Two days after about a dozen neo-Nazis harrassed ticketholders and ticketbuyers outside the Broadway venue where Parade had begun previews, New York Mayor Eric Adams addressed an audience at the musical last night, saying, “When we fill a theater, we send a message out there that this is not a place where hate lives.”
Adams took to the stage at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre prior to last night’s performance, introduced by the musical’s director Michael Arden. (See video below.)
“We have the largest Jewish population outside of Tel Aviv,” Adams told the Parade audience, “and when you come out and really cross-pollinate ideas and culture, that’s the beauty and a symbol of New York City.” The mayor said that the antisemitic protest outside the theater Tuesday night “was not the New York spirit we love – this was hatred, this was bigotry.”
On Tuesday night, prior to the performance of Parade‘s first preview, a group of masked protesters, some carrying signs identifying them as members of the neo-nazi National Socialist Movement, shouted at ticketbuyers “[Leo Frank is] a Jewish pedophile” and “Learn the truth about what you’re going to see tonight. You’re paying $300 to go f*cking worship a pedophile, you might as well know what you’re talking about.” Another protester was heard saying, “Romanticizing pedophiles, Wow!”
Parade, a musical written by Jason Robert Brown and Alfred Uhry and first performed in 1998, stars Ben Platt in the fact-based story of the wrongly accused Leo Frank, a Jewish man tried and eventually lynched in 1913 Georgia for the murder of 13-year-old Mary Phagan.
On Wednesday, Platt and the show’s producers condemned the group’s actions. A coalition of 18 Broadway unions and guilds called on “all members of the theatrical community, all people of conscience, and Mayor Eric Adams to safeguard inclusive environments for everyone who participates in or attends theatrical events in New York.”
Parade is now in previews with an official opening night of Thursday, March 16.
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