By Julie-Anne Whitney 

‘Parade’ – Book by Alfred Uhry, Music and Lyrics by Jason Robert Brown; Produced by Sharman Altshuler; Directed by Jason Modica; Music Direction by Catherine Stornetta; Choreography by Kira Trolio; Set Design by Lindsay Fuori; Lighting Design by Steve Shack; Sound Design by Elizabeth Cahill; Costume Design by Chelsea Kerl; Stage Managed by Cesara Walters; Dramaturgy by Allison Olivia Choat; Presented by Moonbox Productions at the Boston Center for the Arts (Roberts Theatre) through December 28, 2019.

In the early hours of August 17, 1915, a rabble of twenty-five men stormed a prison farm in Milledgeville, Georgia and captured Leo Frank, a Brooklyn-raised Jewish man wrongfully accused of raping and murdering Mary Phagan, a 13-year-old factory worker in his employ. After driving more than 100 miles back to Phagan’s hometown of Marietta, the angry mob hoisted Frank on top of a table under a large oak tree and demanded an admission of guilt. 31-year-old Frank repeatedly proclaimed his innocence – and was promptly hanged by the neck until dead. One month after the lynching, members of the group, The Knights of Mary Phagan, gathered around a burning cross on Stone Mountain near Atlanta, Georgia and ignited the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan.