Inside: The Scottsboro Boys

A Young Vic and Catherine Schreiber Production

Inside: The Scottsboro Boys Music & Lyrics by John Kander and Fred Ebb

Book by David Thompson

Direction and Choreography by Susan Stroman

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Photos by Richard Hubert Smith unless otherwise stated Compiled by: Laura Farnworth

Edited by: Georgia Dale First performed at the Young Vic on 18

th October 2013

Welcome to the Young Vic’s series of Inside guides. We hope that they will provide you with an insight into our productions and take you on a journey through the creative process. They are compiled by emerging directors who are part of the Young Vic’s Director’s Network. The director undertakes research and interviews with actors and the creative team, giving you unique access to the production. The Director’s Network provides positive and proactive support for emerging directors by offering a range of opportunities to help them develop their craft.

These packs are produced by the Taking Part Department at the Young Vic. Taking Part is committed to offering our community in Lambeth and Southwark a wealth of opportunities to be involved in the big world inside the Young Vic. We produce work with local schools, young people and adults, which run alongside our professional productions.

From the plays we produce, to the way that we produce them and all of the other work that we do, we’d like to think there’s something at the Young Vic that would interest everyone.

If you live or study in Lambeth or Southwark and would like to find out more about our work or get involved please visit www.youngvic.org/takingpart

You can also read our blog to find out what we’re currently up to http://youngviclondon.wordpress.com/category/taking-part/

If you have any questions about these packs or our work please contact [email protected]

We hope you enjoy learning about our production from the inside.

The Taking Part Team





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Contents

Introduction from Laura Farnworth

Part 1: Finding the Musical - A True Story 1. The Real Scottsboro Boys 2. The people behind the characters 3. Synopsis 4. Following the story 5. Kander and Ebb: Score and Libretto

Part 2: A Musical with a Political Message 1. Why tell this story as a musical rather than a play? 2. Staging Techniques to tell the story

� Theatrical Form and the Minstrel Show � The Design � Character Doubling � Character and Caricature � Breaking the Minstrel Show Form � Light and Location � Picture Perfect � Jumping Time

3. Activities 4. Some other musicals which convey a political message

Part 3: Staging a Musical 1. The rehearsal room floor 2. A day in the life of rehearsals 3. The Scottsboro Boys ‘bible’ 4. The challenges of this musical

Part 4: From Broadway to London: The transfer 1. Create versus Recreate 2. The Role of ‘The Associate’ and ‘The Assistant’ 3. An original and new cast 4. Rehearsals – Susan Stroman arrives

Part 5: Meet the Company 1. Susan Stroman, Director 2. Jonathan O’Boyle, Assistant Director 3. Alex Constantin, Company Stage Manager 4. Catherine Kodicek, Head of Costume at the Young Vic 5. Colman Domingo and Forrest McClendon - Mr Bones and Mr Tambo 6. James T Lane, Emile Ruddock, Kyle Scatliffe, and Carl Spencer – Ruby/Ozie, Willie, Haywood and Andy

7. Clinton Roane - Roy Wright 8. The Company, Biographies

Appendix 1. Further information 2. Taking Part Sponsorship





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Hello, My name is Laura Farnworth. I am a director and theatre maker. Before working on this resource guide, I had not heard about the true story of the Scottsboro Boys, and even though I work in theatre, I am a little ashamed to admit I was not very familiar with the musical genre either. So the writing of this pack has been a real education for me. It has taken me on a journey, where I have discovered my own appreciation for the musical form, and also a conviction for why the story of these nine young men and boys should be told today. It is these thoughts and insights that I share with you in the hope that they may give you a new relationship to musicals and a closer connection with our production; The Scottsboro Boys. Researching the true events and injustice of the Scottsboro case has both moved and appalled me. I have found it shocking that a rash lie told in 1931, had such terrible consequences that destroyed the rest of these young men’s lives. It is unbelievable to think that their pardons are still in progress today. Speaking to members of the creative team of The Scottsboro Boys has given me an understanding of the precision, skill and craft that goes into staging this show. I have been surprised by how effective the musical form can be for communicating such a harrowing story. Artistically, I have been impressed by the theatrical form and imaginative staging behind the creation of The Scottsboro Boys. With storytelling at its very heart, The Scottsboro Boys is theatre at its best. I would like to thank all the creatives who I have met and talked with, and who gave me their valuable time from such incredibly busy schedules in the remount of this show. I particularly would like to thank Jonathan O’Boyle, the Jerwood Assistant Director on this show, whose insight and observations of the process have been invaluable to me and to the making of this guide. I hope you enjoy. With best wishes, Laura





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Part 1: Finding the musical

– A True Story

The original Scottsboro Boys, 20 March 1931





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Part 1: Finding the Musical – A True Story

1. The Real Scottsboro Boys

This article first appeared in Words on Plays, the performance guide series of San

Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.). Dan Rubin is the editor of Words on

Plays and A.C.T.’s publications manager.

The Scottsboro Boys

A True Story

By Dan Rubin On a Train to Memphis

On March 25, 1931, a number of youths—all poor and uneducated southerners—were bumming a ride on the 44-car Alabama Great Southern chugging its way through northern Alabama on its way to Memphis, Tennessee. One of the travelers, a white boy, stepped on the hand of the black Haywood Patterson as he held onto the side of a car. Heated words were exchanged. When the freight train slowed to climb a hill, the white boy and his pals jumped off to gather rocks, with which they began pelting Patterson and his friends (Eugene Williams and brothers Andrew and Leroy Wright). Patterson’s group, with the help of other black hoboes they recruited, pushed or otherwise encouraged the white boys from the train, ending the dispute. Only that was not the end. It was the first bout in a battle that would go on for decades and expose Alabama’s social inequality and broken judicial system to the world. The Scottsboro case began “with a white foot on my black hand,” Patterson later wrote, eloquently encapsulating the plight of black Americans living in the South at the time— a tragedy that, for many, the Scottsboro Boys came to represent. The defeated white gang ran to the nearby town of Steveson and complained to the stationmaster. The stationmaster got word to the authorities in Paint Rock, and by the time the train pulled into town, a well-armed posse was waiting to stop it. Patterson, Williams, and the Wright brothers were pulled off, as were five other black boys: Clarence Norris and Charlie Weems, who had been involved with the earlier scuffle; and Olen Montgomery, Willie Roberson, and Ozie Powell, who had been traveling alone in other train cars, oblivious to the confrontation. Mostly strangers, they were bound with plow line, shoved onto the flatbed of a truck, and transported to Scottsboro’s dilapidated, two-story jail. The outspoken Patterson asked what they were being arrested for. “Assault and attempt to murder,” he was told. Which is likely what the boys would have been charged with had the authorities not also found two white girls traveling on the train. Victoria Price and Ruby Bates, two mill workers from Huntsville, Alabama, were traveling home after unsuccessfully looking for





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work in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Like the boys, they were impoverished, uneducated, and desperate—“white trash” despised by “respectable” southerners almost as much as the destitute black population. Both girls were the primary providers for their fatherless homes, and, with work in the poorly paying mill sporadic, they supplemented their incomes with sex work. Both had had run-ins with the law before, so when they were taken from the train in Paint Rock, they knew enough to be nervous. They would be charged with vagrancy, or worse, under the Mann Act, with crossing state lines for immoral purposes. So, in the interest of self-preservation, they lied. As the train traveled from Steveson to Paint Rock, they told the officers, 12 black men had held them down and their legs apart, threatened them with knives and a pistol, and taken turns raping them. Three had gotten away, but the authorities were currently holding nine in custody. The distraction worked, and for the first time in their lives, the girls were not looked at as untouchable, low-down tramps: instead they were transformed into poor but virtuous white southern women, whose honor had been sullied and must be avenged. Had the boys feared for their lives before, after learning what the two girls were accusing them of, they knew they were as good as dead. Word of their most deplor- able crime spread instantly. Their brutality was no surprise to the members of the rural white population, who believed that black men would always rape white women when given the chance—and that the only way to combat such savagery was to strike the fear of mutilation and death into their hearts. A lynch mob surrounding the Scottsboro jail grew. By evening, a mass of 300 threatened to break down the doors; inside, the deputies were ready to turn their prisoners over. Soon the boys would be a statistic—nine more lynchings to add to the South’s ugly ledger. And the world would think little of it. The Jackson County sheriff, M. L. Wann, however, would not let that happen. “I don’t believe that story the girls told,” he comforted the nine boys, as his wife, within earshot, attempted to persuade Price and Bates to recant. Wann tried to disperse the crowd. Failing, he called the governor. The governor called the National Guard. The boys survived the night, and the following day they were escorted to a prison in Gadsen. Their arrest made headlines in the morning paper, and they were rechristened: for the moment they were safe, but for the rest of their lives—however long that might be— they would be known as the Scottsboro Boys. The Trial

The Scottsboro Boys had not been lynched by the mob, but the danger, while less immediate, was no less real. On the morning of March 26, 1931, newspapers circulated bearing such headlines as “Threw White Boys from Freight Train and Held White Girls Prisoners until Captured by Posse” and “Nine Negro Men Rape Two White Girls.” In the incendiary articles that followed, Price and Bates were described as “girls,” even though Price, at 21, was older than any of the “Negro Men” she had accused: Weems, the oldest, and Andrew “Andy” Wright were 19; Norris and Patterson were 18; Montgomery and Roberson were 17, the same age as Bates; Powell was 15; Williams and Leroy “Roy” Wright, the youngest, were only 13. With no one to contradict the lurid details printed





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by the media—locked away, the Boys certainly could not—most people believed the grotesque fiction. Judge A. E. Hawkins scheduled the trial to begin on April 6. It was First Monday, or horse-swapping day—a day when farmers from Scottsboro’s neighboring counties would come into town with their families to trade and socialize. The coalescence of this monthly tradition with the well-publicized case attracted thousands by the 8:30 a.m. start of the trial. By 10 a.m., the small village was overflowing with 10,000 spectators. They were there for a lynching: if not a gruesome one, at least a legal one. Armed sol- diers had to set up a perimeter around the square outside the courthouse and stationed extra guards inside. Everyone was searched before entering. The Boys had been held in Gadsen without bail for almost two weeks, unable to communicate with their parents or a lawyer. In the courtroom, they met their representa- tion for the first time. Mr. Steven Roddy had been hired by a group of black preachers in Chattanooga, who had raised $50 for the cause. He introduced himself to the Boys and, with liquor on his breath, told the guilty ones to confess so the innocent ones could have a chance at survival. When Roddy appeared before the judge, however, he balked. He requested that he be allowed to perform in an advisory role to whomever the judge appointed from the Scottsboro bar. The 69-year-old Milo Moody—“an ancient Scottsboro lawyer of low type and rare practice”—accepted the responsibility of the defendants’ fates. And, without time for the defense to prepare, the first of four trials began. The vivid testimony of the unabashed Price would have been enough to send the Scottsboro Boys to the electric chair. (Raping a white woman was a capital offense in Alabama.) A masterful storyteller with histrionic flare, Price retold the fabrication she had fine-tuned for the newspapers over the last 12 days. She painted a violent scene of black brutes driven not just by lust but also by the need to possess white women. This hit the rawest nerve in the minds of the jurors—12 white, rural, southern men. The incompetency and half-heartedness of the Roddy/Moody team did not help matters, nor did Judge Hawkins’s belief that the Boys were guilty and that the trial was a waste of time. But it was the testimonies of Norris, Patterson, and Roy Wright that encouraged one Scottsboro editor to say that the case against the Boys was “so conclusive as to be almost perfect.” The night before the first trial, Norris was taken from his cell, threatened, and beaten. On the stand the following day, he swore, “I did not have my hands on the girls at all, but I saw that one rape her,” pointing indiscriminately at one of the other Boys. “They all raped her, every one of them.” The first trial ended in a guilty verdict for Norris and Weems—the sentence, death. The spectators inside the courtroom cheered and the crowd outside exploded into thunderous celebration. A brass band played “There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight” and “Dixie.” The next day, a hopeless Patterson, tried alone, attempted to save himself and his three friends by pointing the finger at the other five. During Patterson’s trial, Roy Wright—who had been jabbed in the cheek by a militiaman’s bayonet on the night of their arrest and, during the trial, had been taken into a back room of the courthouse, where he was whipped and threatened by a deputy sheriff and his cronies—confirmed Patterson’s accusation. But then the terrified 13-year-old went on to echo Norris’s des- peration: “I saw all of them have intercourse; I saw that with my own





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eyes!” Patterson was found guilty and sentenced to death. The next day Montgomery, Powell, Roberson, Williams, and Andy Wright, prosecuted as a group, were found guilty and sentenced to death. The final trial, of Roy Wright, was declared a mistrial. The jury found the boy guilty, but, because of his youth, the prosecution had only asked for life imprisonment. Eleven jurors held out for the electric chair. Back in Gadsen’s jail, the condemned rioted. They cursed the guards, demanded pork chops, and tried to escape. The guards handcuffed them together and beat them nearly to death. They were all transferred to Jefferson County Jail in Birmingham. Roy Wright stayed there to await his retrial; the remaining eight were taken to Montgomery’s Kilby Prison and put on death row to await their execution, scheduled for July 10, the earliest possible date permitted by law. The Legal Battle That Changed the South

On July 10, Kilby prison officials told the eight boys, “You’re going to die tonight.” They brought in eight caskets for their bodies and prepared the electric chair. At midnight, they led a man from his cell. He shook the hands of his fellow prisoners on his way to the room with the green door at the end of the hall. Minutes later an electric current buzzed through the cell block. Willie Stokes was dead. Stokes was not a Scottsboro Boy: he was a convicted murderer, and the first of many who would pass through that green door while the Boys were held in Kilby. Despite what the guards would have the Boys believe, their executions had been stayed due to appeals filed by the International Labor Defense—a legal institution associated with the Communist Party. The ILD had been watching the Scottsboro case from the very beginning, and they were convinced that the Boys had been railroaded, innocent of any crime other than being poor and black. The day after sentencing, the ILD voted to take on the appeal. Their members were the first kind faces the prisoners saw in Kilby, and they visited and comforted the Boys’ frightened parents. So when the initially hesitant NAACP finally sent stewards to take over the Boys’ defense, they were turned away. The NAACP, had its help been accepted, would have quietly worked within the system to try to save the Boys. The ILD, on the other hand, made noise. It wrote and circulated inflammatory articles about the backwards, KKK-dominated court in Scottsboro. It hosted and encouraged protests. Letters, telegrams, and petitions flooded the offices of local and state authorities, arriving from every state in the union and from all over the world. By 1933, Governor Miller alone had received 50,000 telegrams. Supporters sent the prisoners mail, gifts, and money, and the Boys were especially hated and tortured by the Kilby guards because of their fame. After a year and a half, the ILD won Powell v. Alabama, in which the United States Supreme Court overturned the Scottsboro convictions on the grounds that the defendants had been denied adequate counsel, violating their Fourteenth Amendment rights. To lead the defense during the 1933 retrial, the ILD hired famed New York





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lawyer Samuel Leibowitz, who was able to move the proceedings into the Decatur courtroom of Judge James Horton. Unlike Judge Hawkins, Judge Horton had a reputation for fairness, and the dramatic retrial of Haywood Patterson exposed all of the holes in Victoria Price’s accusation. Leibowitz attacked Price’s character by bringing in evidence of her past indiscretions. Ruby Bates, who had disappeared in the weeks leading up to the trial, made a surprise appearance for the defense and admitted it had all been a lie. As important was the testimony of Dr. R. R. Bridges, who had attended to the girls hours after they were supposedly assaulted and had found no fresh injuries or semen. The all-white, all-male jury found Patterson guilty. For a second time, he was sentenced to death. The ILD and Leibowitz had underestimated southerners’ distrust of northern interference—not to mention their anti-Semitism and hatred of Communists, which rivaled their racial bigotry. Throughout the trial, Leibowitz received death threats. During summation, the prosecution exploited this antagonism, highlighting the “sinister influences” of New York and claiming the testimony of Bates had been “bought and sold with Jew money.” The prosecutors asked the jury to base its decision on the testimony of Price alone, which is exactly what it did.In a move that would cost him his job, Judge Horton set aside the verdict. “The testimony of the prosecutrix [Price] in this case is not only uncorroborated, but it alsobears on its face indications of improbability and is contradicted by other evidence.” He ordered a new trial. Over the next four years, Leibowitz fought for the Boys. He fought retrials before a hostile Judge Callahan and lost. He fought appeals before the U.S. Supreme Court and won: Norris v. Alabama found that black citizens had been intentionally kept off Alabama’s jury rolls. During that time, all nine Boys were victims of the state’s penal system. They were abused by guards and each other. Leaving Patterson’s fourth trial in 1936, Ozie Powell attacked a deputy with a pen knife and was shot in the head. (He survived.) But harder than the violence was the time spent locked in small, dark cells. The Boys who didn’t know how to read and write when they were arrested learned, and they passed their days singing, gambling, fighting, praying, and writing letters mourning the loss of their youth—but, mostly, just waiting. By 1937, Leibowitz was exhausted; the state of Alabama was exhausted, too, fed up with what the trials and appeals were costing its image and coffers. In secret New York meetings, a compromise was arranged: Eugene Williams and Roy Wright could go free; they had been only 13 years old at the time of their arrest. The state was also willing to release Olen Montgomery and Willie Roberson, whose guilt it had long doubted. The rest would get reduced sentences, but would remain in jail. Obscurity

In 1938, outgoing Alabama Governor Bibb Graves intended to pardon the remaining Scottsboro Boys, but when they refused to admit their guilt, he changed his mind. After that, most of the country lost track of the Boys. In the midst of World War ii, few noticed when Charlie Weems, Clarence Norris, Andy Wright, and Ozie Powell were paroled. Few cared as they all struggled to adapt to life on the outside, forever burdened with their Scottsboro Boy identities. No one knows what became of many of them. Detached from





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the cases that had made them a cause, they became invisible. But there were moments when the Scottsboro Boys reentered the news. In 1948, Haywood Patterson escaped from Kilby and fled to Detroit; he was caught by the FBI, but Michigan’s governor refused to extradite him to Alabama. He published his autobiography, Scottsboro Boy, before dying of cancer in 1952 while imprisoned in a Michigan penitentiary, where he had been sent for killing a man in a bar fight. Roy Wright, who seemed to adjust to freedom better than the rest, entered vocational school, served in the army, married, and took a job with the merchant marine. But in 1959, he became convinced that his wife had been unfaithful while he was away at sea: he killed her, and then himself. Norris, who had violated his parole by fleeing north and assuming his brother’s identity in 1946, enlisted the help of the NAACP to clear his name. It launched a successful public relations campaign, and on October 25, 1976, Norris was officially declared not guilty for the rape of Victoria Price and Ruby Bates. Norris published The Last of the Scottsboro Boys: An Autobiography in 1979, at which time he believed he was the only Scottsboro Boy still alive. “The lesson to black people, to my children, to everybody,” Norris said after his pardon, “is that you should always fight for your rights, even if it cost you your life. Stand up for your rights, even if it kills you. That’s all that life consists of.” The last of the Scottsboro Boys died in 1989.

The original Scottsboro Boys, 1931





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2. The people behind the characters

As appeared in the Scottsboro Boys Programme, Young Vic 2013





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3. Synopsis

This synopsis first appeared in Words on Plays, the performance guide series of San

Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.).

On an early evening in December 1955, The Lady sits on a bench waiting for a bus. As she does, she is caught up in a memory. The world around her fades away as a distant minstrel march is heard. One by one, the minstrels greet The Lady. Finally, the Interlocutor—the master of ceremonies—enters and, in traditional fashion, tells the minstrels to be seated. The Interlocutor introduces Mr. Bones and Mr. Tambo, who will lead off the night’s entertainments about the Scottsboro Boys. The proceedings go as planned until Haywood Patterson asks if tonight, for a change, they can tell the truth. The Interlocutor agrees, even though Bones and Tambo confess that they have never told the truth before. The story begins on March 25, 1931, as the nine Scottsboro Boys hop a Memphis- bound boxcar in Chattanooga, Tennessee. As the train slows to a stop in Scottsboro, Alabama, the sheriff (played by Mr. Bones) accuses the nine Scottsboro Boys of instigating a fight with a group of white boys on the train. While searching the train, the handsy sheriff’s deputy (played by Mr. Tambo) discovers Victoria Price and Ruby Bates, two “shimee-shakee harlots,” and threatens to take them to jail. Rather than face jail time, the girls, led by Victoria, accuse the nine black youths of rape. Almost instantly the sheriff and deputy’s attitudes toward the women change: they are no longer common whores, but delicate flowers of the American South, victimized by a gang of black savages. The Scottsboro Boys are beaten and hauled off to jail. Terrified, Olen Montgomery accuses the other boys in hopes the guards will let him go. They don’t. Court is called to order, and the Boys are provided with a drunk, incompetent public defender. Their trial is swiftly concluded: all nine are found guilty by an all-white jury. Their executions are set for July 10 at Kilby Prison. As the boys wait in prison for their execution, they bicker. But when the guards torment 12-year-old Eugene Williams with visions of the electric chair, Haywood comes to his defense. He commandeers a guard’s gun. It is not loaded, but it is enough to deflect attention away from the scared child. Some of the Boys celebrate his heroism; others think he’s reckless. As a guard leads Haywood to the electric chair, the Interlocutor announces that the U.S. Supreme Court has granted a new trial because the Boys did not have a proper lawyer—they’re getting a second chance at life. As the Boys celebrate, the guards take Haywood to solitary confinement; while there, Roy Wright teaches him the alphabet. At their retrial, the Boys are defended by a Jewish New York lawyer, Samuel Leibowitz. On the stand, Ruby admits that she and Victoria lied about the rape. As the Boys wait for





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a verdict, the Interlocutor delivers a cake baked by The Lady. The gift lifts the Boys’ spirits enough that they muse about what they’ll do once they are freed. Despite the Boys’ momentary optimism, the jury is swayed by the prosecution’s argument that northern “Jew money” bought Ruby’s testimony, and once again convicts the Boys. The Boys begin work on a chain gang. Haywood attempts to escape to go see his dying mother, but Olen rats on him and he is caught and returned to solitary confinement. The Scottsboro case drags on for nearly nine years. With each passing year, each passing trial, and each guilty verdict, the Boys continue to languish in prison for a crime they did not commit. In a moment of rage, Ozie Powell tries to strangle a guard with his handcuffs and is shot in the back of the head. He survives, but with severe brain damage. Through a deal struck with the prosecutors, Leibowitz is able to secure the freedom of four of the Scottsboro Boys—Eugene and Roy (the two youngest), Willie Roberson, and Olen (the rat). Leibowitz promises to continue fighting until the remaining five are free. Leibowitz is able to get the condemned Scottsboro Boys an audience with the governor. They’ll be released on parole—if they admit to the governor that they are guilty. Haywood refuses. The governor returns him to prison. The Boys briefly tell the story of the rest of their lives—Haywood spent the remainder of his behind bars, but he writes his autobiography. To close the show, the Interlocutor tries to get the Boys to do the cakewalk—the customary ending to their minstrel act. This time, however, they refuse, and one by one they leave the stage. Haywood, Bones, and Tambo set up a row of chairs in the shape of a bus. As they leave, they reveal The Lady sitting on the bus. The Interlocutor, as the bus driver, tells her to move to the back. “No. Not no more,” she replies. “I’m gonna sit here and rest my feet.”





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3. Following the story

Timeline created by Madeleine Kludje





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5. Kander and Ebb: Score and Libretto

This interview first appeared in Words on Plays, the performance guide series of San

Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.). Amy Krivohlavek is a frequent

contributor to Words on Plays and A.C.T.’s marketing writer.

Entertainment with an Edge

Kander and Ebb and the American Musical

By Amy Krivohlavek

If they were characters in a musical, John Kander and Fred Ebb wouldn’t seem destined for friendship, much less a decades-long musical partnership. But when Ebb, the intense lyricist from New York, and Kander, the warm-hearted composer from the Midwest, were introduced in 1962 by their mutual music publisher, creative lightning struck. By the time Ebb died in 2004, the duo that Kander himself dubbed “Kandernebb” had become the longest-running composer-and-lyricist collaboration in musical theater history, and one of the most prolific. Working together in a small room in Ebb’s New York apartment, they wrote more than 2,000 songs, featured in 20 musicals—13 of which appeared on Broadway—as well as in film scores, concerts, and other special events. Cabaret and Chicago, their best-known and most-celebrated works, have enjoyed count- less productions worldwide, with Chicago now the longest-running revival in Broadway history. The iconic standards “New York, New York,” “Cabaret,” and “All That Jazz” have become enduring hits of the American songbook. The recipients of numerous honors, including three Tony Awards for their songwriting (for Cabaret, Woman of the Year, and Kiss of the Spider Woman), Kander and Ebb were also honored with the Kennedy Center Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Performing Arts. Overture: A Fortuitous Introduction

John Kander was born on March 18, 1927, in Kansas City, Missouri, into a music-loving family who actively nurtured his interest in the arts. He discovered the joys of playing the family piano around the age of four and began taking lessons when he was six. He remembers the thrill of making music for the first time when his Aunt Rheta put her hands over his on the keys: “That made a chord, and as a boy, it was about the most thrilling thing that ever happened to me.” He began composing in the second grade during an arithmetic class. Unable to answer a question posed by the teacher, he explained, “I’m writing a Christmas carol.” She didn’t believe him, so she crossed to his desk to discover big notes scrawled across the pages of his notebook. The school sang the song at the school assembly that Christmas—after the teacher sought approval from Kander’s (Jewish) family. After several stints in the military, Kander studied music composition, earning his undergraduate degree at Oberlin Conservatory of Music, then completed a





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master’s degree at Columbia University. The head of the Columbia music department, Douglas Moore, confided to Kander that if he had to do it all over again, he would write for Broadway. “That was sort of my blessing,” says Kander. “From then on, I directed myself that way.” A chance encounter with the piano player of the Broadway production of West Side Story led him to substitute as a pit pianist, where he met choreographer Jerome Robbins, who brought him in to accompany auditions and write dance music. Born in New York City on April 18, 1928—allegedly, as he was notoriously secretive about the actual year of his birth—Fred Ebb grew up in a more austere household. His parents never took him to the theater or to concerts, and he first discovered musicals through cast recordings. He graduated early from high school, earning rapid-fire degrees (a bachelor’s from New York University and a master’s in English literature from Columbia University) by the time he was 18. He became interested in writing as an undergraduate, but worked a variety of odd-jobs before he began selling song lyrics to record companies at the urging of friends. Following graduation, he worked with Philip Springer (“Santa Baby”), who taught him the nuts and bolts of songwriting. In the early 1950s he collaborated with composer Paul Klein, and the pair generated three full-length musicals and a few popular hit songs. Eventually, Klein left show business, freeing Ebb up for his meeting with Kander. Both Kander and Ebb worked briefly with other collaborators before they were introduced; after they met, they declined almost every outside request to collaborate. As they looked for early inspiration, their music publisher, Tommy Valando, introduced the duo to visionary director/producer Hal Prince, who was working on a play called Take Her, She’s Mine. They wrote a song for the show. Prince didn’t end up using it, but “it was the beginning,” Ebb remembered. “The ease with which the song came, the fun it was to write it, and the pleasure we both took in it, despite the fact that it didn’t go anywhere, were the clues.” Kander agreed: “Some of the shows have been hits and some of the shows have been flops. . . . But the one thing that’s consistent is that we’ve always had a good time writing. Everything else connected with this business can be horrifying, but the one thing that has always been a pleasure to us is just the sheer process of writing.” And the process often didn’t take long. To show off how fast they could work, Kander and Ebb famously created a song between dessert and coffee during a dinner party at Ebb’s apartment. Kander said, “Play a waltz,” and within 15 minutes they had “I Don’t Care Much,” a simple, haunting ballad that they put into their trunk—then pulled out ten years later for Cabaret. Entr’acte: Form Takes Flight

Kander and Ebb grew up in the age of Rodgers and Hammerstein, the very heyday of the Golden Era musical, when a post–World War II optimism inflected the spirit of Broadway and songs from musicals defined American popular music. When Kander and Ebb began writing in the early 1960s, however, the Broadway musical was in decline, as audiences’ attention was diverted by the Cold War and Vietnam—and the rise of rock’n’ roll. The musical had become more serious, which fit Kander and Ebb’s aesthetic as they began to experiment with new forms. As James Leve writes in the recent Kander and Ebb vol- ume of the Yale Broadway Masters series: “Their success was due to an ability to assimilate the past into something new. While moving away from linear narratives





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toward more fragmented structures, they also reached back to old song styles and theatrical venues. This approach helped to transform the musical into a more commentative, self-reflexive, and ironic genre, and one that resonated with modern audiences.” The first musical they wrote together, Golden Gate, took place in San Francisco in the after- math of the 1906 earthquake as the city was being rebuilt. Styled in the manner of a more traditional 1950s musical, the show didn’t take off, but they used it as their audition piece for director George Abbott when he was looking for a songwriting team for Flora, the Red Menace, which became Kander and Ebb’s first Broadway show in 1965. It also marked their first collaboration with an up-and-coming performer named Liza Minnelli, who, at 17, struggled to win the title role, then won a Tony Award for her performance. Although Flora received mixed reviews, it cemented a relationship among Minnelli, Kander, and Ebb that would endure for the duration of their careers. The team wrote material for Minnelli’s solo variety acts, and Ebb remembered an engagement at the Shoreham Hotel as the first standing ovation he ever saw. When people immediately stood up following her routine, “Liza thought they were leaving, and so did I,” said Ebb. “She sat down on the stage, she got so scared of it all. That was our first experience, and from then on we just kept writing, and she got more and more successful.” Minnelli would go on to star in the screen adaptation of Cabaret, for which she won an Oscar, and continued to appear in many of their other musicals and perform original solo material, including the famous television concert Liza with a “Z.” After Flora opened, Prince pushed the team toward a new project. Cabaret, a dark, risqué piece set in Berlin during the Nazis’ rise to power, became Kander and Ebb’s breakthrough show as it redefined musical theater into a new form for the postmodern era: the “concept” musical. Moving beyond linear storytelling, this new genre was more self-referential and presentational, with all elements of the production tied to a central theme or metaphor. As Ebb remembered, during the Broadway previews of Cabaret, audiences fled the theater at intermission; after the rapturous reviews, the show played to sold-out houses. According to Leve, Kander and Ebb were “provocateurs and arguably the most subversive practitioners of the concept musical.” Like Bertolt Brecht, they drew attention to the disconnect between song and story, but gave it their own spin: Kander and Ebb developed their own sense of irony by exploring serious topics within various forms of popular entertainment: for example, a decadent cabaret embodies German society during Hitler’s rise to power [Cabaret]; the Hollywood musical provides a wrongly imprisoned homosexual an escape from an oppressive society [Kiss of the Spider Woman]; vaudeville is a metaphor for a legal system that rewards the most dazzling courtroom performances [Chicago]; a dance marathon represents possibilities for a better life [Steel Pier]; and a minstrel show reveals the ingrained racism of the American criminal justice system [The Scottsboro Boys]. In this way, Kander and Ebb created musicals that mirrored and celebrated popular culture, using bold, broad entertainment styles to illuminate darker, more serious issues that resonated profoundly with contemporary audiences. “Good storytelling, even about tough subjects, should always be entertaining,” says Kander. “And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with giving people something to think about while you’re entertaining them.”





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As it produced both successes and flops, Kander and Ebb’s career spanned revolutionary changes in the musical—and American history. On the landscape of musical theater, they watched the arrival of the rock musical, the British invasion of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, the rise of the mega musical, and the debut of Disney on Broadway. Offstage, they witnessed the passage of the Civil Rights Act, the Stonewall Riots, the Vietnam War, the push toward women’s rights, the Cold War, and the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the wars that followed them. Deftly capturing political and cultural events, their musicals are among the most socially aware of the genre - using song and dance not just to entertain but to ignite a consciousness. Finale: The Scottsboro Boys

Following Ebb’s death from a heart attack in 2004, Kander was bereft. Nonetheless, he continued working, determined to bring the projects they had already begun to the stage. One of them, Curtains, a detective comedy play-within-a-play about murder and musicals, hit Broadway in 2007. The Scottsboro Boys (originally titled Minstrel Show) arrived in 2010. Scottsboro had its genesis around Ebb’s kitchen table back in 2002, as they searched for inspiration with two of their favorite collaborators, with whom they had worked on Steel Pier—director/choreographer Susan Stroman, who also choreographed a successful off-Broadway revival of Flora, the Red Menace in 1987, and bookwriter David Thompson. While sifting through famous court cases of the 20th century, they were immediately drawn to the controversial story of the Scottsboro Boys. In 1930s Alabama, nine young African American men were accused of raping two white women on a train. The trial— and subsequent appeals and retrials—spanned decades, destroying the lives of the young men as the American legal system repeatedly failed to deliver them justice.

Musical Numbers in The Scottsboro Boys “Minstrel March” ......................................... Orchestra “Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey!” .............................. Company “Commencing in Chattanooga” ...............Haywood, Scottsboro Boys “Alabama Ladies” ..........................................Victoria Price, Ruby Bates “Nothin’” ............................................................Haywood “Electric Chair”.................................................Guards, Eugene, etc. “Go Back Home” .............................................Haywood, Eugene, Scottsboro Boys “Shout!” ...............................................................Scottsboro Boys “Make Friends with the Truth” .................Haywood, Scottsboro Boys “That’s Not the Way We Do Things” .......Samuel Leibowitz “Never Too Late” ..............................................Ruby Bates, Scottsboro Boys “Financial Advice”............................................ Attorney General “Southern Days” ...............................................Scottsboro Boys “Chain Gang” ......................................................Scottsboro Boys “Alabama Ladies” (Reprise) ........................Victoria Price “Zat So?”................................................................Governor, Leibowitz, Haywood “You Can’t Do Me” ...........................................Haywood, Scottsboro Boys “The Scottsboro Boys” ....................................Scottsboro Boys “Minstrel March” (Reprise) ..........................Orchestra





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As Thompson remembers, Ebb immediately jumped at the project: He couldn’t work fast enough on this one. He was way ahead of me when we were writing, which was not typical of Fred. . . . He knew immediately. This was the embodiment of that notion, which is, we are going to entertain you, and you are going to have fun, but at the same time we’re going to lead you to a place that is very dangerous and controversial, and what you take out of this, where you get, you’re going to have to sort out yourself, but in the meantime we’re going to entertain you. Their only show based on an actual historic event, The Scottsboro Boys, according to Leve, became Kander and Ebb’s “most direct assault on racial prejudice in America and their most unsettling work.” The material also inspired the team to delve into yet another historic—and taboo—theatrical form, as the segmented structure of the minstrel show proved ideal for telling the dynamic, wide-ranging story of the Scottsboro Boys. Several previous Broadway musicals had evoked the minstrel show, but simply to perpetuate racist attitudes; in The Scottsboro Boys, it works subversively to advance the central theme. Thompson explains that in their original form, minstrel shows “made fun of all sorts of social forms, whether it was the upper class, [political] parties, things that were fash- ionable, elegant, the white man, the understanding of certain things.” Race, class, gender, and politics became ammunition with which to entertain and create a sense of superiority over the audience. Minstrel shows are, of course, infamous for having been extremely pejorative in their depiction of African Americans. For Kander and Ebb, this made the minstrel show a powerful subversive structure through which to tell the complex story of the Scottsboro Boys, once again balancing broad entertainment with an undercur- rent of tragedy and despair—and transforming an outdated form into something fresh, provocative, and surprisingly modern. In many ways, Scottsboro brings the Kander and Ebb canon full circle, bringing in familiar elements from many of their musicals and fusing them together to tell the story: the press, the justice system, prostitution, racial politics, and gender. About the challenge of creating Scottsboro, Kander says: The trick here has been: How do you write a musical where the audience will respond to the story even though it’s about some very ugly things? I never write a piece thinking that I have to do X because the audience will like X. That’s paralyzing. But we are entertainers, all of us, and finding great entertainment in a story like this one has been a test, a thrilling one. There’s a kind of racism in America today that is so insidious, the way enemies of our black president use code language to depict him as the “other,” and that part of our world has a direct through-line back to the Scottsboro Boys. The minstrel show elements are, I like to think, part of the entertainment, but in a way that makes you think about how we tell stories, tell our history as Americans. Kander and Ebb’s chief weapon for defending individuals throughout history has been the song. Their most famous compositions, often created for the iconic divas who debuted them—from Minelli and Chita Rivera to Lauren Bacall and Barbra Streisand— have been described as “hyperbolic anthems of survival.” Ebb loved to perform them, and Kander called them “screamers.” They represent perhaps the best example of the duo’s seemingly mismatched—yet somehow divinely paired—talents: Ebb’s acerbic





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lyrics climb relentlessly onward, buoyed by Kander’s hopeful vamps and gorgeous melodies. Whether giving voice to a fading cabaret singer, a condemned murderess, or a wrongly accused black teenager, Kander and Ebb give their characters a will to survive that continues beyond the final note. According to Minelli, one of their greatest interpreters, “You look at the work, and the work speaks for itself. Their songs say what we’re really thinking and they expose what lies behind the façade and behind the secrets, behind the bluster and behind everything that society teaches you to be. They challenge and inspire you to stand up for yourself.” SOURCES Jackson R. Bryer and Richard A. Davison, eds., The Art of the American Musical:

Conversations with the Creators (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005);

Patrick Healy, “Blackface and Bigotry, Finely Tuned,” The New York Times (October 12,

2010); John Kander and Fred Ebb (as told to Greg Lawrence), Colored Lights: Forty Years

of Words and Music, Show Biz, Collaboration, and All That Jazz (New York: Faber and

Faber, Inc., 2003); James Leve, Kander and Ebb (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009);

Jesse McKinley, “Fred Ebb, 76, Lyricist Behind Cabaret and Other Hits, Dies,” The New York

Times (September 13, 2004)

John Kander and Susan Stroman. Photo by Paul Kolnik `





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Part 2: A Musical with a Political

Message

The Scottsboro Boys. Young Vic 2013





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Part 2: A Musical with a Political Message

1. Why tell this story as a musical rather than as a play?

“If you don’t make it entertaining, no one will listen”. Fred Ebb

Musical, notorious for singing, dancing, bright lights and jazz hands, is not perhaps the first genre that one would think of for communicating dark and difficult subject matters. However, John Kander and Fred Ebb understood the powerful potential the musical form had for tackling serious issues, and with this they brought innovation to the form. “Kander, and Ebb (who died in 2004 before the project was completed) were accustomed to controversy, having tackled complex and sensitive subjects in their decades long career, including singing Nazis in ‘Cabaret’, a Latin American prison in ‘Kiss of the Spider Woman’ and the gangster underworld in ‘Chicago’.” (Lynell George, Young Vic Programme Note) The Scottsboro Boys tells the true and terrible story of the injustice and racism that nine young African Americans suffered, all because of a careless lie; a lie that had devastating consequences, and completely wrecked the lives of nine young men. Incredibly it was not until April of this year that the remaining eight Scottsboro boys were exonerated. Their pardons are still in process. (See the true history of the Scottsboro Boys timeline, Section 1.3) The controversy that The Scottsboro Boys musical met with in America is a clear indication of the relevance this story has still today, and why it is necessary that their story be heard.

In August this year, the new UK cast members, who would be performing the remount of The Scottsboro Boys at the Young Vic, travelled to America. For one week they had the incredible opportunity to meet and work with Susan Stroman (Director and Choreographer), John Kander (Music and Lyrics) and David Thompson (Book). Company Stage Manager, Alex Constantin, told me how on the first day of the trip, Stroman, Kander and Thompson, spoke passionately about the real life events behind the story and that it was important that

Forrest McClendon, Kyle Scatliffe, Colman Domingo, Adebayo Bolaji





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the cast understood “they have a respect to show to the people that lived through this true event”

1. On the last day in America, Alex remembered sitting in a room with John Kander,

and whilst she listened to him, she began to realise the reason “why musicals like these are made….why he [Kander] chooses these difficult subjects, and why he thinks that musicals are the best way of doing it”. The musical is a brilliant form to communicate and tackle serious issues because it is such a highly popular and entertaining art form. Big dance numbers, songs, movement and spectacle will captivate and thrill an audience. Their catchy songs and energy are contagious. The musical draws in an audience and it this connection that Stroman, Kander and Ebb play with brilliantly as a means of communicating a powerful message. The Scottsboro Boys begins in a quite jovial tone, which gives an audience a false sense of what the production is really about. But as the performance unfolds, the darker reality of the story reveals itself, and then it hits you that a much more serious issue is being tackled. John Kander calls this moment, ‘kicking the safety ground from under you’. From listening to John Kander, Alex Constantin began to appreciate that the musical, rather than a naturalistic play for example, can be a far more effective medium to deal with grave issues because sometimes “you can’t tackle these subjects by just being really macabre about it … you can’t make someone sit through an hour and a half and assault them with, ‘this is hideous’, ‘this is terrible’; you need to make someone enjoy it first, and then through doing that, when it gets kicked out from under them, they get a realisation of how easy it is to fall into the trap.” The Scottsboro Boys behaves much like a piece of Brechtian performance. In contrast to the aim of a piece of naturalism or realism, the overt theatricality of the musical consistently reminds the audience that this is a presentation of a true story, and not reality itself. One example from The Scottsboro Boys is a song called The Electric Chair. The number is performed as a tap dance, with witty lyrics, and the complete opposite to how you would expect to frame such a harrowing subject. The idea behind the number is very dark, particularly when you remember that as a true story, the electric chair was a very real fate that these young men were facing, for something they did not do. This unusual combination of heavy content with dazzling musical numbers makes for unsettling viewing, and keeps the audience in a state of flux and at a slight distance from the subject material. “That discomfort is precisely what Kander and Ebb were after, a discomfort with how easy it is to ‘grab justice,’ to manipulate a lie into a semblance of truth.”

2 The musical format gives an

audience space to observe and reflect. Assistant Director, Jonathan O’Boyle’s explains that for him, the musical is a powerful form because it draws an audience in; “…a really difficult true story, can be quite alienating as a play, whereas I think a musical gives it one step away from reality, and then you go home and realise, oh, that was actually real - these kids were in jail for thirty years!”

3 He goes on

to tell me that he anticipates when an audience watches The Scottsboro Boys they will not know how to respond, some may laugh, some won’t, but it is exciting because the audience is not told what to think; “it’s brilliant… it’s what all theatre should be, whether it is a play or a musical, or an opera, it gives you a chance to think without it being judgmental. It is very clever.”

1 See Alex Constantin, Company Stage Manager, Interview, Section 5.3

2 Lynell George, Young Vic Programme Note

3 See Jonathon O’Boyle, Assistant Director, Interview, Section 5.2





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2. Staging Techniques to tell the story

� Theatrical Form and the Minstrel Show Kander and Ebb have always been very clever about the theatrical language they choose as a framework for their musicals; Cabaret used cabaret style staging, and Chicago was told using the vaudeville style. Work on the show first began in 2002, but when Ebb died in 2004, Kander and Stroman put the project on hold, and didn’t start work again on it until 2008. When Kander, Ebb and Stroman decided they wanted to create a musical around the true story of the Scottsboro boys, they knew that they wanted to find a way of presenting the story that matched up to how shocking the true events were. When they began research, they uncovered articles where journalists referred to the trials and the boys as if they were being paraded in a minstrel show. This gave Kander, Ebb and Stroman the inspiration to use the minstrel show form as a framework to build the show upon, but what they wanted to do was to take the form and turn it on its head. Using the minstrel show format was an inspired idea; on the one hand it provided a pre-existing theatrical structure through which the story could be told; and by breaking the form they were able to make a powerful statement: ‘It would be a raw confrontation with one layer of America’s legacy of bigotry and racism and, at the same time, a commentary on the perpetually shifting ground upon which the Scottsboro Nine stood.’ (Lynell George, Young Vic programme note)

A Brief History of the Minstrel Show The Minstrel Show grew out of carnival and mask, originating in 1830s America. By the 1840s, the minstrel show had become a nationally recognised entertainment form. The shows were extremely degrading towards African Americans, being performed by white performers with ‘blackface’ makeup, to create a stereotyped caricature that portrayed black people as foolish buffoons. The players would speak in a mock imitation ‘plantation’ dialect, and the shows were built around stock characters, with singing, dancing, and skits, accompanied by musical instruments, such as the fiddle, banjo and tambourine. Before a show, the minstrel players would walk through a town to rally an audience. To echo this, at the start of The Scottsboro Boys, the cast enter from behind the audience and travel through the middle of the auditorium, before they enter on stage. Traditionally, players sat in a semicircle of chairs. In the middle was the ‘Interlocutor’, who was the leader of the troupe, a kind

1900 Minstrel show poster, Strobridge & Co





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of master of ceremonies. His character was very genteel and high status, making the minstrel players appear all the more rowdy and undisciplined. At one end sat Mr. Tambo, who played the tambourine; at the other end sat Mr. Bones, who played the bones

4. In between skits and songs, these two would exchange jokes. It was

customary for Tambo to be slim, and Bones to be fat. Racism was rife in America, particularly in the south, and it meant that being a minstrel player was a dangerous profession. Whilst off stage, and after each show, players would need to leave town quickly to avoid attack, and remained in character, keeping their costume and make up on, in an attempt to protect themselves. In those days, white people kept themselves separate from black people. The minstrel shows, therefore, became the only contact they had with African Americans and so the shows were very detrimental in their reinforcement and perpetuation of a racist stereotype.

Forrest McClendon and Colman Domingo as Mr Tambo and Mr Bones

4 Bones – A musical instrument made from animal bones, similar to playing the spoons.





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� The Design The set design of The Scottsboro Boys by Beowulf Boritt takes its inspiration from the minstrel show. Three wooden chairs and ten metal chairs define the space. The thirteen chairs begin in a semi-circle, characteristic of minstrel show staging.

A challenge of the script is the number of locations it presents. It’s important that a production finds a way to move swiftly between locations, in order that the energy of a performance does not flag or get interrupted. The design choice to use thirteen chairs provided a theatrical solution for this challenge. In The Scottsboro Boys, each chair can interconnect. From the initial semi-circle, the performers move the chairs into new arrangements to denote the different locations at each stage of the story. For example, they form a line chairs to create the illusion of a train carriage. Choreographing the chairs in this way meant that transitions between locations could be extremely fast; sometimes they happen in a matter of seconds. In turn, the speed and energy of the transitions fuels the performance, adding a new level of dynamism and energy to the show.

Above and across the stage, are three proscenium arches that stand one in front of each other, each slightly smaller the more upstage they are, the third arch being the narrowest that is furthest from the audience. The arches act as giant picture frames for the action on stage, and give the stage space a sense of depth and perspective.

The set design for The Scottsboro Boys is stylistically minimal. It does not attempt to present reality in its entirety, but instead inviting an audience to complete the world in their own imaginations, thus making them more connected to the story. This simplicity of the set also places storytelling and the performer’s physical performance at the heart the show.

The Scottsboro Boys, Young Vic 2013





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� Character Doubling in The Scottsboro Boys The true events of the Scottsboro case involved many different people, and the minstrel show tradition presented a theatrical solution for how actors could double up and play these many different characters. In the musical, the actors play a troupe of minstrel players, who are telling the true story of the Scottsboro Boys. Just like with traditional minstrel shows, the troupe is led by the ‘Interlocutor’, who is the only white actor in the cast. There is also a ‘Mr. Bones’ and ‘Mr. Tambo’, the two showmen which bookend the show: “There’s so many layers going on, and layers where Stroman says ‘actually this is a point where you’re just Forest and Coleman’, so it’s truly Forest and Coleman playing Tambo and Bones, playing all these characters” (Forest McClendon, Interview Section 5.5). By taking on the roles of the minstrel players, it allows the performers to step in and out of being the nine Scottsboro boys. The minstrel frame also allows the actors to play characters they would not normally play, and the form becomes particularly powerful when we watch African Americans playing white women, white lawyers, white sheriffs and white judges. A piece of realism or naturalism calls on an audience to suspend their disbelief and strives to achieve the actor and the character they are playing as one. In contrast, the framework of the minstrel show in The Scottsboro Boys puts a margin of distance between the actors and the nine young men. This slight disconnect helps to mitigate the weight of the difficult subject material to prevent an audience becoming alienated. Jonathan told me; ‘…its quite brilliant because it allows an audience to observe and have an opinion without it being real, … there’s that sense of detachment, which is fantastic, because if it was real, I think it would be horrendous, it would be impossible to watch.’

The Scotssboro Boys, Young Vic 2013





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� Character and Caricature The show is very physical and the performer’s body is central to distinguishing between the different races, ages and classes of the various people from the true events. In the musical production, all characters, other than the Scottsboro Boys, are performed larger than life, like a caricature or parody. This echoes with the set of stock characters typical of the traditional minstrel show. Each character is denoted through physicality, voice, and just one or two bits of costume, such as a huge cigar, or a pair of glasses. Assistant Director, Jonathan, shared with me that “the actors that play the young girls, that accuse the boys of rape, all they have is a clutch bag and a hat, and the character is formed... it is brilliant because you have a six foot three black actor playing a white girl.” Switching between characters is made clear for the audience, because all characters have their own entrances. A new character will enter from off stage, or enter from behind the semi-circle of chairs, or from behind another performer. Their piece of costume is put on before they enter, so that when they are in full view of the audience the character transformation is complete. Each prop or piece of costume was carefully chosen to capture the essence of a character. For the actors, the additional bit of costume helps to unlock the physicality of a character, allowing them to switch quickly and efficiently between characters. Out of context, these characterisations may appear extreme, but set against the intensity of the story they act as a clever counterpoint that bring both light relief and emphasis to poignant moments.

� Breaking the Minstrel Show Form The Scottsboro Boys musical was met with some criticism in America from people who considered the production was racist for using the minstrel show. However, often, this criticism was from people who had not seen the show. In the finale the nine Scottsboro boys enter, wearing top hat and tails, and reveal themselves to be wearing ‘traditional minstrel blackface’.

5 When Assistant Director,

Jonathan, first read the script he told me he was confused by the end, ‘I didn’t understand what was going on. [I thought] why are black actors doing that?’ In order to break a form, you first have to establish it. What Jonathan realised was that the choice to use the minstrel show by Kander, Ebb and Stroman, was in fact all about this moment. The performers had to put on the makeup, so that they could take it off, and the action of removing the ‘blackface’, which would never have been removed onstage traditionally, broke the form of minstrel show. It demonstrates onstage that underneath the ‘blackface’ the performers are more than their staged caricatures. The gesture is symbolic of shedding a long and degrading history. It is an act of pride, ownership and freedom.

5 The script has a note that reads ‘In the original production, the eight Scottsboro boys performing the

finale wear traditional minstrel blackface. The choice of whether or not to use the makeup is left to the

discretion of each company and its members.’





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‘The problem in America was that some people thought the production was racist…. [but they] didn’t watch the show, and they weren’t aware that actually doing that enabled the actors to take the make-up off and make a statement’ Jonathan O’Boyle, Assistant Director There is another significant distinction to make about the The Scottsboro Boys in regards to its use of the minstrel show format. In the production, while audience enter the auditorium, the thirteen chairs are pre-set on stage in a tangled heap. At the top of the show, the actors dissemble the chairs, and place them into the semi-circle. They then move and arrange the chairs for every new scene. In contrast to players in the historical minstrel shows, the actors here create and are in control of the theatrical structure; crucially, they are in charge of the space.

� Light and Location In theatre productions, light is used to visually bring focus to a particular part of the stage, and to change mood and atmosphere. The timing of how the lighting changes from one state to another is used by directors to punctuate specific moments they wish to bring attention to. In The Scottsboro Boys, lighting is an essential element in the storytelling. A key function of the lighting is to indicate location, for example, a cell, court room, or train yard. Additionally, Stroman views the lighting as part of the choreography. This means that the timing of a lighting cue is crucial, and musically, all cues must be in time with the action on stage. The Deputy Stage Manager

6, therefore, has to be very accurate in cueing the lights,

they cannot be a beat late! Lighting is also fundamental for the creation of a stage picture, which as can be seen below is a big part of the style of this show.

� Picture Perfect When Stroman is directing and choreographing action, she is always keeping an eye on the stage pictures being made. Composition, balance and the spatial relationship between performer, chair, and light, are all framed by the three proscenium arches. Each sequence of choreography is set very precisely, requiring the whole company of actors, stage management, and technical crew, to be extremely disciplined and working together as one. Anything that falls slightly out of place breaks the stage picture, risking setting everything else out that follows. This level of accuracy is a big physical and mental challenge for the performers, particularly when working at speed during complex musical numbers. To practice spatial precision, the performers and dancers in rehearsals follow numbers along the front of the playing space so that they can keep a track of where they are. This means ‘that no matter what, the picture remains the same, [it’s about] symmetry, it is really technical… dancers love it, they expect it, because they know that they are not out of place.’ Jonathan O’Boyle, Assistant Director (see Part 3, staging a Musical, for more about the rehearsal room and an image of the numbers used by the cast)

6 The Deputy Stage Manager (DSM) on a production is responsible for calling all cues for the

performance, including lights, sound, actor entrances, and scene changes.





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� Jumping Time, from 1931 to 1955 Sadly, the true events of the Scottsboro case chronicled many years. Therefore, in the script, there are sections where time needs to pass, sometimes several years in just a few seconds. To signal a jump in time, a theatrical solution the musical uses is the Brechtian technique of using placards. At several points in the show the two lead characters walk across the stage with a placard with a year written across it, for example ‘1932’. Using the placard in this way, reinforces for the audience that the show is not attempting to be real, but is a theatrical presentation of the true events. In reality, the Scottsboro boys went through many years of trials. During part of the show, there is a sequence that charts the time between trial number three, and trial number eight. The effect of time passing at this point is achieved physically and visually, using choreography and rhythm. Rather than show the trials in the court room, Stroman chose to show the journeys to and from the court room. Chairs are arranged in a line to represent the bus which would have taken the young men back and forth from the trials. The performers sit in a chair, as if on a bus. They face one direction to go to the court, and the opposite to go back to prison. To symbolise each trial, the narrators shout ‘Guilty!’, until they reach trial number eight where they say ‘You’re God Damn Guilty’. The choice to not show the trials, but focus instead on the bus journeys makes a powerful comment on injustice of their cases. It undermines the worth of the trials, and the simplicity of the single word ‘Guilty’, communicates a message that their outcomes were prejudicially predetermined.

The Scottsboro Boys in rehearsal, London 2013





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3. Activities

Ask everyone to choose one piece of costume or a prop. What kind of character

does this costume or prop belong to? Ask them to create a physical character

around a single prop or piece of costume, using the prop top transition from

themselves to the character onstage.

Explore in small groups different ways a character can enter a playing space, for

example, from behind a piece of furniture, or stepping out of a box, or suitcase, or

from behind another person.

Explore making perfect pictures - tell the story of the Scottsboro Boys in 3, 5 and

10 stage pictures. Focus on precision in the pictures, ensuring they are placed in

exactly the same way during the transitions. You could experiment with using

numbered gridlines.

Use chairs to create different locations from the Scottsboro Boys – for example, a

court room, a prison cell, a train, a bus, a train yard. What are the different ways

the chairs can be used to denote location? Encourage the use of detail, even if it is

imagined.

As an extension of this exercise, explore how to journey from one location to

another and play with making transitions without words, using music and

movement.

Time passing - in small groups create a physical sequence that plays with time

passing in the story. See if you can travel 5 years in 20 seconds!





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4. Other musicals that communicate a political message

Assassins: About assassins who have attempted to kill the President of the United States,

and attempts to dramatize the unpopular idea that the most notorious killers are as much a product of culture as the famous leaders they attempt to murder. (Stephen Sondheim)

Cabaret: Also by Kander and Ebb, Cabaret is set in the context of 1931 and the Nazi rise to power in Berlin.

Chess: Set in the context of a Cold War struggle between the United States and

the Soviet Union, during which both countries wanted to win international chess

tournaments for propaganda purposes. (Benny Andersson, Bjorn Ulvaeus, Tim Rice)

Elegies for Angels, Punks and Raging Queens: Written from the perspective of characters that have died from AIDS. The songs represent the feelings of friends and family members dealing with the loss. (Bill Russell)

Evita: The story follows Argentine political leader Eva Perón, her early life, rise to power,

charity work, and eventual death. (Andrew Lloyd-Webber, Tim Rice)

Girlfriends: Is a female-led musical set during World War II. (Howard Goodall)

Hair: An anti-Vietnam rock musical that debuted in 1968, touching on modern issues, including war, the power of young people, the importance of voting, and making your voice heard. (Gerome Ragni, James Rado)

Miss Saigon: Set in 1970s Saigon during the Vietnam War, it follows the romance

between an American GI and a Vietnamese bar girl. (Claude-Michel Schonberg, Alain

Boubil)

Parade: Based on the 1913 trial of a Jewish factory manager who was accused and

convicted of raping and murdering a thirteen-year-old girl. The musical deals with themes

of prejudice and anti-Semitism. (Alfred Uhry, Jason Robert Brown)

Show Boat: From 1887 to 1927, the musical follows the lives of performers, stagehands,

and dock workers a Mississippi River show boat. A central theme is racial prejudice. (Oscar

Hammerstein II, P.G. Wodehouse)

The Beautiful Game: About a local football teams attempt to overcome the violence that engulfs their community, and chronicles the protagonist’s journey from political ambivalence to IRA volunteer. (Andrew Lloyd-Webber, Ben Elton)

The Civil War: Based on the American Civil War. (Frank Wildhorn, Kim Scharnberg)

Oh, What a Lovely War!: A satirical look at the First World War. The songs work to ‘send up’ military decisions that sent thousands to their deaths. (Joan Littlewood)





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Part 3: Staging a Musical






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One of the challenges of rehearsing a musical is that there are so many different disciplines that need to be learnt and practiced, dance numbers, songs and harmony, scene work, and transitions. Therefore rehearsals follow a well-structured plan to make sure everything is covered evenly. Assistant Director, Jonathan, says it is a bit like ‘putting together a jigsaw’. Coordination of all of these elements means that the process must be very technical, even down to how the rehearsal room is laid out.

1. The Rehearsal Room Floor

Mark Up The rehearsal space is prepared by stage management before rehearsals begin. Similarly to how a room is set up when rehearsing a play, stage management map out the outline of the set design and stage space on the floor with coloured electrical tape (LX tape). This means that everyone can see how big the playing space is and where things are, such as exits and entrances. When a cast moves into the theatre for the technical and dress rehearsals, it can be quite disorientating for the actors. There are a lot of new things to take on board all at once, costume, set, lights, and sound. So it is important to limit as many of these surprises as possible, and the floor markings are an important part of helping with this transition between rehearsal room and theatre. (See the photo on page 44 for an image of the floor) When the some of the original US cast came to London to begin rehearsals with the UK cast, they were surprised by how small the playing space felt in the rehearsal room. They had been used to a large stage in Los Angeles with an audience of four thousand seats! Because of the rehearsal room floor markings, the US cast could immediately see how much closer to the audience they would be, than they were used to in America. They quickly understood that particular moves and sequences needed to adapt to the smaller playing area of the Young Vic stage. Had the floor markings not been there, the US cast would have only discovered this in the theatre at technical rehearsals and would have caused chaos at such a late stage in the process.

10, 8, 6, 4, 2, 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 Particular to a musical rehearsal room, the stage management team also label the front of the stage with numbers. They start with zero in stage centre, and then every foot towards stage right and left, they mark in increasing multiples of 2, i.e. 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, and so on. These numbers are there are for the performers to orientate themselves during the musical numbers. The numbers give a visual mark so they can see at a quick glance where they need to be. Symmetry is very important in this kind of ensemble work, because if one person is slightly out, it pulls attention and ruins the stage picture. In some rehearsal rooms the numbers may be replaced by lights, but they are used for the same purpose.

Numbered gridlines in the rehearsal room





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Spikes and Transitions In the early days of first creating The Scottsboro Boys, Susan Stroman (Director and Choreographer) and Eric Santagata (Assistant Choreographer) spent a week in a rehearsal room, just the two of them, with lots of chairs, just working out the routes of the chairs in the scene transitions. In rehearsals, to help map the transitions between scenes, the stage management marked coloured ‘spikes’ on the rehearsal room floor. These were so that the performers could see where they needed to place their chair to be ready for the next scene. One of Jonathan’s (Assistant Director) responsibilities during rehearsals was to call out the colour of the spike for the next scene, so the performers knew where they were heading for in the transition: ‘So I would say ‘this scene is blue, this scene is pink and green .... I have to make sure I know what everyone is doing, and where they are.’ This was really important because some of these transitions happen in less than twenty seconds, so there is no time for uncertainty. In this production they used twenty-seven different colours – Jonathan said to me it looked a like a tube map!

The rehearsal room. Photos courtesy of the stage management team.

A spike in the rehearsal room





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2. A day in the life of rehearsals – the ‘jigsaw’ of rehearsing

choreography, voice, scene work, transitions

The day before any rehearsal, stage management release a ‘rehearsal call’ which is sent to all creatives and cast members, so that everybody knows who is required and what will be worked on. A typical day in The Scottsboro Boys rehearsal schedule would look something like this: 10:00am Rehearsal begins 10:00 -10:15am Warm Up – Vocal or Physical 10:15 – 11:45am 1.5 hours vocal session, which includes learning songs and

harmony* 11:45 – 12:00pm Break 12:00 – 13:30 1.5 hours movement session on choreography and dance numbers* 13:30 – 14:30 Lunch 14:30 – 18:00 Scene work and transitions: The Company work chronologically

through the show. Scenes and transitions are rehearsed separately. Once learnt separately, the cast practice running scenes and transitions together. Finally the vocals (songs) are added in.

* The morning would begin with the vocal session followed by a movement session, or vice versa. The warm up may only be fifteen minutes but it is an important way to start the day, particularly on a musical. Whether the morning contains 1.5 hours of vocal or physical will indicate whether they do a vocal or physical warm up. Jonathan said that the warm up is ‘about the cast getting into the right head space… that they are together as a company and ready to work. Because they are quite a young company, they have a fantastic energy and generosity, but the subject matter is quite focused, so it’s good for them to come together, as a team, and know that what they have got to achieve is quite tricky.’ Rehearsing a musical is quite different from the process of rehearsing a play. Whereas in play rehearsals, the director is likely to allow a lot of time in the first few weeks to discovery and experimentation, when rehearsing a musical, it is much more about the learning and repetition of musical numbers and songs, and this will take up a large proportion of the rehearsal time. Because the performers are dancers and singers, as well as actors, they are used to learning by muscle memory.

7 Practicing the numbers over and over

again in the correct positions is a big part of the process.

7 Muscle memory: involves consolidating a specific task into memory through physical repetition





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3. The Scottsboro Boys ‘bible’ – the touring document that is 3-4 inches thick!

Susan Stroman’s process is very precise. With the exception of the scenes, every single move, action, and bit of dialogue, is timed to music.

Stroman is one of the world’s leading musical theatre directors and choreographers, and has an extremely busy work schedule. She will often be developing new shows whilst other shows are remounted for touring. When The Scottsboro Boys was originally conceived at the Vineyard Theatre in New York, before moving to Broadway, every single move that everybody did in the show was noted down in a large document called the ‘bible’. This was produced by the original assistant director and choreographer, Eric Santaganta, and is an accurate log of exactly what happens. Then when the associates and assistants come back to remount the show, maybe a year later, they watch videos of the original performances, with the bible in front of them, and from there, they are able to rebuild the show, without having to ask Stroman to come and work it out with them. For copyright reasons, only very few people are allowed access to the bible. There are only three copies; Susan Stroman has one in her office in America, which stays there permanently, and the associate director has one, and the assistant choreographer has one. The bible is the document that the team used here in London to recreate The Scottsboro Boys, led by Associate Director, Nigel West and Assistant Choreographer, Eric Santaganta. Assistant Director, Jonathan, who saw the bible whilst in rehearsals, told me it is about four inches thick, and at first, it is like looking at another language. ‘Each page has every single note of music written down as a dot, and underneath it, what every single person is doing, where they are, where they have come from, what they are wearing… Susan Stroman is really specific and when you watch what’s happening … every single move is thought about, nothing is free.’

An example of Jonathan O’Boyle’s personal ‘Bible’





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4. The challenges of this musical

‘It’s a true event - this is really about the horror through which people were put because of

something they did not do.’ Alex Constantin, Company Stage Manager

Probably the greatest challenge of this musical is that the story being told is true, and that it is such a terrible story of great injustices and obscene prejudice. In the making of the show, and in its remounting, these difficult issues and subject matters can affect the performers and creatives. Alex told me how in rehearsal they may be working on one of the musical numbers; ‘… we’ll be laughing and dancing, and the next minute we are talking about something … and you’re just in tears… it is such a powerful piece in that respect … me and the Assistant Musical Director the other day had to walk out of rehearsals because we were just crying.’ A lot of care, therefore, is taken to be sensitive to those working on the show, and to show respect to those who lived through the true events.

When Alex travelled to America with the UK cast, she told me that on the first day John Kander, Susan Stroman and David Thompson talked to the UK company about their American history and the context of this true story. One of their main concerns for bringing the show to the UK, was how the British would associate with their American history. So, in the first few days of the trip, the three creatives spent a lot of time talking with the UK cast about the production’s historical context and discussing sensitive issues that the show confronts.

As described earlier, a particularly difficult moment is the finale, where the performers wear ‘blackface’ minstrel makeup. When the show was originally rehearsed, and during this remount process, the company dealt very sensitively with the actors as they tackled the scene for the first time. Stage management created a ‘closed rehearsal room’, where the actors could work in private, and only people directly involved in the scene were allowed into the room. The actors, with the support of the director, worked for an hour, learning how to put the makeup on and take it off. Because of the degradation associated with the makeup historically, this was quite a distressing process for the actors, as they got used to applying the makeup. The closed rehearsal room gave the actors a protected space to deal with any unsettling or uncomfortable feelings. During this time, the actors were excellent at supporting each other, and I imagine that their passion for telling this story would have really helped them at this stage of the process.

Because this show is so precise and technically complex, each show demands a lot, both physically and mentally, from the performers, stage management team and crew. For stage management and crew, everything they do backstage is crucially important. On a play, if something goes wrong backstage the actors will ‘act’ their way out of it, they can improvise on stage to solve the problem, and sometimes an audience never knows something’s gone wrong. But with a musical, particularly this one because everything is so precise, stage management are very much part of the choreography. Backstage, everything stage management does must be timed and co-ordinated. If a stage manager forgets to set a prop, it can have serious implications. For the performers, of course, probably one of their biggest challenges is what they put their bodies through; ‘…their bodies are the machines… the show asks them to completely deconstruct themselves of their race, their character, who they are… and additionally they are being asked to perform numbers, whilst singing, and … they are being asked to do this eight times a week.’ Alex Constantin, Company Stage Manager





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Part 4: From Broadway to London –

The Transfer

The Scottsboro Boys in New York with Susan Stroman, Paul Kolnik, 2013





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Part 4: From Broadway to London – The Transfer

1. Create versus Recreate

‘If this was a new show, we could reinvent how we might do something to make it easier and faster. But we are working with people who have been doing this for eight years… Even if we find a different way of doing it, it might not actually be relevant, because they might have already tried it.’ Alex Constantin, Company Stage Manager Remounting a show that has been performed before is a very unique process and very different to making a new show. For the new UK cast members they had to learn how to perform and tell this story, but they were not finding it for themselves. Instead, they have had to recreate an already existing performance, but equally they need to find a way of making it theirs, so that in performance it looks completely natural to them. This is a very particular skill, but it is one that musical performers are very used to, because musicals will often run for a long time, or be remounted, and new performers tend to get recast into productions all the time. In rehearsal the performers will be told where they need to stand, or what they need to do, and they will accept the direction, and then find a reason themselves for why they are doing something. This is very different to working on a new show, where the actor will question motivations in a scene, in order that they understand why their character is doing something, and therefore be able to give a more truthful performance as a result. ‘…an actor may ask ‘why’, but the nature of this is that they can’t, and they understand that they can’t. It’s a different sort of vehicle. But … they do have to find their own energy, a creative energy … otherwise there is no point doing it.’ Jonathan O’Boyle, Assistant Director






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Because the subject matter of this particular show is very sensitive and can be hard hitting in rehearsals, it is very important that as a company the performers are very open and accepting of what the process is. Patience is key, as is being able to support each other. Company Stage Manager, Alex Constantin puts a lot of energy into making sure the whole company feel connected to each other creatively, and creates a place where experienced industry actors can impart their knowledge to younger actors recently out of college. As can be seen in the interviews with Alex Constantin and Catherine Kodicek (See Part 5: Meet the Company), one of the biggest challenges of a remount is recreating something that is pre-existing. Every single prop and piece of costume needs to be exactly replicated, and facilitated within a budget. ‘… it’s like making a carbon copy whilst re-making it here.... Normally you try and adapt things to make them work, and now we are just trying to adapt ourselves to make it work. … They have done all the work beforehand and so all we need to do is work to make sure that is happening here. It’s fun, it’s really fun.’ Alex Constantin, Company Stage Manager One of the biggest challenges for a Director, Associate Director or Assistant Director on a remount is that they have to be thoroughly prepared. It is of course important to prepare for any process, but when you are remounting a production, there is very little time for discovery. Because the performers know that the production has been on before, when they ask a question, about a scene, character, or backstory, the performers expect the directors to know the answer. If you are a new director on a show, then you need to know the material very well, in order that you are prepared and ready for any questions as they arise. It is a very different vehicle to directing a new show.

Swing and Dance Captain Jordan Shaw





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2. The role of the ‘Associate’ and ‘Assistant’

On a touring musical, the creative team in the rehearsal room is a little different to a new show. In the Young Vic rehearsals room for The Scottsboro Boys there were the following people in the room:

Associate Director – Nigel West

Assistant Choreographer - Eric Santagata

Musical Director - Robert Scott

Assistant Director – Jonathan O’Boyle

Stage Management Team

In Week 4 Director and Choreographer Susan Stroman joined. When the show was originally conceived, Director and Choreographer, Susan Stroman led rehearsals. Once a musical show starts its tour, the production company employs ‘Associates’ and ‘Assistants’, for example an Associate Director, Associate Designer, and Assistant Choreographer. This allows Stroman to be free to create and rehearse new shows whilst other shows tour nationally and internationally. It is important that the show an audience sees on tour is to the exact same standard as when it was originally produced, even if it has been running for several years. The job of the Associates and Assistants is to manage the production whilst it tours - they are responsible for rehearsing and remounting the show. Nigel West is the Associate Director for the Young Vic’s run of The Scottsboro Boys. Nigel knows the show well because he was the Associate Director for the recent run in Los Angeles, and he is familiar with working with Stroman, having worked with her as Associate Director on Crazy for You and The Producers. In week four of rehearsals Stroman travelled from America to rehearsals in London to work with the new company for four days. She worked systematically through the show, correcting any bits that weren’t quite right, and refining and tweaking the show ready for performance. (See Jonathan O’Boyle’s diary entry for week four of rehearsals and Susan Stroman’s visit, Part 3.4).






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3. An original and new cast

For the Young Vic run of The Scottsboro Boys there are five original cast members from the US, and twelve new cast members from the UK. To transfer the show from the US to the UK, and assimilate new and original cast members requires a highly structured schedule. Creatives and cast members are introduced to the process at different times. To ensure that milestones are kept to, every single element of the process is planned in detail.

A Trip to America . . . For the twelve new UK cast members, the process began with trip to America in August this year, where they had the fantastic opportunity to meet and work with Susan Stroman, John Kander and David Thompson for five days. Because Stroman was only able to be in London for four days of the rehearsal process at the Young Vic, it was important that the new cast members had an opportunity to connect with Stroman, to understand why the show was made and learn more about the historical context of the show. ‘The reason we went out to the US was because our cultures are so separate and so different. If you look at anywhere you go now, and you see Starbucks, Nero’s, Pret A Manger, they’re everywhere, but the way people interact with each other in the UK and US is so different. This is a story about American history, and I think it would be really interesting to see how it happens here, because although our history is different, maybe some of our approaches to life aren’t…’ Alex Constantin, Company Stage Manager Stroman was rehearsing Big Fish the same week the UK company were visiting, and so The Scottsboro Boys would be rehearsed from 2pm to 10pm. Stroman would rehearse Big Fish from 10am in the morning, and then join The Scottsboro Boys rehearsals in the evenings, making for a very long working day! The five days were structured as follows: 2:00 – 6:00pm Choreography and basic blocking of the main numbers and scenes,

with the US and UK cast, Nigel West, Eric Santagata and Alex Constantin

6:30 – 10:00pm Susan Stroman joined to work on scenes and talk actors about why

the show was made

London Rehearsals In London, the new UK cast began work a week and a half earlier than the original US cast members. This was to give them a head start, so that they had time to learn as many of the musical numbers and routines as possible. During these initial eight days the UK cast worked on all the vocals and choreography in the show. The original US cast members joined half way through week two, and because they had done the show many times before, they were able to get back into it quite quickly. During the first morning of the UK and US cast rehearsing together, the whole cast sung together the musical numbers from start to finish through the show. In the afternoon they then went back to the top of the show, and worked through physically and vocally, bit by bit.





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Because a lot of the US members were in most of the scenes, very little work had been done on them in the first eight days. When the cast arrived at a scene, they would pause and rehearse each scene in much the same way as you would a play. They talked through the scene, and discussed where each character had just come from. Everybody had to work to a very tight schedule, and they did not have a great deal of discovery time on each section, perhaps only half an hour, before they were on their feet and moving the scene. Having the US cast members join was an important step forward in the process. They brought a whole new energy into the room and invaluable insights from earlier production runs in America. One of the US actors had even been a part of the show at the very beginning, when the musical was first conceived and workshopped. That kind of knowledge was invaluable to the new people working on the show. The original cast members were able to support and inspire new members with their passion for the story. Some of them even brought actual images and pictures that had been on the walls of the rehearsal room for the first ever rehearsals of the show in the US years before. When rehearsing a musical, there are two levels of performance that need to be achieved, the intimacy of scenes, and the spectacle of the musical numbers. In her interview, Alex Constantin (Company Stage Manager) makes the point that with this musical in particular, the scenes have to land in order for the songs to work, and that the songs need to work so that the scenes land. Both aspects of the show are vitally important for the show to happen as a whole. Once the US cast joined, it became an even more industrious rehearsal process, with often two sets of rehearsals running at the same time. Scene work would be happening in the main rehearsal room, whilst vocals and musical dance numbers were practiced in a separate room. By week 3 the full company had come together and began running the show from start to finish. The next section is an excerpt from Jonathan O’Boyle’s rehearsal room diary which gives insight to perhaps one of the most exiting stages in the process, Susan Stroman’s visit to the London rehearsal.

Coleman Domigo in rehearsal, London 2013





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4. Rehearsals – Susan Stroman Arrives

Jonathan O’Boyle’s Rehearsal Room Diary for The Scottsboro Boys – Week 4

Week four of the rehearsals for The Scottsboro Boys has been the busiest yet. We’ve had the American cast for just over a week and a half and we are already in a position to run the show. The British cast and the American cast have blended really well and each has upped their game to get the show in excellent shape for the week ahead. We began the week with vocal and physical warm-ups. This helps the cast focus for the rehearsal day and particularly helps focus their minds – the show is almost two hours with no interval so the level of concentration needed is extraordinary. This idea of the warm up is not unusual. We have started each day this way and it has really helped with company focus and moral. Each morning throughout the week we looked at different areas of the show that needed extra time to work on and areas which needed polishing. This included cleaning dance routines and working on vocal sections of the show. It also included working on specific areas of the text and scene work. As we have only had the full company together for a week and a half, there is still quite a bit of work to do on the acting areas of the piece. The musical numbers have been worked on extensively, especially as the American members of the company have been in the show on Broadway – but some areas of text and scenes needed completely reworking as the dynamics of the company have obviously changed here at the Young Vic. This however is all positive, as the work being produced is alive and fresh.

On Monday afternoon we put the entire show on its feet for the first time. Running a show is always scary as you often find areas of the piece that are under rehearsed or, in extreme cases, areas that have yet to be looked over at all! Luckily, we had no such problem. The show fitted together really well and for the beginning of week four, was in excellent shape. I find this part of the rehearsal process the most exciting. You can begin to see the show in its entirety. It’s also a huge step forward for the actors as they can finally start to see what their complete journey is through the show – for some this can be overwhelming as the show has no interval and the level of stamina and concentration needed to sustain the whole two hours is huge. After each run we would have a notes session where the director and myself would hand out cards to individual actors

Susan Stroman, Photo by Paul Kolnik





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with their individual notes written on them. This is a new way of handing out notes for me. I am used to verbal notes sessions – but what this method facilitates is the actors being able to take the note away with them and work on the section of the show in their own time before the next rehearsal. The morning after each run we would have a working notes session. This entailed working on any specific areas of the show that were highlighted in the run that needed extra rehearsal or clarification before we had did another run in the afternoon. With each day came a more polished and more rounded run-through. The actors were discovering smoother ways through their journeys and character transitions, stage management were perfecting their props tables and the music department was perfecting the band’s relationship with the company. All in all, we were heading in the right direction! This week was also a very special week for the team. Our Director, Susan Stroman – who has until now been in New York directing Big Fish on Broadway – joined us for the latter half of the week and the beginning of our technical rehearsal period. Until now we have been in the capable hands of Susan’s Associate Director Nigel West. This for me has been the most intense, inspiring and exciting four days of the rehearsal process, and intense in an excellent way. Susan, lovingly nicknamed ‘Stro’, has the most amazing gravitas and presence of any director I have every worked with. With grace and intelligence, she worked through the show and ‘tweaked’ every element that wasn’t quite right. She gave a wonderful speech (with David ‘Tommy’ Thompson, the book writer) about the show’s conception and their relationship with the composers Kander and Ebb. They also spoke extensively about the real ‘Scottsboro Boys’ and how their story is as relevant today as it was when the show was originally written. Stro then worked on cleaning certain dance numbers which needed that extra lift to make them go from being excellent to outstanding – something I think only she could have done. We ended the week with an excellent run. The presence of Stro in the room has lifted the entire production and the entire team. She galvanized the company and the piece. For want of a better phrase, she sprinkled us with her magic dust that only she could. This show, after all, is a project she cares about and a project she has worked on for many years – she knows the piece inside out. It was an honour to observe her work. We head into tech on Friday, where we start to see the show take on the new life of being in the theatre. I can’t wait!





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Part 5: Meet the Company

Forrest McClendon, Kyle Scatliffe , Colman Domingo , Adebayo Bolaji





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1. Susan Stroman, Director

This interview first appeared in Words on Plays, the performance guide series of San

Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.). Dan Rubin is the editor of Words on

Plays and A.C.T.’s publications manager.

The Moving Subtext of an American Tragedy

An Interview with Director/Choreographer Susan Stroman

By Dan Rubin

Five-time Tony Award winner Susan Stroman believes the success of any musical comes from great collaboration, and the team she has collaborated with most frequently is Kander and Ebb. Her first big break in New York came when she choreographed the 1987 off-Broadway revival of Kander and Ebb’s Flora, the Red Menace. She reunited with them in 1991 for the off-Broadway revue And the World Goes ’Round (which she also co-conceived) and again in 1997 for the Broadway musical Steel Pier. Not only did they become great collaborators, but they also became great friends. As she explains: “To have that kind of freedom and joy with close collaborators is rare in this business.” In 2002, Stroman, Kander, Ebb, and book writer David Thompson began collaborating on The Scottsboro Boys by seeking out an American story. The project was put on hold after Ebb’s death in 2004, but the remaining three began working on the project again in 2008 and produced it at New York’s Vineyard Theatre in early 2010. Later that year the show moved to Broadway, where it was nominated for 12 Tony Awards. After the first leg of A.C.T.’s 2012 coproduction of The Scottsboro Boys with The Old Globe opened to rave reviews in San Diego, Stroman was kind enough to speak with us by phone about creating the musical and why it is essential that the story of the Scottsboro Boys is never forgotten. How did the process of creating The Scottsboro Boys begin?

It started around Fred Ebb’s kitchen table—a very famous kitchen table because it’s where Chicago was written and Cabaret was written and the song “New York, New York.” That kitchen table should be in the Smithsonian. We had done an off-Broadway production of Flora, the Red Menace, where we met, and we then went on to do a retrospective of Kander and Ebb’s work called And the World Goes ’Round, and then we did the Broadway show Steel Pier, so we love working with each other. It’s interesting how musicals come to be: sometimes someone will hand you a script to turn into a musical, sometimes people will hand you a novel to turn into a musical, sometimes you’ll have a vision of a girl in a yellow dress and you make that into a musical. Scottsboro came about because we loved collaborating together. The slate was open to do whatever we wanted, so long as we did it together. We started talking about doing something true. Real. Something based on a piece of





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history. Usually when you are doing a musical (at least for me) you are in a more fantastical situation—make-believe. We thought, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful to do something that was based on a true story?” So we decided to start by looking at the ten greatest trials in American history. Not necessarily trials associated with African American history?

No, but of course the Scottsboro Boys is one of the most famous groups of trials in our collective history. It immediately jumped out at us. It was about nine innocent boys who were accused of a horrific crime. It was about a dark time in our history, when so many things happened to spawn the beginning of the civil rights movement. The case was about the North against the South, black against white, Communists, the NAACP. It was filled with big characters, like Samuel Leibowitz, a New York lawyer some considered to be the next Clarence Darrow. He went down to Scottsboro and thought he could get these boys out right away, because it was clear from the evidence that they didn’t do it. When he got down there, the prejudice that he found against a northern, Jewish lawyer was as great as the prejudice against the nine African American boys. As we delved more into the research, everything about it struck us: they were locked up together and called the Scottsboro Boys as if they were a theatrical troupe. People knew the names of all the lawyers, all the judges, the names of all the men on the jury, but they never knew the names of the boys. They were always lumped together as the Scottsboro Boys. Kander and Ebb are known for writing for the underdog, writing songs like “Maybe This Time.” They are known for writing about ordinary people in extraordinary situations, like Nazi Germany or a Latin prison, so they were attracted to this story right away, because it is about how one lie destroyed the lives of nine young men. How do you balance accuracy and theatricality when adapting history into a

musical?

What was most important to us was making the boys individuals. We didn’t want it to be an after-school special or a documentary, and the minute you decide to make something theatrical, you give yourself license not to be linear. So we focused on the individuals as real people. One of the boys, Haywood Patterson, learned how to write while he was in jail. Eventually he wrote a book called Scottsboro Boy, and we based a lot on his story. He is the character who comes out as the leader of the nine. He was always put in the front, because he was said to have looked the meanest and the strongest, and he was the most trouble. In the end the show is about the phrase, “I matter.” You can lump these people together, but when you pull one character out, it’s a whole different story. “I matter” is a huge part of it because we remember each of them at the end of the show. A lot of people don’t remember this part of history, and it is still relevant today. Kander and Ebb were both young boys in the 1930s. Did they bring any of their

own memories into the creative process?

John Kander remembers it very well. He remembers being a little boy in Kansas City and reading about the Scottsboro Boys in the paper every week. And then, all of a sudden, they were gone. No one was talking about them anymore. He remembers that moment: one minute they were very popular, and then they disappeared.





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When was the decision made to incorporate the structure of a minstrel show into

The Scottsboro Boys?

In doing the research, we came across journalists who, several times, referred to the trials as a minstrel show— saying the boys were paraded around as if they were in a minstrel show. Kander and Ebb used a cabaret device for the show Cabaret and a vaudeville device for the show Chicago. So they thought that minstrel would be a great way to bring music into the Scottsboro story. Fred always used to say, “If we don’t make it entertaining, nobody will listen.” That device, which is thought of as racist, actually helped us, because we decided to take the form and turn it on its head. Usually minstrel was white people portraying blacks in a disrespectful way, but we asked ourselves, “What if it were a group of African Americans playing white people?” It allows these nine actors to portray two white women, white guards, white sheriffs, white judges: it allows them to play parts that they would not otherwise be able to play. Also, the way the show is structured . . . It is typical for a minstrel show to have a semicircle of chairs, and as our show unfolds, the actors take those chairs and they tell the story with them: they make them into a train, they make them into a holding room, they make them into a cell. So the actors become in charge of the structure: they build the set. And at the very end, they deconstruct the minstrel form and they walk away from it. The very last thing the audience sees is a semicircle of chairs completely tipped over. Were you nervous about working with a form that is taboo?

It was the perfect way for the actors to tell this story. In the minstrel format, there was always a story told (it was a silly story—a farmer’s wife and a traveling salesman, or something), and here we are telling the story of the Scottsboro Boys. Flipped on its head, using the device in a way to show the tragedy of it all, we thought it was a good idea. When people see the show, they understand it and they’re with us. Admittedly, when they hear this out of context, it doesn’t sound like a swell idea. I read about the protests of the Broadway production, and about how some of those protesters traveled to see the Philadelphia production and, afterwards, came backstage and apologized for protesting. They did. The actors were overwhelmed by that. When that happened on Broadway, because the protesters refused to see the show (we offered them tickets, of course), it was hard to have a conversation about it—there was no way to engage them. The Scottsboro Boys really does make people think, and when audiences leave they have a conversation about it—unlike some musicals, after which you go to dinner and don’t discuss it. When you leave The Scottsboro Boys, it inspires a conversation about your own thoughts and opinions about race, your own family, your own history. When you inspire that, as creators of theater, you feel like you’ve accomplished a great deal. What was the first Scottsboro Boys rehearsal room like?

It was wonderful. We got together for the first reading the day after Obama was elected president, and we were wondering if the idea of race would change in America. It was exciting. The actors saw this piece and the way we were using the minstrel form as a great challenge. Never once was there any consternation about race in the room. I was waiting to see if anyone would be uncomfortable, but it never happened. If anything, the cast rallied together and invested in telling that story. Because of the device, they became storytellers. Of all the shows I’ve ever done, I’ve never been with a group of actors who invested so much in telling a story.





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Do you think that, in part, that passion stems from the fact that this story has been

forgotten?

I’m sure, because it’s been erased from history. It’s not taught. Most people aren’t aware of how the Scottsboro Boys helped redefine the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection under the law for all Americans and ensured that no race or ethnic group could be excluded from serving on a jury. Rosa Parks’s husband marched for the Scottsboro Boys, and she writes about them, and you want to believe that when she made that courageous decision on the bus, that her knowledge of the Scottsboro Boys was a part of what made her say, “No, I’m not going to move this time.” How was it different for you to choreograph for a real story as opposed to a

fantastical world?

Because I am a choreographer for the theater, I have to adhere to a decade and a geo- graphical area for every show. So for Scottsboro Boys, I’m in the ’20s and ’30s. My choreography is interspersed with real steps that are indicative of that time period—as well as elements that were very popular at that time, like the shadow play. The shadow play was especially popular in the ’20s, and we have a song “Make Friends with the Truth” during which the guys put up a sheet and do a little shadow play behind it. It’s something you would often find in minstrel shows or in vaudeville. Scottsboro actor James T. Lane has said that when you are choreographing, you

give not only the steps but the history of the steps. Why is it important that

dancers understand where the steps come from?

When you dance, it has to be motivated, and the more information you can give on a dance step, the greater it will become because it will become rich—it will be danced with subtext. For example, we do the cakewalk, which really came from the levee down south, where African Americans would mock the white master. They would hold their hand high and have their chest erect and lift up their knees in mocking the upper class. But it became so popular that it became a dance step. Your first collaboration with Kander and Ebb was on a revival of Flora, the Red

Menace, but one of your early jobs was dancing in Chicago.

Yes, I did the national tour with Gwen [Verdon] and Chita [Rivera] and Jerry Orbach. I had known Kander and Ebb from afar, and Scott Ellis had done [Kander and Ebb’s] The Rink, and one day we were both lamenting how we would love to do what we came to New York to do, which was to create theater. And Scott said, “Let’s ask Kander and Ebb if we can work on Flora, the Red Menace. The worst thing that could happen is they will say, ‘No.’” I think that’s good advice for young people today: the worst thing that can happen is they can say, “No,” but you should go ask the question. So we asked them, and they said, “Yes.” So we took it down to the Vineyard Theatre and had a wonderful production. It had a little bit of a cult following, and, in fact, it launched our careers to the other side of the table. And we became very good friends with Kander and Ebb. You’ve worked with them on a number of shows, and with Scottsboro’s book

writer, David Thompson.

Yes, we’re all very close. In fact, David and Kander and I are meeting to start something new.





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Will you start again by sitting around the table and asking, “What are we going to

do this time?”

Yeah. Same thing. That’s the best way! Will you look for a true story again?

We’re talking about it. We just started getting together again. We’ve come close to choosing something, but not yet to speak about. What were the disadvantages of starting with historical material in creating a

musical?

I don’t think there were any. We always had research to fall back on. It was very fulfilling. The whole thing. For all of us, of all the shows we’ve ever done, this is the show that is most dear to us. How did Ebb’s death in 2004 influence The Scottsboro Boys?

When Fred died, it was put on the shelf. I didn’t know that we would go back to it. Then about three years ago, Kander said, “Let’s look at this again.” And I said, “Of course,” and we realized how much had already been done. Kander finished the rest of the lyrics and the music, what needed to be done. We thought, “What would Freddy do here? What would Freddy say?” Kander said he would channel Freddy when he was at the piano. So he was always with us. We would talk about him at every rehearsal and reading. We miss him. He would be so pleased: we were always chasing him, because he was so excited about The Scottsboro Boys.





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2. Jonathan O’Boyle, Assistant Director

An extract from Laura Farnworth’s meetings

with Jonathan…

Who is in the rehearsal room at the moment? Me (Assistant Director), Nigel West, who is the Associate Director, who has directed it most recently in LA a few months ago and he has worked with Susan Stroman the director before on Crazy For You in the West End and on The Producers, so they’ve got a good relationship. And I think she uses him as her Associate for things that are in Europe and Britain. She’s got an Associate who is working with her now on Big Fish on Broadway, that’s why she is not here, because she is directing a different show on Broadway. She is with us for three days and that’s it.

Do you know what will happen in those three

days? They will be the last three days so we will be doing runs, and I imagine that, what I think will happen is that she’ll probably tweak, she will mould what has been set, if it’s not exactly what she wants, she will tweak it and adjust. There’s also been a week in America already, where the British cast flew to America for a week to work with Stroman on scenes.

Can you tell us about the trip to America? The British cast all went and met with the Americans, they did lots of background work on where the show came from and its history. They spent time on a few numbers, just so they could get in the head space of the way Stroman works, because she is very specific. Every single move or action or bit of dialogue is timed to music - when you watch what’s happening, even the small bits that we are doing at the moment, every single move is thought about, nothing is free. It’s good that the cast went to New York to spend time with her and to understand where she comes from, her process. To me it isn’t the same creative process that you might normally have. The cast are learning and shaping a story, but they are not finding things for themselves. They have to find how to recreate things, and that is actually quite a difficult skill for a performer. It is about repetition, because they are dancers and they are performers and singers, they learn by muscle memory. If they are told to stand somewhere, they accept it, and they find a reason for it - whereas I know that an actor may ask ‘why’, the nature of this is that they can’t, and they understand that they can’t. It’s a different sort of vehicle. Having said that, they do





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have to find their own energy, and creative energy to get through otherwise there is no point doing it.

What is the challenge for an assistant director when doing a remount of a musical? Preparation, as always, but even more so because you are not given any time in rehearsal to ‘discover’. You have to be on it so you know exactly what is going on, what the scene is, where the people are, what are the people talking about - because obviously questions come up, for example ‘what’s the backstory to this?’ Or; ‘who is this character?’, and the performers expect you to know.

What’s your role during rehearsals? At the minute, because I have been through the transitions with the associate director, I help facilitate the transitions of the chairs. So I will say for example; ‘Olen, you are moving chair 1 and 2 to these marks on the floor.’ There are twenty-seven different sets of colours, it looks like a tube map! So I will say ‘this scene is blue, this scene is pink and green’. I am also reading in for people. Because I have to maintain the show when we open, and rehearse four understudies, I have to make sure I know what everyone is doing, and where they are. Even though the ‘bible’ exists, that document to me at the moment is a bit like a foreign language, because I don’t know the show as well as the person who wrote it, so I have my own way of noting where people are, so I am working my way through it as we go, and making my own notes.

When will you start working with the understudies? It began today! There are two swings, who learn everybody. Some of the smaller parts have learnt the big parts, as normal, so we have started to teach those. Because it is a dance piece we have to be ready to go on first preview in case someone breaks a leg, which is tricky because at the moment everyone is in everything - so we have to try and grab half an hour. One of the swings is the dance captain, so he will be monitoring the choreography once the choreographer leaves. We will start full time rehearsals for understudies after the first preview. So in the afternoons, we will be rehearsing understudies. That will continue probably once we have opened after press night and will probably take about three or four weeks, and then we will do a couple of runs before we close. Me and the associate director will be doing this together, which is great because it’s a big jump for me, with only two understudies.

Can you tell me a little about the style of this show? Kander and Ebb are very clever. They wrote Cabaret, and when it was originally produced it was set in a cabaret, so the style of the piece facilitated the style of the performance. With Chicago, it’s about vaudeville, so again, it is set within a Vaudeville world. This show is about injustice and the black community, so the director, with Kander and Ebb, said why don’t we invert the minstrel show. So they perform as minstrels, which is why there is the semi-circle of chairs with an Interlocutor chair, because that is the format of every minstrel show ever made. And that sort of unlocked everything, they went this is amazing we, we can have the performers in the town, where ever it may be, playing the Scottsboro Boys, so there is a sort of detachment from the actor/performer. For me, as someone new to the process, it’s quite brilliant because it allows an audience to observe and have an opinion without it being real, even though it is real story, there’s that sense of detachment, which is fantastic, because if it was a real, I think it would be





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horrendous, it would be impossible to watch. So they have just taken that one step away from it - so we can access it.

It sounds quite Brechtian in style? Yes it is. And there are placards. It is quite presentational. There are two characters called Tambo and Bones, who are the classic bookends of the minstrel show, they play all the different characters. And the Interlocutor, who is the only white character, he runs the troupe. And then towards the end, they put on ‘blackface’, which when I first read the script, I didn’t understand what was going on. Why are black actors doing that? And I sat there for a long time and then I thought, oh my God, they are inverting it, because they take it off. They are playing white people, putting on black make up, but they are black actors putting black make up on… and then the Interlocutor goes ‘”come on! It’s a happy ending”. But it’s not because they all died - one shot himself, one drank himself to death. It is a tragic story, and they were only exonerated two months ago. So it is not a happy ending. They stand there and wipe the makeup off in front of him, after singing this amazing song about the Scottsboro Boys, and it sort of inverts the format - which is the opposite of racist, which is brilliant, it’s a brilliant style, very clever.

This is a musical dealing with a very tragic true story. How do the cast and company seem

to deal with that? I know that they are aware of what the end is. Originally it was done as a closed rehearsal, meaning only creatives who are directly involved are in the room. They have an hour in a rehearsal where they learn how to put the makeup on, and take it off. In America that was very traumatic, it took people a long time to get over that. I don’t know how it will happen here. That will happen in week four. I think they are sensitive to each other and they support each other. Particularly the older actors, they are quite passionate about this story being told, which is great, that is the point of it.

And what do you think is particularly brilliant about telling this story in the form of a

musical rather than a play? I think a musical gives it one step away from reality, and then you go home and think, ‘oh, that’s actually real! ...these kids were in jail for thirty years!’ There is one song in it about the electric chair which is a tap dance, and they are tapping around the electric chair, so in one sense it is actually quite funny, but when you watch it you don’t quite know how to respond, and I think that is exciting, some people will be laughing, some people won’t be laughing, because it is quite sensitive. I think that discourse is exactly what the point is, and it is not frivolous, and it allows you to go away and think about it. This isn’t happy, happy, happy. It starts off jovial, with numbers where it gives you a false sense of what it is about. You know it is a difficult subject, but then it sort of deteriorates into this dark reality of what is going on, interspersed with a tap dance, or a song about a reprieve, which is a brilliant uplifting song. So it’s brilliant, it is I think what all theatre should be, whether it is a play, or a musical, or an opera - it gives you a chance to think without being judgmental. It is very clever.

Can you tell us about the use of caricature? Tambo and Bones play caricatures of the characters really. There is the lawyer, a guard, a judge, a governor, all these characters are extreme and they have one or two bits of costume or a prop to indicate character, so for example, a massive cigar, or glasses, or a policeman’s hat, and nothing else indicates the character apart from that. So they might put on a jacket and within that picture you are taken into their world. Once you then juxtaposition what is going on with the seriousness of what is going on with the boys, it sort of allows you to take





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it. You are thinking, ‘oh my goodness, this is quite horrific’, but then you can have a moment of lightness where it is quite funny. It is quite clever like that. Because they are black actors playing white characters they are sort of parodying everybody, not just white sheriffs, but Jewish lawyers, young white girls, it’s like a caricature of the whole world, and when that form is broken at the end it gives you a real sense of what the characters have gone through. One thing that is really good is just having one prop, a glass, or a cup, that just changes the character. For instance, the actors that play the young white girls that accuse the boys of rape, all they have is a clutch bag and a hat, and the character is formed. And it is brilliant because you have this six foot three black actor, playing a young white girl. When they are actors in the minstrel show, they are almost themselves as actors, and then they become the boys, and then they become characters, so there are three levels to it. Playing at these three levels it has to be caricature, it is really physical and it’s all about the way their bodies are used to indicate class, race and age.

What are the challenges with the script? If you read the script out of context it can come across as racist. They have a go at the Jewish lawyer from New York, which is interesting because in the South of America in that time, it was ‘worse' to be a Jewish person than a Black person - so in real life the Jewish lawyer had to have body guards. The way he is spoken about in the musical is not very good, but that is because we are being shown, as the audience, that at the time it was not acceptable. But to read it without context, it is quite close to the bone. On stage you can see it is black actors, performing people being racist about black people, it’s in context. But on paper it is just Tambo, and you might not know Tambo is black. There is some context on the front page of the script from the author. I think that it is a comment on that world rather than reality - it is actually the opposite of racist.

What has it been like with the Americans joining? It’s brilliant, because they know the show, and it’s part of their history. The actors playing Tambo and Bones brought in images that they had up on the original rehearsal room wall. The images were not very nice- they are of lynchings, and public hangings, and two young black men hanging from a tree and white people laughing and pointing at them. Their passion for the story is different to why British people are passionate about it. I think the British are passionate is because it’s a good musical and it’s a brilliant story, but it is not about us. Whereas it is about the Americans, it’s about their history. So to have their passion and their energy is brilliant. Coleman has been a part of the show for five or six years since the original workshops. They care about it and they talk about it passionately and that is rubbing off on people which is great, because you can’t buy that, and I can’t research that. Also, having native American speakers in the room is brilliant, and it helps the British cast with their accents, with rhythm, with energy.





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3. Alex Constantin, Company Stage Manager

What is your role on The Scottsboro Boys and at the Young Vic? I am the Company Stage Manager. Normally the Young Vic has a Company Manager, which is me full time, and then a Stage Manager on particular shows, but this show I’m doing both. As a Stage Manager, my job is to look at the day to day running of the show - the budget for props and in rehearsals, making sure there is tea and coffee for example. The Stage Manager will make sure that the show runs smoothly - that the ASMs [Assistant Stage Managers] are doing what they need to, if they have cues, that they do their cues correctly, that everyone is covered. And just the day to day maintenance of the show and keeping to what the director and the designer want - I will often work very closely with the director or designer in rehearsals, to make sure their brief is fitted. Then as a Company Manager, my job is pastoral. I guess making sure everyone is happy. Making sure the cast are happy, that the director is comfortable and if they have problems they can call me at any point. Someone will call me often at 3am in the morning with certain troubles, or someone will text me about tickets at 5am in the morning, which has happened! It’s not really a scheduled job, it’s sort of like being a friend, or an agony aunt, someone who’s impartial and making sure that everyone working on that show feels valued for what they are doing. The Young Vic works so hard to make sure that everyone is getting the most possible while they’re working on a show; we make sure the company are not lacking or left wanting for anything.

Is the first time that you have done those two roles? No, since I have been at the Young Vic (I joined January 2013) I have only been the Company Manager. I have helped out on most shows, and I’ve been around to make sure the Stage Management aren’t wanting for anything. Before that I spent three and a half years Company Stage Managing, as I am on this show. Last Christmas I was doing another Kander and Ebb musical, Cabaret, so I was on stage doing cues. The only difference is that here I also the building stuff to do - planning for the new shows, looking after the companies that are in the studios, whether it is our show or not, but it keeps me busy! It’s quite nice to spend another Christmas with a Kander and Ebb musical.

Can you tell me about the trip to America in August? So it was one of the most incredible weeks of my life. I got to meet Susan Stroman, John Kander, and David Thompson, who are the people that created The Scottsboro Boys. It was interesting because I had already worked on a previous show of Kander’s, and it was interesting because he spoke about Ebb. They put on this meal for us on the last night, which was gorgeous, but sitting in a room with Kander and realising why musicals like these are made, and why he chooses these difficult subjects, and why he thinks that musicals are the best way of doing it… You know he says things like, in Cabaret, ‘Tomorrow Belongs To Me’ is this beautiful ballad - you sit there and you are enraptured and then you fall for it, and then you realise he’s actually a Nazi. Kander talks about it, I think he calls it, ‘kicking the safety ground from under you’. So with The Scottsboro Boys you are sitting there and you are listening to these songs and this entertainment, and then you realise, at the end of the day he is making a social comment, with this music. To get you comfortable, you know you can’t tackle these subjects by just being really macabre about it sometimes, because at the end of the day you can’t make someone sit through an hour and a half and just assault them





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with it, this is hideous, this happened, this is terrible, you have to sit there and make someone enjoy it, and then through doing that, when it gets kicked out from under them, they get a realisation of how easy it is to fall into the trap. They are really tricky subjects. The reason we went out to the US was because our cultures are so separate and so different. If you look at anywhere you go now, you see Starbucks, Nero’s, Pret A Manger, they are everywhere, but the way people interact with each other in the UK and US is so different. This is a story about American history, and I think it would be really interesting to see how it happens here, because although our history is different, maybe some of our approaches to life aren’t, and people are the same everywhere, no matter whether we carried out those acts or not. I think it’s really interesting. It was truly inspirational being in New York. The three creatives that created the piece are just completely inspired by the story - they told the cast that at the end of the day, they own this story, and they have a respect to show to the people that lived through this true event. You know we sit there, we’re doing the music and sometimes we’ll be laughing and dancing, and the next minute we are talking about something that will blow your head off and you’re just in tears. It is such a powerful piece in that respect, for example, me and the Assistant Musical Director the other day had to walk out of rehearsals because we were just crying. It’s a true event - this is really about the horror through which people were put because of something they did not do. New York was about building a bond with Stroman because she couldn’t be here for a couple of weeks and making sure that the people who were working on it realised where the piece came from. It was incredible.

What are the differences for working on a musical versus working on a play, and what are

the challenges of the musical form in respect to your role? I find the hardest thing about this musical is that it is so close to a play and that the scenes have to land, otherwise the music doesn’t work. Equally the music has to land, or the scenes won’t work. From my point of view the hardest thing about it is, is that the Stage Management team are an integral part of the choreography, we cannot miss a prop because otherwise they cannot do that jump, which leads to something else, which in the end leads to another scene - It all ties in. On a play, if you forget a prop, you feel really bad, but they can act their way out of it, but on a musical it can have serious physical implications, everything is so technically choreographed. I am dealing with bigger numbers, I am dealing with more people, I am dealing with musicians, as well as actors, I am dealing with understudies, as well as the swings, as well as the cast, I am dealing with a massive age range - on plays you have a few ages ranges, but on this musical you are dealing with a lot of different characters, from a lot of different backgrounds, who sometimes have nothing in common. For example, on this show I am working with someone who is 17 years old, up to someone who is ‘undisclosed age’ and older! And they each deserve the same amount of respect, but their needs are completely different; someone needs privacy; someone needs help working their computer; someone needs helping getting from A to B to do a costume fitting. On a musical, the hardest thing is that their bodies are the machines, that is the same with any type of show but in musicals they are pushing their bodies even more. They are doing a show which them to completely deconstruct themselves of their race, their character, who they are, because it’s so close to who they are, and additionally they are being asked to perform numbers whilst singing - and at the same time, they are being asked to do this eight times a week. Some people think ‘well it’s only for an hour and forty five minutes’, but the





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cast are essentially doing a gym workout for an hour and forty five minutes, sometimes twice a day, and they have to look like it’s the first time - as a Company Stage Manager you have to make sure they feel comfortable doing that. For the Deputy Stage Manager (DSM) as well, Stroman is a big fan of lighting being part of the choreography, it can’t be a beat late. On certain straight plays a DSM will have to judge, because you never want to box someone into performing the same thing every night - you have to be organic and move the performance with them and that takes a different skill. I think in terms of musicals the hardest thing is the health and safety, because they’re physical, everything has to be bang on.

What are some of the challenges bringing a pre-existing production from Broadway to the

Young Vic? My biggest problem at the moment is that guns aren’t legal in England, and they are in America, and I had to get three guns that look like police guns, and holsters that fit those guns, and that’s actually really tricky.

It is a sensitive story, I am interested how you and the rehearsal room are responding to

the form of the minstrel show. We haven’t tackled that completely yet, and tomorrow afternoon that is about to happen, as in they will practice with the makeup. So I am making sure it is a closed rehearsal room tomorrow. In terms of how we are responding to it as a company, and how I am responding to it as stage management; I am making sure that every member of my stage management team spends enough time in that room, so that people are familiar. It is really important that we are all there for each other and sometimes it’s just that we make sure we all take a tea break together. Sometimes on a break, stage management will be busy doing things but on this show it’s really important that we get that moment together, even if it is just once a week. It’s also difficult because the stage management team are English, and the US cast don’t have that much to identify with us on certain things. So I ask people about their culture, about where they have come from, getting them to share, and sharing ours. I think it’s the only way of doing it; it’s like making new friends I guess, or making new family. It’s just about being open enough that people know they can trust you when they are not feeling great. Everyone has had those moments in rehearsals, I have, stage management has, the actors will be up and down, especially when we get to technical rehearsals. But at the moment it’s still a very new and exciting thing for everyone because half of them are in a new city and the other half are doing something that they have probably dreamed about doing since they were children. At the moment it is a really exciting and creative place - I think a lot of the cast are feeling a bit burdened because they did a few scenes today that are really hard hitting, and a few of the cast came up to me and were like, ‘I need to just get some fresh air’ - you just need to give them a hug, and not pretend you empathise because that’s the worst thing because no one really knows what you are going through.





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4. Catherine Kodicek, Head of Costume at the Young Vic

What is your role here at the Young Vic and what is your role on The Scottsboro Boys? I am Head of Costume for the Young Vic so I look after shows that are being currently rehearsed and created for performance. I also look after shows that are already in performance and make sure there are dressing people and laundry people and whoever needs to work on it. And I look after things that are on tour, things that are in the West End, basically anything costume related that the Young Vic does, I’m the person that looks after it.

What is the difference between working on a pre–existing show such as The Scottsboro

Boys, to a completely new show? A completely new show the designer is creating it as you go along. The set tends to be bashed out really far in advance but the costumes are more fluid. There will be an idea, there will be a design, images and things they want to represent. Then once they are working on the show things will change, rehearsal notes will come out, we may be changing things according to character, or how a certain person wants to play something. The actor will say ‘oh I really think I should be wearing this’, then there is a discussion, it’s kind of a two way street of evolving ideas. In the past people worked in a much more regimented way where they have designed the costumes on day one. They have made the costumes and the actors are told ‘this is what you will be wearing’ - when I first started working that was what it was like. You would say to the actor, ‘this is your costume, here is the designer, talk it through with them’. Now it is much more about, ‘what do you think you would be wearing? We think it looks like this, this is the aesthetic of the play, what will you be like within that?’ The actors have much more involvement and it is better because they do better performances, it feels real, the costumes feel like real clothing rather than just a kind of fakery. So when it is a show that we are creating from scratch, that’s what happens. There is lots of conversation and there is lots of changing ideas and ideas being batted around. Sometimes you end up looking at something on press night that is so different, completely different to what you started out with, because it has moved around so much, and it is all for the good. When you are doing a show that has been done eight times before you are following a rigid plan. The plan is - this is what they are wearing! The people in the show do not have any say in what they wear. It is much more like it used to be, you are saying to them, ‘this is what the Interlocutor looks like, this is what they wear at that point’. I know they had an actor in the past who decided at some point to wear glasses, that was not part of the original design and he is not wearing them now. It’s kind of fixed - it has to look exactly like the one in America. There is no room for, this looks nicer, or this is made out of better fabric, it’s that expectation to see the thing that you have had before. So it’s a recreation, rather than any of kind of creation. What is interesting about it is we have done shows at the Young Vic that we have remounted, or we have brought back, we did Vernon God Little twice, Beauty Queen of Leenane twice, we did Dolls House three times. Every time it’s changed a bit, the direction has changed, the set has changed, the actors have changed, some of the costumes have changed. But this show is like an archeological dig, you are digging stuff out and you are recreating it. And so it brings all new challenges, because what you are trying to do is make something that sometimes there is little information for. So we’re looking at whatever





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is in the public domain, photographs of the show, and the information that we are being given from the Associate Costume Designer. At first we did not see the original designs, the original imagery, all we saw was the photographs of the show as it existed on Broadway and in various places. It wasn’t until the Associate Designer arrived here with her ‘bible’ that we actually got access to that information - then it was full throttle forward because now we had the information. Certain things that did not make much sense, suddenly made more sense. For example, the judge’s robe, it’s this giant eight foot oversized judge’s robe. So we made a judge’s robe, we got information, we looked at all the judge’s robes in America, they are all the same, have been for hundreds of years, we did all the things that make a judge’s robe look like a judge’s robe, and then we scaled it up. So it was very long in the arm, it was very long in the body, and they said it’s not quite right, the last time it looked like this. So then we kept modifying, but we did not have a design for it, there was no drawing, we were working from the premise that it is a judge’s robe, when really it was something slightly different.

What might be some of the differences or challenges of working on a musical versus a

play? When people are dancing they get hot and they sweat. When they are singing most of the time, unless it’s an opera for instance, they have a radio mic because they’ve got to balance the people out with the band. Radio mics always pose a problem because you have to position them somewhere on the body that allows movement, and doesn’t interfere with the sound. Most sound people like to have the microphone right at the top of the forehead because it is the best place to catch it. In this show the boys have very closely cropped hair, they’ve got hats, that are on/off all the time - if you had something on the forehead then when the hat hits it, it’s going to make a sound that a sound person can’t control. So now we’re having to have what they call an ‘ear rig’, it’s just round their ear, but it’s not the ideal place for most sound people so there is a balancing between that because we have got to try and put the mic pack somewhere on their body that it can be taped up and through their clothing. And then you get people that don’t want to wear a mic pack around their waist, they might want to wear it somewhere else, so we are customizing all these mic accoutrements in order to fit the costume properly. And in terms of dancing, they are tap dancing, they are doing all kinds of movement, and bouncing around, and jumping and forward rolls and it’s so physical that the costumes are going to take a real battering, and they are going to sweat through so many things. Every single thing is going to need washing every single day. Normally with a straight play it’s like your own clothes – you wash anything that is closest to the body every day. But cardigans and jackets, sometimes even trousers, you might do trousers every other day, but you wouldn’t expect to wash every single garment every day, unless you have to. So if you have a matinee you need double, you need two of everything, because the amount of laundry to time between the matinee finishing and the evening performance starting, you’ve got maybe three hours, well a laundry call is six hours, for a show like this, six, seven hours - so you haven’t got time. That’s makes a big difference to the budget - having doubles of costumes, and staff time. You have got people working on the show like dressers, sometimes in a straight play they might also do the laundry, but on a show this big they can’t because there are not enough hours for one person to do it. So we end up with four dressers and a laundry person, who comes in the morning, who do all of that. Then it’s the longevity of the clothes. Our run has been extended by four weeks, and so certain things, because you are looking at an era where they were wearing old clothes and gowns, they were worn out. So we are taking brand new denim, brand new jackets and brand





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new shirts and we are then breaking them down to a certain level so they look old and nice and weathered. Then we are trying to keep them looking at that level of old, but washing them and drying them, and washing them and drying them. So you also need replacements during the run because at some point your worn out jumper is going to become a threadbare, non-existent jumper, so you need a second jumper. So anything like that where you are trying to maintain a certain level of distress is hard over a long period of time. And when they are sweating, because sweat destroys clothes and washing destroys clothes. That is our biggest challenge on this show in terms of it being a musical and a dance show.





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5. Colman Domingo and Forrest McClendon - Mr Bones and Mr Tambo

What has been the biggest challenge in transferring the show from the US to the Young

Vic? Has there being anything that’s been exciting or difficult?

Colman: The biggest challenge is really the show - I think is exceptional in every single way. It’s unlike any other show as it is so incredibly detailed - there are details on top of those details and then a few more. There’s such detailed work between Forest and I. This show strives to be completely exceptional, so good is never good enough for any of us. Right now we believe the show is good but not only do we want it to be great, we want it to be exceptional - that’s always a challenge coming back into it and revisiting it with fresh eyes, with fresh bodies, to hear things a new. So it’s a challenge for everyone - for the guys who originated it, these walls were built in our bodies and then for us to see it in a new light, in a new space and with new audiences. All of it is a great challenge, but a challenge in my eyes and my ears is always a great opportunity.

Forrest: One thing that I think we thought would be a challenge, that isn’t as much of a challenge as we expected is the dialect, in a nutshell. I’ve seen Sizwe Banzi here in thick South African and King Lear in Belarusian, and these are audiences who are just really accustomed to hearing different sounds - so that level of sophistication in the audience makes that particular thing less challenging.

Have you noticed the response being different in terms of them being a British audience

and maybe different things resonating?

Forrest: Yes, everything is just so much funnier! [Laughs] Because they have less baggage about the history of it, they have less baggage about the form and so I think it’s infinitely funnier coming right out of the gate!

Colman: The tricky thing is that a lot of time our characters, Forest and I, we look directly out to the audience - I’ve been having a little challenge to not look as directly into the audience because what a British audience gives back with the body language and face is not exactly… expressive. Usually they’re looking very much like this [pulls a straight face] and I cant really read what that is, and then you hear like thunderous applause and your like, ‘Oh I had no idea, I had no idea you were actually into it because your just like [pulls a straight face]’!

And so in the US is that very different, are people much more responsive?

Colman: Yeah, there’s a joke that I always say, I’m like, “Did you like it? Did you think it was funny? …Tell your face!” [Everyone laughs]. I respect that it’s just a different way of experiencing it, that’s just my common joke for myself!

Actually it’s really good for young people to know that that their response as an audience is

important. I think they’re told so much that they have to sit still and not react, but actually

we really like it when they’re really honest with their responses.

Colman: That’s why we loved the students last night, because students are so honest, they don’t have that veneer or any set of rules in their mind of how they should behave in this





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environment. They were just open. When we walked out last night they were just looking excited like ‘OH MY GOD! Are you talking to me!?’ ...some of the other audience members were looking like [straight faced] “What’s happening? Why are they speaking to me - what’s going on?”

Does the show feel different in a much smaller space?

Forrest: Absolutely. I think that this is closer to where we originated the show at the Vineyard in New York, so it’s much smaller. There’s an intimacy. I think that when the audience is quite large you feel like you’re playing to them and when it’s this intimate you feel like your playing with them.

Why do you think the story is told best as a musical rather than a straight play?

Colman: We always say that if it was told as a straight play you couldn’t sit through it. You couldn’t sit through 15 minutes of it, because it was so dastardly horrific. All of the events everything about it, you could not bear the deep deep ugliness of exactly what happened. So I think they were very smart in its form, to tell the story, to flip it on its head and tell it with a really racially charged formula of entertainment colliding with a racially charged event. I think with that we make some really brilliant high art, I think. We elevate this story imminently.

Forrest: Especially in the way that music is used - I mean the construct is stunning because there is this minstrel show, in a musical, in a memory play. So music is utilised in two different ways, both to comment on the story as well as to move action forward the way it does in a traditional musical. So we have the full use of music as a tool in the piece that allows you moments where you can emotionally experience what they’re going through - I don’t think without music we could go inside people’s hearts as easily.

How have you found the process, in terms of dealing with the subject matter? I imagine it's

quite emotionally draining?

Forrest: It can be and I think sometimes it sneaks up on you and you don’t even realise. We always talk about letting some of the themes of the play go… I went home and I felt like I was carrying a lot of this play with me, but I didn’t realise because you think, ‘oh you know Colman and Forest they’re the funny guys in the play’. But what we have to do in the play are really ugly things and I forget that it takes a toll on us as well.

Colman: The agreement to feel all of that is what we signed on for. Someone asked me about all of the history today and if it’s quite sad? ‘Sad’ certainly is amongst the things you feel, but the blessing of the play is that it allows me my real sadness, my real anger, my real joy to experience all of it – and then to balance and to let that love come on through because I absolutely do feel that, that hate. The raw, raw pure anger.

Forrest: And the idea that you had to find that place in your heart, in your spirit where you can feel those ugly things and to find a way to let you release that stuff, it’s really interesting. It’s working on so many levels - I think the entire company, we’re all working on this performance level and there’s so many layers going on. Layers where Stroman says ‘actually this is a point where you’re just Forest and Coleman’, you know so it’s truly Forest and Coleman playing Tambo and Bones, playing all these characters, and then there’s our relationship as colleagues and friends, supporting each other in the scenes, so there are many levels that are sort of trippy.





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What are you most looking forward to about the rest of this run?

Coleman: The thing I really look forward to is talking to more and more people about it - to really talk about the issues and about this ugly chapter in history.





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6. James T Lane, Emile Ruddock, Kyle Scatliffe, and Carl Spencer –

Ruby/Ozie, Willie, Haywood and Andy

Why do you think this story is best told as a musical rather than a straight play?

Emile: I would say that if you told this story straight an audience won’t be able to listen to it, they won’t be able to cope with it, it’s just too real. People know it’s real and that’s what hits them. So the reason it’s a musical is not to dumb it down to make it easier on people, but to make it more palatable.

James: And music, you know, it cuts right to your heart, it cuts right to the emotions, it’s like a universal language. You can tell a great story through music.

Have you been curious to learn if an English audience will respond differently to an

American audience?

Kyle: There were certain jokes that they weren’t sure an English audience would get, but so far they’ve gotten them!

Any in particular?

Carl?: George Wallace [All agree]

James: He was a judge in one of the trials and the reference is so within the US history that we didn’t feel it would land with a British audience.

Kyle: But a lot of people have laughed at it! You can hear it, it’ll be scattered at first and then start to grow as others realise what we’re talking about. It’s really cool that they’ve got the reference.

Emile: In terms of contextual references, things like the song Jew Money, the Jewish population in America is higher than it is in say London, especially in New York where the show was performed. I think Nigel West was saying sometimes British people like taking the mick out of Americans, it can be quite humorous to a British audience to do that. So a number like Jew Money British audiences can find more funny than the Americans, who can find it almost offensive sometimes I think.

And does the response feel different?

James: No it doesn’t – this show just beats you over the head, wherever you are! [They laugh] And we are getting the same type of feeling from the audiences here and there. They love it, they walk out in tears, they want to hug you, they want to talk about it and get into it. They are very very passionate about this work, and the response feels the same.

How is it emotionally representing this story time after time onstage every night? You’ve

said that when it comes to the applause you’re just standing there…

Kyle: For me and I think for the whole company we have the same mind-set where the audience may be applauding us, but they’re not applauding us. We’ve told our story and it’s for them, for those nine boys and what they went through. So at the end of the show, it’s almost militaristic the way we react to it because we all get up together, we go to the front together, we are a company, no one’s better than anyone, we came to tell the story together. And when we get the applause I’m like this isn’t for me, this is for him. And when I bow this is Haywood’s bow. It’s not for me.

James: The story was in obscurity before this musical kinda came along. There was Scottsboro Boys Museum, but no one had really heard of it, it wasn’t doing well, we didn’t know the story from our childhood history or anything. So now this story is being told all the





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way around the world and so many people are getting to hear this for the first time, and it’s an honour to bring this story back. You feel like you’re honouring what happened and honouring their voices.

How’s it feel working with a mixed British and US cast – are you learning things from each

other? [They laugh]

Kyle: It’s a lot of fun, I love it! It’s so much fun!

Carl: We’re having a good time!

Kyle: Especially since the UK guys came to New York for a week and they got to see where we are and now we get to see them, we see how the show fits.

Carl: We’ve found differences more through conversation than actually what we’re doing - it’s more like individual processes are different than the process of making musical theatre.

Kyle: Every had their own process of getting where they need to get to, but when we’re all there together it’s very humbling, everyone is there to do the same thing.





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7. Clinton Roane - Roy White

What has been the biggest challenge in transferring the show from the US to the Young

Vic? I’m not sure there is a challenge – it’s the same show, great new cast members and everything’s flowed pretty easily. Maybe having to make sure the audience really hears everything we’re saying as we’re using a southern dialect, that’s been the only weird thing about it. I feel that it’s translated pretty great.

Have you found the audiences to be different? They’re pretty much the same – maybe there’s a few they don’t get. In America there were a few lines I’d have to hold for like ten seconds while people laughed and here I’m like, no one’s laughing!

Why do you think this story is best told as a musical rather than a straight play? As a straight play it would just be so depressing and everyone would cry ten times more than they already do. Music has a great way of lightening a feeling and a way of touching people more.

How has it been to work on a production that’s about such a difficult and distressing true

story? I guess it’s hard emotionally, especially to tell it over and over again. But the thing for me is that I’m doing something much bigger than myself, I’m giving someone a voice when they never had a chance to be heard. At the end of the day, everyone goes home knowing who Roy Wright was, and that’s the biggest pay off.

Can you tell us a bit about the stuff you worked on before you worked on The Scottsboro

Boys? I was in college! I got this literally four months after graduation, but in between the Broadway production I did a show called Hello My Baby, and then we toured Scottsboro Boys in America, and now I’m here.

The concept of a Minstrel show is not so well known in the UK, is that something you knew

much about before this show? Actually yes, it’s so funny the way the universe brings things up. My senior year at college we had to write papers on different subjects for theatre history and for some reason my topic was Minstrelsy. I didn’t delve as deep as this show does but I discovered lots about the history. Then hearing John Kander talk about it I was like ‘oh, this is how it really is’, because he was there. It makes it great a musical because you have a vehicle, if you didn’t have a format to put it in it might not be as powerful and it takes this message to the next generation.

Is this the smallest theatre you’ve done the show in? This is the smallest I’ve done it in, all of the theatres on the tour were bigger than this. Coleman, Forest and Christian did it Off-Broadway at the Vineyard Theatre, which is the same size, maybe a little bit bigger. The is the smallest I’ve ever done so it was weird during the preview because the theatre is already small enough as it is, but when you have people





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actually sitting in the seats and they are like right here [gestures in front of face], it’s like ‘Wow, you’re really right here!’ [Laughs]. I really prefer this because everyone’s right there with you, there’s nowhere you can hide – we see your faces, we see all of your reactions, your coughs, your laughs…

How difficult was the show to learn? Well, that’s what my training was for! What I learn at school was that with every class you take the easier it becomes to pick things up. Even when I couldn’t afford classes after graduation I would make sure I read plays or watch a music video and try to learn the choreography. It would really help like in an audition room where you have to be able to change things up very quickly. Also getting sleep and eating healthy makes a big difference in retention and brain activity.

When you first heard The Scottsboro Boys was transferring to London, what did you think? When the producer first called me I actually cried! Because I was like praying since I was in college I just wanted to go to London and do a show in London so bad. And I was just so happy, they spoke about it a bit during Broadway but talk is talk in theatre and you never know what’s going to happen, so when she said it was actually happening and they wanted to take me over I was very happy. And I’m happy that the show is coming over here and we get to tell the story over here.





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8. The Company, Biographies As appeared in the Young Vic Programme, October 2013





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John Kander & Fred Ebb /

Music and Lyrics The John Kander and Fred Ebb collaboration of four decades has created what many would consider Broadway standards and contemporary classics. One of their first collaborations became a hit song for Barbra Streisand, My Coloring Book, which earned John and Fred a Grammy nomination. In 1965 the pair worked on their first Broadway show, Flora the Red Menace, produced by Hal Prince and directed by George Abbott. Flora also introduced rising new star Liza Minnelli. Following were: Cabaret (Tony Award music and lyrics), The Happy Time, Zorba, 70 Girls 70, Chicago, The Act, Woman of the Year (Tony Award music and lyrics), The Rink, Kiss of the Spider Woman (Tony Award music and lyrics) and Steel Pier. Their collaboration also transferred itself to movies and television as they wrote original material for the Academy Awards, Liza with a Z and HBO’s Liza Minnelli’s Steppin Out (both Emmy winners), Baryshnikov on Broadway, Goldie and Liza Together, Funny Lady, Lucky Lady, New York, New York, Steppin’ Out, and Chicago, the film. In 1985 the song New York, New York became the official anthem of New York City. At the time of Mr Ebb’s death in 2004, Kander and Ebb had several projects in different stages of completion waiting in the wings, Tony-nominated Curtains which played at the Al Hirschfeld Theater on Broadway in 2007; twelve-time Tony-nominated The Scottsboro Boys which opened on Broadway in 2010; All About Us (an adaptation of Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of our Teeth); and The Visit which had a successful run at the Goodman Theater in Chicago and The Signature Theatre in Fairfax, VA starring Chita Rivera. Mr Kander is currently collaborating with author/playwright Greg Pierce on two new projects, The Landing and Kid Victory.

David Thompson / Book Broadway theatre includes: Scottsboro Boys (Tony and Drama Desk Award nominations, Hull- Warriner Award, Outer Critics Circle and Lucille Lortel Awards for Best Musical); Steel Pier (Tony nomination); Chicago (script adaptation for current revival); Lincoln Center’s Thou Shalt Not. Off-Broadway theatre includes: And the World Goes ‘Round (Drama Desk and Outer Circle Critics Awards); Flora, the Red Menace (Drama Desk Nomination). McCarter Theater: A Christmas Carol (now in its twenty-second year). Television includes: Sondheim – A Celebration at Carnegie Hall (Emmy nomination); PBS specials – Razzle Dazzle, Bernstein on Broadway, The Music of Richard Rodgers and “Great Performances” My Favorite Broadway.

Susan Stroman /

Direction & Choreography Broadway theatre includes: The Producers, Contact, Crazy for You, Show Boat, Oklahoma!, Young Frankenstein, Big, Picnic, The Music Man, Thou Shalt Not, The Frogs, Steel Pier, Big Fish. Off-Broadway theatre includes: The Scottsboro Boys, Happiness, Flora, The Red Menace, And the World Goes ‘Round, MSG’s A Christmas Carol. New York City Opera includes: A Little Night Music,110 in the Shade, Don Giovanni. Ballet includes: Double Feature, For the Love of Duke (New York City Ballet); But Not For Me (Martha Graham Company); Take Five... More or Less (Pacific Northwest Ballet). Film includes: Center Stage (American Choreography Award), The Producers: The Movie Musical (Four Golden Globe nominations). A five-time Tony Award-winner, her work has been honoured with Olivier, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, Lucille Lortel, a record five Astaire Awards, and the George Abbott Award for Lifetime Achievement in the American Theatre.

Beowulf Boritt / Set Design Broadway theatre includes: The Scottsboro Boys (Tony Nomination), Chaplin, Grace, Rock Of Ages, Sondheim On Sondheim, Spelling Bee, LoveMusik, The Two And Only. Off-Broadway theatre includes: The Last Five Years, Toxic Avenger, Miss Julie, Roundabout, Public, MTC, 2nd Stage, Vineyard, MCC, Primary Stages, and the New Group. Other Designs: The Seven Deadly Sins (New York City Ballet), Paradise Found (Menier), Reel to Real (Beijing), Chaplin (Russia), Rock of Ages (West End, Toronto, Australia, Las Vegas) and the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus. He received a 2007 OBIE Award.

Toni-Leslie James /

Costume Design Broadway theatre includes: Lucky Guy, The Scottsboro Boys, Finian’s Rainbow, Chita Rivera: The Dancer’s Life, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, King Hedley II, One Mo’ Time, The Wild Party, Marie Christine, Footloose, The Tempest, Twilight… Los Angeles 1992, Angels in America: Millennium Approaches & Perestroika, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, and Jelly’s Last Jam. Off-Broadway theatre includes: multiple productions at New York Theatre Workshop, Lincoln Center Theater, the Public Theater, the Vineyard Theatre, Second Stage, Playwrights Horizons. Toni-Leslie James dedicates this production to the memory of her son, Jett Gerald Higham.





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Ken Billington / Lighting Design Theatre includes: 97 Broadway productions including Hugh Jackman Back on Broadway, Chicago, The Scottsboro Boys, Sondheim on Sondheim, White Christmas, Title of Show, The Drowsy Chaperone, Footloose, Sweeney Todd and revivals of Dreamgirls and Sunday in the Park with George. Theatre for West End includes: Sweeney Todd, What the Butler Saw, Chicago, Annie, The Drowsy Chaperone, High School Musical. UK Tours include: High School Musical 2, Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5 and the seasonal tour of White Christmas. Other projects: Disneyland’s Fantasmic!, Jubilee at Ballys Las Vegas and Shamu Rocks at the Seaworld Parks. Awards include: Tony Award for Best Lighting Design of a Musical for Chicago.

Paul Arditti / Sound Design Previous Young Vic: Feast, Three Sisters, The Changeling, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, Been So Long, The Member of the Wedding,Vernon God Little, The Respectable Wedding, generations, The Skin of Our Teeth. Forthcoming productions include: American Psycho (Headlong & Almeida); NT 50th, King Lear (National); Red Velvet (New York). Recent designs include: Edward II, The Magistrate, London Road, Collaborators, The Veil (National);Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (West End);The Audience (West End); Red Velvet (Tricycle); Jumpy (West End); In the Republic of Happiness, In Basildon, Jumpy (Royal Court); One Man, Two Guvnors (National, West End, Broadway, World Tour); Doctor Dee (ENO); The Bee (New York); Company (Sheffield Crucible); The Most Incredible Thing (Sadler’s Wells); Billy Elliot the Musical (West End, Broadway, Australia, US Tour). Awards include: One Man, Two Guvnors: Tony Award Nomination 2012; Billy Elliot The Musical: Tony Award 2009, Drama Desk Award 2009, Olivier Award 2006; Mary Stuart: Tony Award Nomination 2009; Saint Joan: Olivier Award 2008; Festen: Evening Standard Award 2005; The Pillowman: Drama Desk Award 2005.

Robert Scott / Musical Direction Robert has supervised and conducted many major musicals both in the West End and in the United States. Theatre includes: Singin’ in the Rain (Chichester Festival Theatre and the Palace Theatre); Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (London Palladium and Broadway); the critically acclaimed 2008 revival of Funny Girl (Chichester Festival Theatre); Annie, Cabaret, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, White Christmas, The Wizard of Oz, Oliver!, Me and My Girl, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Crazy For You, the award-winning revival of She Loves Me (the Savoy Theatre); Carousel (Chichester Festival Theatre). Robert trained at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama.

Jill Green CDG / UK Casting Previous Young Vic: The Human Comedy. Other theatre includes: I Can’t Sing! – The X Factor Musical, Rock of Ages, Jersey Boys, The Producers, Contact, Sinatra at the Palladium, The Vagina Monologues, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Fosse (West End); West Side Story (UK tour); Singin’ In The Rain (UK tour); Aladdin (Old Vic); Jack and the Beanstalk (Barbican); Finding Neverland (Leicester Curve); She Loves Me, 42nd Street, Oklahoma!, Music Man, Babes in Arms, Carousel (Chichester Festival Theatre); Spike Milligan’s Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall (Bristol Old Vic/Hampstead/UK tour); Wuthering Heights (Bollywood adaptation, Tamasha Theatre Company); The Producers (UK tour); The Three Musketeers (Bristol Old Vic); Much Ado About Nothing (Liverpool Everyman); Promises Promises (Sheffield Crucible); My One and Only (Chichester Festival Theatre/Piccadilly Theatre); Cats (UK tour); Fosse (European/International tour). Workshops include: Around The World In 80 Days, X Factor the Musical, Made in Dagenham, Finding Neverland, Queer as Folk, Silk. Feature films include: Beyond the Sea (co casting). Jill’s Casting Assistant is Gordon Cowell.

Stephen Kopel CSA / US Casting Broadway theatre includes: Beautiful – The Carole King Musical, The Winslow Boy, The Glass Menagerie, The Mystery Of Edwin Drood, Harvey, Don’t Dress For Dinner, Once (also tour), The Road To Mecca, On A Clear Day You Can See Forever, Anything Goes (also tour), The People In The Picture, Brief Encounter, The Scottsboro Boys, Sondheim On Sondheim, Hedda Gabler. Off-Broadway theatre includes: Violet, The Cradle Will Rock, I’m Getting My Act Together… Regional theatre includes: productions for Williamstown Theatre Festival, the American Repertory Theatre, North Carolina Theatre, Denver Center Theatre, Ford’s Theatre, Chicago Shakes, Hartford Stage, Old Globe, Marriott Lincolnshire and Bay Street Theatre.

Jim Carnahan CSA / US Casting Jim serves as Roundabout’s Director of Artistic Development. Theatre for the Roundabout includes: The Winslow Boy, Big Knife, Talley’s Folly, Drood, If There Is I Haven’t Found it Yet, Harvey, Anything Goes, Sondheim on Sondheim, Hedda Gabler, Liaisons Dangereuses, Sunday in the Park, The Ritz, 110 in the Shade, The Pajama Game, 12 Angry Men, After the Fall, Assassins, Twentieth Century, Big River, Nine, Joe Egg, Cabaret, Follies, Other Broadway theatre includes: Matilda, Once, Peter and the Starcatcher, Clear Day, The Scottsboro Boys, American Idiot, Mountaintop, Jerusalem, Arcadia, Boeing-Boeing, Spring Awakening, Curtains, Faith Healer, Festen, The Woman in White, The Pillowman, Chitty, Democracy, La Cage aux Folles, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Noises Off, Into The Woods, True West, Copenhagen. Film includes: Home At The End Of The World, Flicka. Television includes: Glee (Emmy nomination)





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Nigel West/ Associate Director Credits include: Me and My Girl (West End, UK Tour, Sweden, Australia,New Zealand, Canada); Crazy For You (West End, UK Tour, Australia,South Africa); Beauty And The Beast (West End); Chicago (West End, UK Tour, Korea, Australia, Mexico City, Argentina, Germany, Spain, Singapore); The Producers (US tour, Austria, Germany); Disney and Cameron Mackintosh’s Mary Poppins (Canada); She Loves Me (Canada); Closer Than Ever (Holland); The Wizard Of Oz (Southampton, US tour and Maddison Square Gardens New York City); Stephen Kings’ Misery (UK tour); Just For Joe (Edinburgh Festival / Kings Theatre Glasgow); Blue Remembered Hills (Belgrade Coventry). Eric Santagata / Assistant Choreographer Theatre includes: The Scottsboro Boys (original Broadway production and all other productions since the show’s conception). Other Broadway and New York credits include: The Apple Tree, Chaplin, Happiness (Lincoln Center); Face the Music and Stairway to Paradise (City Center Encores!); The Boy Friend and Casper (on tour). Upcoming theatre: this spring Eric can be seen onstage in the new Broadway musical Bullets Over Broadway.

Alison de Burgh / Fight Director Theatre includes: A Little Hotel On The Side (Theatre Royal, Bath); The Prince of Denmark (National Youth Theatre); It’s A Mad World My Masters (RSC); Macbeth (Lyric, Belfast); What The Butler Saw (West End); The Changeling (Young Vic); The Ladykillers (West End and tour); Private Lives, Speaking In Tongues, The Dumb Waiter, Peter Pan, Bent, The Play’s The Thing, Donkey’s Years, The Anniversary, As You Like It (all West End); The Black Album, Harper Regan, Therese Raquin, Coram Boy, Pillars of the Community, Tales from the Vienna Woods (all National Theatre); Romeo and Juliet, The Penelopiad, As You Like It, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (RSC); Macbeth (Lyric Belfast); Sons Without Fathers (Belgrade Coventry & Arcola). Opera includes: Cavalleria Rusticana & Pagliacci (Holland Park Opera Carousel (Opera North) Don Giovanni, Knight Crew, Euryanthe (Glyndebourne Festival Opera); Florentine Tragedy / Gianni Schicci (Greek National Opera); Varjak Paw (The Opera Group); The Trojans at Carthage, The Handmaid’s Tale, Lulu, Morning to Midnight (English National Opera). Film includes: Being Othello, Mine, The Dark Room, Ghost Story, Stubborn and Spite, Four, Respect, Promises Promises. Television Includes: Maestro, The Hour, The Eleventh Hour.

Emma Woodvine / Dialect Coach Previous Young Vic: A Season in the Congo, The Changeling, A Doll’s House, After Miss Julie, Beloved, I Am Yussef and This Is My Brother. Theatre includes: Hitchcock Blond (Hull Truck); Carousel (Opera North/Barbican); Pitchfork Disney (Arcola); ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore, Macbeth (Cheek by Jowl); Noises Off (Old Vic); Othello (Sheffield Crucible); GHOST the musical (Piccadilly Theatre); The School for Scandal (Barbican); Breakfast at Tiffany’s (Theatre Royal Haymarket); 11 and 12 (Peter Brook at the Barbican); The Fastest Clock in the Universe (Hampstead Theatre); As You Like It (Watford Palace Theatre). Television includes: Christopher and his Kind.

Jonathan O’Boyle / Assistant Director Jonathan trained as an actor at The Central School of Speech and Drama and on the MFA Theatre Directing course at Birkbeck, University of London. Most recently, he was the Resident Director at Sheffield Theatres. Directing credits include: Last Online Today, Guinea Pigs (Sheffield Crucible Studio, New Writers’ Project). Assistant Director credits include: My Fair Lady, This is My Family, The Village Bike (Sheffield Crucible); Bull (Sheffield Crucible/Brits Off Broadway, New York); Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me (Southwark Playhouse). Next Spring, Jonathan will direct Neil LaBute’s trilogy Bash: The Latter-Day Plays at the Old Red Lion Theatre. Jonathan is supported through the Jerwood Assistant Directors Programme at the Young Vic.





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Appendix





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Further Information on The Scottsboro Boys From Words on Plays, the performance guide series of San Francisco’s American

Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.).

Acker, James R. Scottsboro and Its Legacy. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2008.

Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow. New York: The New Press, 2010.

Carter, Dan T. Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State, University Press, 1969.

Davis, Angela Y. Women, Race, and Class. New York: Vintage Books, 1981.

Goodman, James. Stories of Scottsboro: The Rape Case That Shocked 1930’s America and Revived

the Struggle for Equality. New York: Pantheon Books, 1994.

Leve, James. Kander and Ebb. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009.

Miller, James A. Remembering Scottsboro: The Legacy of an Infamous Trial. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009.

Norris, Clarence, and Sybil D. Washington. The Last of the Scottsboro Boys: An Autobiography. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1979.

Patterson, Haywood, and Earl Conrad. Scottsboro Boy. New York: Doubleday & Company, 1950.

Ransdell, Hollace. “Report on the Scottsboro, Ala. Case.” May 27, 1931.

Strausbaugh, John. Black Like You: Blackface, Whiteface, Insult & Imitation in American Popular

Culture. New York: Jeremy P. Tracher/Penguin, 2006.

Toll, Robert C. Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth-Century America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974.

Other Information and Press

Scottsboro: An American Tragedy (An excellent film and website with resources) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCBV-GhyINY http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/scottsboro/index.html

BBC: The real story behind the Scottsboro Boys musical http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-24551844

Young Vic Blog http://youngviclondon.wordpress.com/category/2013-season/the-scottsboro-boys/





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Taking Part at the Young Vic is supported by:

95.8 Capital FM's Help a Capital Child

The Austin and Hope Pilkington Charitable Trust

The Newcomen Collet Foundation and

The Red Hill Charitable Trust





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The NoThe NoThe NoThe Noëëëël Coward Foundation l Coward Foundation l Coward Foundation l Coward Foundation was set up in 2000 to award grants to educational and development projects across the arts. It is proud to support a diverse range of organisations working in theatre, music, playwriting and many other areas, and is delighted to be part of The Young Vic’s work with schools and students. The Foundation is supporting the subsidised ticket scheme for THE SCOTTSBORO BOYS as it is keen to help introduce young people to excellent and innovative productions, encouraging them to develop as theatregoers and become audiences for musical theatre in the future. For further information, see www.noelcoward.org

Noël Coward (1899Noël Coward (1899Noël Coward (1899Noël Coward (1899----1973) 1973) 1973) 1973) Noël Peirce Coward was born in 1899 and made his professional stage debut as Prince Mussel in The Goldfish at the age of 12, leading to many child actor appearances over the next few years. His breakthrough in playwriting was the controversial THE VORTEX (1924) which featured themes of drugs and adultery and made his name as both actor and playwright in the West End and on Broadway. During the frenzied 1920s and the more sedate 1930s, Coward wrote a string of successful plays and musicals including HAY FEVER (1925), EASY VIRTUE (1926) and BITTER SWEET (1929). His enduring professional partnership with childhood friend Gertrude Lawrence, started with PRIVATE LIVES (1931), and continued with TONIGHT AT 8.30 (1936)

During World War II, he remained a successful playwright, screenwriter and director, as well as entertaining the troops and even acting as an unofficial spy for the Foreign Office! However, the post-war years were more difficult. Austerity Britain – the London critics determined – was out of tune with the brittle Coward wit. In response, Coward re-invented himself as a cabaret and TV star, particularly in America, and in 1955 he played a sell-out season in Las Vegas featuring many of his most famous songs, including Mad About the Boy, I’ll See You Again and Mad Dogs and Englishmen. In the mid-1950s he settled in Jamaica and Switzerland, and enjoyed a renaissance in the early 1960s becoming the first living playwright to be performed by the National Theatre, when he directed HAY FEVER there starring Maggie Smith. Late in his career he was lauded for his roles in a number of films including Our Man In Havana (1959) and his role as the iconic Mr. Bridger alongside Michael Caine in The Italian Job (1968).

Writer, actor, director, film producer, painter, songwriter, cabaret artist as well as an author of verse, essays and autobiographies, he was called by close friends ‘The Master’, a title of which he was secretly proud. He was knighted in 1970 and died peacefully in 1973 in his beloved Jamaica. For further information on Noël Coward, please see www.noelcoward.com.

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