By Carrie Chapter, Philadelphia Theatre Company Dramaturg

On February 19th, Philadelphia Theatre Company waved goodbye to the first post-Broadway production of Kander & Ebb’s THE SCOTTSBORO BOYS. Looking back, it’s difficult to believe such an extraordinary team of artists have already come and gone. The audience response to this show was nothing short of tremendous! Every performance delivered bright, different clarity to our Philly theatergoers, connecting everyone to greater sense of cultural understanding and history. It was truly a sobering, provocative, heartfelt treat day after day, night after night.

Our community outreach and events here at PTC always strive to be extensive and quality-driven, but, because of the show’s past controversy and its social politics, we passionately threw our programming into hyper-drive. First on the table was our Book Club selection, The Central Park Five: A Chronicle of a City Wilding by Sarah Burns. This nonfiction revisionist account of the 1989 Central Park Jogger case, in which five juvenile minorities were wrongfully convicted of a violent crime, set up an effective parallel with the similar injustice of the nine Scottsboro boys. Our readers really enjoyed the selection, and it was one of our most well-attended meetings to date. We also reveled in a plethora of community partners including The Brothers Network, WURD Radio, and the Pennsylvania Innocence Project – all of which held individual panel discussions/events after different performances during the run. What made these partnerships so special is that PTC could provide the forum, but then allow each organization to develop their own program befitting their respective aims; the audience really responded well to the balance and diversity of the various programs. In a sociopolitical context, the show also drew groups like the ACLU and the Anti-Defamation League, both of which were hosted by me and our producing Artistic Director, Sara Garonzik, in a post-show talkback format.

In terms of my standardized programming, our American Playwrights in Context post-show interview emerged as one of our most memorable events in PTC history. Composer John Kander, librettist David Thompson, and director/choreographer Susan Stroman were interviewed on stage by theatre journalist, Peter Filichia, who inquired after their collaborative process, the sad passing of lyricist Fred Ebb, and the future of THE SCOTTSBORO BOYS. The Backstage Tour had a bonus feature for this production; our resident Lighting Supervisor demonstrated all the light cues via iPad! (You should have seen the looks on the faces of some of our older patrons.) For my Special Topics panel discussion, I purposely steered away from the themes of race and injustice, and instead held a panel of musical theatre scholars discussing “Crime in the Musical Theatre Tradition,” in which we delved into Kander & Ebb’s contributions, Sondheim’s SWEENEY TODD, PARADE, etc., and so forth.

We really believe THE SCOTTSBORO BOYS found its place in the sun, a place to truly thrive and be absorbed as a masterwork, and that is in the accessibility of the regional theatre world.