense

They talk and I just stare and shut my mouth

It's like a foreign land

I didn't understand

That being southern's not just

Being in the South

When I look out on all this La la la in the

How can I call this home? Land o' cotton

These men belong in zoos

Alison Stewart: Ben, what research should you do into Leo to prepare?

Ben Platt: Well, there's a fantastic book by Steve Oney. It's called The Dead Shall Rise. That's become the primary text in terms of this case and this period. It gives it a beautiful amount of context and this very thorough investigation of that whole period from all sides. I certainly read that. I know that Michaela did too.

I also had the opportunity to go and unearth some archival stuff and some letters that Leo wrote, and telegrams sent back and forth between him and different publications and supporters while he was in prison. Certainly had a good amount of backdrop and tapestry from his history. I think the challenge and the important thing has been really treating the text of the show as the primary source as important as it is to have context for the time period. Michael has made sure that the production is very much rooted in reality and in history.

At the end of the day as an actor, the playable character exists mostly on the page. While it's very much based on reality, this piece and much of it is directly taken from history, it is somewhat fictionalized, and of course, the arc of Leo and Lucille and their characters are tailored to this particular piece. I think for me, it was important to have the context and understand where it is, this is all taking place, but to really craft the character first and foremost from Alfred and Jason's writing.

Alison Stewart: Michael, you display, on the wall behind the stage, projections of the real people that these characters are based on. When did that decision come into the process?

Michael Arden: Well, that was something I knew from the beginning that I wanted to be integrated into the production. I wanted to make sure that at all time, the audience was reminded that no, these people aren't just characters invented by our fabulous writers, but they lived, they breathed, they fought, they suffered injustices, they loved. It was also important to me to give the audience arm them with that information to show them a real picture of Lucille and Leo at the same moment when we meet Ben and Micaela playing Lucille and Leo.

We're able to hold an artistic emotional truth in our minds and representative truth of these two actors on stage, but we're also able to hold this stationary historical truth in our minds, and then we are as an audience then get to put those two together and we create a version of these people in our own minds as an audience member that we then grapple with that lives somewhere between art and truth.

Yes, that was, that was from the beginning. I knew I wanted to really let the audience be constantly reminded of the real history here.

Alison Stewart: My guests are Ben Platt and Michael Arden. We are discussing Parade. We'll hear more from the Parade Cast album, and we'll discuss the relationship between Leo and Lucille after a quick break. This is All Of It.

[music]

You're listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Allison Stewart. My guest this hour are Tony nominees, Ben Platt and Michael Arden. We're discussing Parade, which is now running at the Bernard B Jacobs Theater. It is up for best musical revival. It's a show about the mob lynching of a Jewish man accused of murder. That's Leo Frank. That's the role that Ben Platt is playing. The murder is the catalyst for a lot of the action in the play, Ben, but they're really at the heart of the story and you alluded to it earlier, was this relationship that's been written into this version between Leo and Lucille, his wife. She becomes his most dedicated defender, but at first, when we meet them, there's something else going on in this relationship. They're not estranged, but there's a little bit of a coldness. What's behind that?

Ben Platt: Yes, I think one of the many things that makes this a beloved piece of musical theater, particularly in the theater community is this juxtaposition between this very difficult subject matter and time period. Then this really beautiful, very human, very relatable love story. As you alluded to enters at a time that love stories don't often begin which is that these two are already married and have already been together for a certain period of time and have managed to find a dynamic, but there's a lack of connection, and they're having trouble really fully seeing each other. Through the trauma and all of the painful things that they go through, they are really finally able to fully take in the other and fully find each other again and connect.

For me, among all of the difficulties of the show, the thing that's the most joyful and hopeful to do every night is to live that story with Michaela, who is obviously incredibly gifted, and a wonderful person, but to get to go on that journey that is on the opposite end of the spectrum in terms of the momentum and direction of it. It heads towards such a hopeful, joyful, connective place as you get towards the end of the show as opposed to the historical narrative.

It's a very painful, but really beautiful juxtaposition and to just focus on the three dimensionality of that relationship and of those two characters really connecting and finding each other just as an actor has been definitely the most gratifying part of the experience.

Alison Stewart: Let's listen to a very moving song from the show. This is a duet between Leo and his wife Lucille, played by Micaela Diamond. This is All the Wasted Time from Parade.

[MUSIC - All the Wasted Time: Ben Platt & Micaela Diamond]

And I never knew anything at all

I never knew anything at all

All the wasted time (All the wasted time)

All the million hours

Leaves too high to touch

Roots too strong to fall All the days gone by

To never show I loved you so

And I never knew anything at all

I never knew anything

At all!

Alison Stewart: Michael, I'm going to ask you a serious question in a moment but when I think about Michaela just a few years ago she was riding the subway to LaGuardia. It's amazing when you think about time and what can happen in such a short amount of time, and she's this incredibly talented young performer.

Michael Arden: Yes, Michaela it seems to me that we're watching the birth of a Broadway legend here, so audiences are so enthralled with her. To see her and Ben together, what they're able to do, he is just such a special and unique gifted performer and artist. The two of them together challenge each other, and it's like they lift each other up every night. It's a wonder to see.

Alison Stewart: How did you work with these two actors to help the audience understand the evolution of this relationship between Leo and Lucile from this, as I said, a little bit chilly, they're not connecting at the beginning to being truly connected right before he dies? What did you talk to them about in terms of staging, in terms of the way they physically interacted or didn't interact with one another?

Michael Arden: Yes. I think we looked at a lot of where they were physically with each other at different points in their relationship. How did they feel about their own bodies. It was something we chatted about a bit. How much comfort did they have not only with each other but with themselves, and starting from a place of Ben and Michaela here and now living in the world we do today, and they're bringing so much of their personal experience into each moment. Then by the end of the play, it's really as if they're just meeting actually for the first time because they're both able to let down the guard and the defense of who they think they need to be for each other, and actually are just approaching each other as almost with childlike wonder and with sexual curiosity. It's beautiful to watch.

Every scene changes as opposed to most traditional love stories where I feel like you're falling in love. This is sort of peeling away of all of the brick and mortar that they have put up to protect themselves in this harsh world because of who they are. So much of who they are and how they fit into society affects their relationship and unfortunately, it takes this awful separation for them to find that.

Alison Stewart: My guest director, Michael Arden and actor, Ben Platt, were discussing Parade, now running at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater, it is nominated for best musical revival and each of my guests are nominated in their prospective categories. Ben, during intermission, people who see the show, you are on stage. Leo has been imprisoned, the rest of the cast is off stage. You're sitting at just a desk and you're there throughout the entire intermission. Are you still in character during that time? If so, what are you thinking? If not, still what are you thinking?

Ben Platt: Well, it definitely varies among Michael's very brilliant concepts was this one and when we initially discussed the production he warned me about it nice and early. It was good to know going in that this was going to be a component and of course, I immediately saw the value conceptually of the audience's inability to fully disengage from the story and also for me, a way to pay homage to Leo and the last two years of his life that he spent in isolation, which is very dormant and not so propulsive concept in an otherwise very propulsive show. I think it was a beautiful way to always have a moment to honor that.

It varies. It's something like a little over two hours a week that I'm sitting up there. There are days where everything is fully connected and I can stay very literally in the reality. There are days when it's about making it through the 15 minutes and a bit more of like a dissociative, meditative state. There are days when there's distracting things happening in the crowd. I try to take each one as it comes and just do my best to remain focused in whatever way that that means on any given day.

Alison Stewart: Have you spoken to Jessica Chastain at all about this because the dollhouse begins with her on a rotating stage for 15 to 20 minutes by herself before the show starts?

Ben Platt: Yes. We just did. We had the opportunity to do a round table together and we discussed it. Hers has such a different impulse obviously and conceptually comes from a very different place. The main difference is that she is decidedly making eye contact with each and every member of the audience as they come in. Obviously for me, that's quite the opposite of what I'm hoping to feel in that moment. It's much more about feeling like someone that's on display within his own world and so I can't imagine what her experience must be having to look all of these Chastain fans in the eye as they enter.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: Well, it's so interesting Michael what that moment also tells us about human nature because as I put on my reporter's hat during intermission, watching people trying to figure out what to do, because obviously there are people there who are fans of Ben, who want to take a picture but then suddenly realize, wow, this might be inappropriate, this might not be the best time to take a selfie. I'm curious about how you were thinking about the audience as a director with this 15 minutes.

Michael Arden: Well, I think this 15 minutes or some nights 16 minutes, is a little microcosm for how we behave and how we both associate and disassociate with stories in the theater. These 15 minutes represent two years that he sat in a prison cell. We're obviously not sitting there for two years but 15 minutes can feel excruciating. I'm sure Ben, heaven help you, I'm so sorry and I've asked you to do this, but you see certainly it runs the gamut of people wanting to take pictures of Ben Platt. You see people who are surprised that this is happening and are torn between getting their sippy cup full of red wine or sitting with him because we do have freedom as the audience and some people don't leave their seats and sit with him in this meditative state.

I think for me, as a theatermaker, I'm really interested in challenging the audience and making them an active participant, and this certainly does. It gives the audience a choice when Leo doesn't have a choice. That choice, I think, requires them to examine who they are in relation to Leo, who they are, what their comfort is, how disciplined they are.

It might not even occur to some people but I think it does, I think register. You do have to make a choice to get up. We're not used to standing up and walking away and getting in line for the bathroom when that star is on stage. I think just by nature of that fact we're engaging the audience, they are part of the story at that point

Alison Stewart: Ben, when the show began in February, it was met with protests from Neo-Nazis who stood outside the theater. Was it hard to perform those nights?

Ben Platt: It was only once, thankfully. It was the very first-

Alison Stewart: One night?

Ben Platt: -preview. One night, yes. It's yes and no. I think it's a reality that we knew was there and to see tangible proof of it is obviously frightening and upsetting. In that regard, it adds a layer of apprehension that isn't already there for having your first preview on Broadway already. I think certainly, yes, it was difficult to take in the undeniability of that.

also think that as a company, we really instinctually and immediately banded together and chose to use it as a galvanizing thing and a reminder that there is such a really direct and urgent reason for us to be doing this every night. There are days in any show where you feel like I can't possibly climb this mountain today or even twice today. I always tend to go back to that evening in my mind on the days where I feel that way because you don't get the privilege in every piece of art to have such clear motivation as a person to be doing what you're doing even if the art is beautiful. To have both of those things in this piece once-in-a-lifetime experience for sure.

Alison Stewart: Parade is running now at the Bernard B Jacobs Theater. It is nominated for best musical. Ben Platt and Michael Arden are both nominated in their categories. Thank you so much for making time for us today.

Michael Arden: Thank you.

Ben Platt: Thank you.

 

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