Block, and Micaela Diamond in The Cher Show. That was crazy to learn at 19 because it gives you a lot of grit, it gives a lot of grace to people and to yourself.” And that is our version and that does not mean it's necessarily true or false. And we all do this, to a certain extent we all make up a narrative of what happened with that person or with your family member or whatever. Then we would get in rehearsal, and she'd be like, ‘That never happened.’ I think you become so famous that you forget the truth of certain moments in your life. “Rick Elice, the book writer of our show, would record these sessions where she would tell them about her life. “She really has all these different versions of her life that are all true to her,” she says. It doesn’t matter if I go to a temple or say the kaddish or not, I am Jewish, and that’s been a beautiful lesson in playing Lucille.”ĭespite being just 23 years old this is Diamond’s second Broadway outing, having sandwiched the COVID-induced theater shutdown with The Cher Show in which she embodied the mononymous icon’s early years. “I grew up with a lot of acceptance and then suddenly there are neo-Nazis outside our theater and my face is on all these big billboards. “Lucille and I have both had to come to terms with our Jewishness,” Diamond says. This is, sadly, best demonstrated by neo-Nazi protests that took place outside the show during previews. The piece feels just as vital today as it did during its first run, in 1998, and not all for positive reasons. It's really a channeling of racist vitriol, and a community looking to find this candidate who will best fit the scapegoat.” She adds, “What I love about Parade is it's not really a ‘who’s done it’ or a murder mystery. "It’s a fact-finding mission." Joan Marcus “What I love about Parade is it’s not really a ‘who’s done it’ or a murder mystery," says Micaela Diamond, who stars in the hit Broadway musical. I think a lot of Jews, at the turn of the century, were using their white privilege to adhere to a kind of safety.” I understand Lucille’s desire to assimilate in a way that feels safe. There's so many beautiful juxtapositions for Jewish cast members in the in the piece-we all say the kaddish before going on stage every night but none of us go to temple. “I grew up in a conservative temple and, slowly, throughout my life have moved further away from the religious aspects of Judaism more toward it in a cultural way. “I love the tension Lucille feels with her Judaism,” Diamond says. And once I'm on the train I know that it will lead me exactly where I'm meant to be.”īeyond the music, Lucille is a juicy, complex role-a woman, a Southerner, and a Jew, forced to grapple with those warring identities and how they overlap in a time when all three were at odds. I just try and trust the script and the music. And that is such a gift as an actor because I can kind of be where I am. And then the all-belt moment for ‘All The Wasted Time’ So he's actually written it to be like warmed up into. “And then I get to have like, the mix-y belt moment for ‘Do It Alone’. “Not to get too in the weeds about it, but I start in a kind of light, airy soprano and then slowly have a mix-y moment before Act One with ‘You Don’t Know This Man,’ she explains. “And I really feel like the emotional arc really matches my vocal arc.” “Jason Robert Brown has written this beautiful score for Lucille and, I've never talked to him about this, but I love that I get to have this beautiful arc in the show,” she says. That evolution is brilliantly, and beautifully, rendered in the music, which serves as her lodestar. Micaela Diamond and Ben Platt in Parade, open now at Broadway’s Bernard B. Her performance charts Lucille’s evolution from wistful accessory to the outsider Leo as he is jailed for the crime he didn’t commit to an empowered, forceful influence helping navigate him towards a potential release. In it, she plays Lucille Frank, the wife of Platt’s Leo, a Jewish man accused of murder of a young factory worker in 1913 in Atlanta, Georgia. Jacobs Theater, co-starring in the musical revival of Parade alongside Ben Platt. She continues, “Even now, in this moment, I don’t know if I want to try and explain it, because there’s a magic there.”ĭiamond is now delivering that particular brand of magic eight times a week at the Bernard B. I felt like I could make words jump off the page.” “I remember looking, and was singing ‘Some Enchanted Evening,’ and I can feel myself within this character, loving being loved, and I could communicate all that to the audience. There was a moment in her high school production of South Pacific when Micaela Diamond felt that she just might have what it takes to be a professional actress.
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