The Scottsboro Boys: You Can’t Do Me.
A dim orange light directly projected the hidden heroes of the Broadway musical The Scottsboro Boys in the dark Lyceum Theatre. Several metallic chairs were bunched up on the empty stage as if they were implying the musical’s complicated dilemma of maintaining balance between depicting the gravity of a historical event and presenting entertainment to the audience. The illumination of the legs got dimmer as the light gradually faded away. Soon the entire stage was filled with all the miscellaneous noises of the city. When the light was finally restored, the audience was introduced to a crucial, but mysterious heroine of the musical. One African American lady in an ivory dress and heavy trench coat sat on one of the chairs. With this anonymous woman’s blank gaze at the audience, the Scottsboro boys finally drew their heavy curtains.
The Scottsboro Boys is a musical based on a historical incident that was taken place in 1931. Nine African American teenagers, who were traveling the northeast part of Alabama, were wrongly accused of raping two white women. Just like most of the audience there, I initially misread the synopsis and presumed that this musical’s potential was locked in the heavy atmosphere of depicting racism and clashes between different social classes in the 1930s. As the storyline progressed, however, I found that my initial assumption was wrong. The musical’s potential was not limited. The musical did stop at simply narrating the historical context on behalf of the innocent victims of the social prejudices. Similar to what the Scottsboro boys sang their song “Shout,” this musical was an astonishing debut of all the muted, forgotten, and ignored neighbors of our society.
The musical was able to project the voice clearly by minimizing the number of stage devices and allowed the audience to focus on the characters and the storyline from other visual factors. By doing so, it was able to make the audience to perceive the metaphorical meaning of the scenes better. The several metallic chairs and three giant frames were the only stage devices that were used in the musical. The scene after another, the chairs were bunched up and became a train, a prison cell, and often simply served their original role, chairs. The cell created by chair legs implied unfair treatment of the society toward the innocent boys behind the iron bars. Meanwhile, the huge frames on the back of the stage indicated the society’s paradox for its careless judgment of individuals according to its own biased standard. Also, it served as a metaphor for our cognitive rulers that we use everyday to measure others’ worth.
Even though the songs were encoded in lively beats and sung by performers with energetic choreography, the musical successfully maintained its sharp satire on the social prejudices against the African Americans. The best moment of this performance came at last when all the boys sang “The Scottsboro Boys” together in unison. Their faces were entirely colored in black except for their mouths. Everyone, whether they were freed from the wrong accusation or got executed, came together in one voice. In the middle of the song, the freed boys came up to the front and explained what happened to their lives afterward. Even though they could run away from the instant accusation of a false crime, most of them could not successfully merged back into the society. In this scene, I was able to redefine my own definition of freedom: the society itself was the actual life-long imprisonment for the boys.
The Scottsboro Boys examined the significance of spirit of civil disobedience in our society. History is written in favor of who play by the rules. In that perspective, Haywood was the loser: he was the only person who refused to admit his false charge and chose death rather than pleading for life. However, the real irony in the musical is that the concept of power was interpreted differently. This time, or at least this musical was in favor of the losers and strived to retrieve their lost voices. Haywood himself became a resonating evidence of injustice by refusing to obey a false order.
Besides portraying the serious consequences of racism in the 30s, the musical also depicted discrimination against other social groups. The lady who first appeared on the stage did not speak any word throughout the musical. She either sat or stood in the corner of the stage as if she did not belong to anywhere. No one noticed her presence. When she knelt down to check if Haywood was okay after being forcefully pushed away by the prosecutor, Haywood waved her off. In the last scene, she sat on a chair in the dark all by herself again. A white driver demanded her to give up her sit. “No,” she spoke for the first time, “No, I don’t want to move.” Setting up the “speechless woman” as Rosa Park was slightly too dramatic and easily predictable to some extent. Nonetheless, this predictable ending was powerful enough to recap and collect all the ambivalent emotions toward the incident.
Through the upbeat flow of rich jazz melody in “Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey!” and Haywood’s deep voice in his solo “You Can’t Do Me,” the Scottsboro Boys presented a full package of different performance arts. Each character’s voice was unique, yet blended perfectly into unison. After the curtain fell back again, I found myself remaining in my seat asking myself different questions. What freedom really means to me? Am I free in my world? What is justice? I couldn’t answer any of the questions out of my head. However, I suddenly realized how heavy the weight of freedom is that I carry all the time.
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