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(JTA) — Eight occasions per week, audiences at Broadway’s “Parade” see the curtain rise on a retelling of an act of antisemitism. What they don’t see is the Jewish ritual that comes first.
In an essay for The New York Instances, 23-year-old star Micaela Diamond writes that earlier than virtually each efficiency, the forged members stand in a circle and say the Mourner’s Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the lifeless.
“It’s an expression of neighborhood as we inform this tough story,” writes Diamond, who performs Lucille Frank, the spouse of Jewish lynching sufferer Leo Frank.
It’s not the one prayer recited each night time: Ben Platt, enjoying Leo Frank, recites the Shema simply earlier than he’s killed by a lynch mob, within the closing moments of a musical dramatizing his 1913 arrest and 1915 homicide. The historic consensus is that Frank was harmless of the rape and homicide costs towards him.
In her essay, Diamond shares what she has discovered from enjoying Lucille Frank, to whom she feels related.
“I can relate to Lucille — her Jewishness, her lack of Jewishness, her insistence on assimilation,” Diamond writes. “There are such a lot of components of my identification that really feel extra on the forefront than my Jewishness, like being an actor, being queer, being cook dinner. … But our identities are as nuanced as our roots are indelible.”
Folks like Lucille Frank thought of themselves “Southern first, American second, Jewish later,” in keeping with Alfred Uhry, the author of “Parade.” However in her essay, Diamond notes that order doesn’t matter to antisemites — and she or he had seen it for herself.
On the opening preview night time of the “Parade” revival in February, neo-Nazis rallied exterior the Bernard Jacobs Theatre.
“A play that was meant to be a revival of a century-old story instantly had up to date implications,” Diamond writes, echoing Platt’s take provided on Instagram that night time. “It was a haunting reminder of this story’s immediacy.”
Diamond additionally notes the connections between antisemitism and anti-Black racism within the story of Leo Frank and at the moment. “Parade” provides a condemnation of a legal justice system that “fails to guard all of these with out energy” by pitting Black folks and Jews towards one another, she writes, pointing to how the Frank household’s Black housekeeper is urged to testify towards Leo Frank with proof fabricated by the prosecution.
“If we refuse to embrace our inherent otherness — the components that make us definitively Jewish People — we neglect our frequent battle with different marginalized folks,” Diamond writes.
“Parade,” which is about to run till a minimum of early August, is up for six Tony Awards this weekend, together with finest actor for Platt and finest actress for Diamond.
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