本篇論文探討劇作家阿佛烈．尤瑞（Alfred Uhry）與作曲家傑森．羅勃特．布朗（Jason Robert Brown）於一九九八年合力譜寫的音樂劇《大遊行》（Parade）。《大遊行》的靈感來自一九一三年的歷史懸案，一位來自紐約在亞特蘭大經營鉛筆工廠的猶太企業家里歐．法蘭克（Leo Frank），被控謀殺一名十三歲的小女孩瑪莉．范根（Mary Phagan）。在真相仍未完全水落石出之前，這棘手的案件如何能翔實呈現在舞台上呢？戲劇研究者面對根據此近百年來爭議不休的歷史公案所改編的舞台劇，是否有資格置評，甚或有餘地提出翻案？在欠缺法律鐵證的前提下，在兩造訴求正義的抗爭團體前，作者試圖跳脫訴訟爭議，不捲入歷史事件，避免妄作罪愆定論。要言之，本篇論文主要持歷史遺產的觀點一一檢視南方如何受南北戰爭失利的震盪，高度工業化的北方與新興工業發展的南方之間的地方嫌隙，鉛筆工廠裡勞資雙方的階級對立，黑人、白人、猶太人間的種族糾葛，以及對猶太人與黑人的情慾偏見等等一一以探查此案件背後的構成環境，包括戰爭、階級、種族，情慾等面向。再者，本文討論美國陪審團的國家司法體制及動用私刑的地方仲裁機制，二者底蘊之強烈戲劇觀看性質。本文認為，舞台上的法蘭克案從裁決、定讞、死刑、減刑到最後私刑，每一步驟都充滿吸引大眾觀看的戲劇張力。音樂劇向來就被視為喜溫情、愛幻想，而它撩人情感又訴諸場面的雙重特質不但強化了受害雙方的私密情緒，且又映照公眾審判和私刑的觀看本質，使得民怨公憤及個人創痛皆得以找到宣洩的出口。本篇論文的結論是，當司法正義失效時，私了正義就會取而代之，開始以暴制暴的惡性循環。而以戲劇形式呈現的詩的正義，儘管非無可議之處，應加以正視為彌補公冤及傳達私怨的可行方案。

This paper makes inquiries into the 1998 musical Parade by playwright Alfred Uhry and composer Jason Robert Brown, based on the historic case of Leo Frank, a Jewish industrialist from New York running a pencil factory in Atlanta and accused of murdering the 13-year-old girl Mary Phagan in 1913. How can the thorny case be represented with any fidelity on stage when all the facts have not come to light? What can a theatre researcher contribute to or comment on a controversial production of a reproduction of a historical incident that has never ceased to produce great furors over the past 90 years? In the absence of irrefutable legal evidence that could close the case and in the face of contending camps that claim justice on each side, the author will stay above the litigation fray and distance himself from any attempt to pass judgment on the innocence or guilt of people involved in the historic case. Rather, the paper first probes the context surrounding the case, including war, class, race, and to a lesser extent, sexuality by examining it from the perspective of historical legacy, such as the post-bellum South reeling from the repercussions of the Civil War defeat, the regional animosity between the highly industrialized North and New Industrial South, the class antagonism of management and labor in the pencil factory, the ethnic strife between blacks, whites, and Jews, and the conventional bias against the perceived sexual perversion of Jews and blacks. Secondly, the paper discusses the embedded theatricality of both the national institution of trial by jury and the regional institution of lynching in the US. Then, it considers the staging of Frank’s trial, conviction, death penalty, commuted sentence and final lynching, each phase of the case presented as public spectacle. Musicals have been conventionally considered a genre that thrives on light-hearted sentimentality and fantasy, but its recourse to spectacle and appeal to emotion paradoxically lends itself to the heightened emotion of the conflicted victims in private as well as the specular nature of the trial and lynching in public, giving utterance to both the public outrage and private trauma. The paper concludes that since vigilante justice takes over and continues the vicious cycle of vengeance where legal justice fails, poetic justice in the form of theatrical representation, albeit not without its problematics, should be rightfully taken into account as a viable means of redressing public wrong and representing private grief.