A guide for the audience of Tony Kushner's Caroline, or Change produced at the Civic Theatre.

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Caroline,
or Change
The Civic Theatre
New Orleans, Louisiana

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Change is Constant.
Civil Rights Then & Now
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Inspired by Kushner’s childhood
memories of the civil rights movement in
the South, Caroline, or Change was
commissioned by the San Francisco
Opera in 1998. Kushner jumped at the
opportunity under the condition that he
be allowed to tell Caroline’s story through
music rather than a straight play.
For Kushner, a homosexual in the 20th
and
21st
century, the struggle for civil rights
was a very personal and pressing issue.
At the time he wrote Caroline, or Change,
homosexuality was at the center of the
political spotlight. “Don’t ask don’t tell”
was only 5 years old, television stars such
as Ellen DeGeneres were slowly coming
out of the closet, and there was great
question as to whether the 1996 Defense
of Marriage Act (defining marriage as
between one man and one woman) would
be overturned. The fight for marriage
equality is known by many to be the civil
rights struggle of our era, and Kushner’s
decision to address the civil rights
2
movement in the 1960’s emphasizes the
continuing struggles for civil rights of
many minorities in America today.
The unemployment rate for African
Americans has consistently been twice as
high as the white unemployment rate for
50 years according to the Economic
Policy Institute. Same sex couples still do
not have the federal right to marry.
Various minorities today are still fighting
for equality. In the words of Tony
Kushner, “If the movement’s mightiest
dreams haven’t been realized yet, it
would be worse than a mistake to predict
that they never shall be realized.”
Through highlighting the protagonist’s
personal struggle with equality, Kushner
brings the civil rights movement of the
past and the civil rights struggles of the
present to a contemporary audience in
Caroline, or Change.
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Author
Biographies
Meet Tony and Jeanine, the
dynamic duo behind the musical.
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Tony Kushner (Playwright)
Kushner was born in New York City
in 1956. Shortly after his birth,
Kushner and his parents moved to
Lake Charles, Louisiana where
Kushner spent the rest of his
childhood. Raised in a Jewish family,
Kushner did not fit the typical profile
of a Lake Charles, Louisiana resident
in the 1960’s. His father, a clarinetist
and conductor, and his mother, a
bassoonist, Tony Kushner grew up
surrounded by music. His love and
passion for music continues to play a
prominent role in his life today.
In the introduction to Caroline, or
Change, Kushner says, “Words
betray the arduousness of the
struggle to express, to interpret, to
understand. Music offers up emotion
and idea with an organicity and
shapeliness and spontaneity that
must be what we mean when we say
that something possesses grace.
Words can be graceful, but music is
grace itself. Music is a blessing that
enters the soul through the ear.”
As a Pulitzer Prize winning author,
Tony Kushner is best known for his
play, Angels in America. His works
tend to focus on themes of
homosexuality, war, and equality,
and act as an inspiration to all who
have the privilege of coming in
contact with any of his works. In this
production at the Civic Theatre,
Kushner brings his childhood
memories alive in his home state of
Louisiana.
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Jeanine Tesori (Composer)
Musical composer Jeanine Tesori
made her Broadway debut in 1995
arranging the dance music for a
revival of the hit musical How to
Succeed in Business Without Really
Trying. Since, she has achieved
enormous success, winning an Obie
Award, the New York Drama Critics
Circle Award for Best Musical and
the Lucille Lortel Award for
Outstanding Musical for her Off-
Broadway musical Violet. Tesori’s
lyrics in Caroline, or Change are
only one of her four Tony-nominated
scores for Broadway. Her others
include her scores for Twelfth Night
at Lincoln Center, Thoroughly
Modern Millie, and Shrek the
Musical.
Tesori was Kushner’s first choice as
a lyricist. Her passion for the theatre
knows no bounds. In her words, “I
think the really interesting thing
about opera and music-theatre is its
ephemeral nature. Once you are
not there, you are always not there.
You always have not been there.
You can record it and archive it, but
it’s not the same as being around the
campfire for the primal story-telling.
So, when people say, ‘You had to be
there,’ they really mean you had to
be in the presence of that feeling
and that electricity. It’s the real deal
and happens in real time.” A historic
venue, the Civic Theatre’s
architecture and renowned
acoustics amplify Tesori’s heartfelt
music.
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The Journey to Equality
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When President Lincoln signed the Emancipation
Proclamation in 1863, it was the first step on a long
journey to equality for African Americans. While the
Emancipation Proclamation was the first major step
towards equality, it only awarded African Americans
with one right – the right to be free. Over the next
several decades, African Americans continued to
fight for the most basic rights: the right to be more
than three-fifths of a person, the right to vote, the
right to be treated as an equal.
It wasn’t until 1954 that the African American’s fight
for equality began to gain traction and attract
national attention. Brown V. Board of Education
ended segregation in schools and marked the
beginning of the civil rights movement. Prominent
figures such as Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.
lead movements against the marginalization of
African Americans.
During the election of 1960, the importance of the
Civil Rights movement made the race between
Democrat John F. Kennedy and Republican Richard
Nixon one of the most important elections in African
American history. While many Southern democrats
disliked Kennedy for his outward support for the
Civil Rights movement, he won the election with 70%
of the African American vote. Optimism was high
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when Kennedy took office in 1961, but having only
won the popular vote by only 0.17%, the new
president was hesitant to implement radical change.
On August 28, 1963, more than 200,000 African
Americans came together to form the largest political
rally of the Civil Rights era, the March on
Washington. The march culminated in Martin Luther
King’s famous “I Have A Dream” speech and soon
after inspired Congress to develop a comprehensive
civil rights bill (later named the Civil Rights Act). The
act did not pass until shortly after the assassination of
President Kennedy on November 22, 1963.
Congress passed the Civil Rights Act on July 2, 1964,
which included: (1) protection against discrimination
in voter qualification tests, (2) outlawing
discrimination in public accommodations
(restaurants, hotels, theaters, etc.), (3) legal
ramifications needed to enforce desegregation in
schools, (4) withdrawal of federal funds from
programs with discriminatory practices, and (5)
establishing the Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission. This act was a crucial step in achieving
the primary goal of the civil rights movement: full
legal equality.

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Jews in the
Civil Rights
Movement
Jews in America played a
prominent role in the Civil
Rights Movement. In fact, there
was not a single ethnic group
that contributed more support
to the Civil Rights Movement
than the Northern Jewish
population. The public’s
opinion of an individual’s
support for the Civil Rights
movement mattered little if any
to Jews in the North. Southern
Jews, however, faced a much
more difficult situation, a
tradeoff between traditional
southern values and their own.
The South is and always has
been predominantly Christian.
This put Jews in a similar
situation to African Americans
in that both were minorities.
However, Jews had rights that
African Americans did not:
Jews were not segregated in
educational institutions; Jews
did not have to take a voter
qualification tests; Jews had
employment opportunities that
African Americans did not. For
this reason, especially on the
heals of the trauma from World
War II, the majority of Southern
Jews, fearful of marginalization
and their own safety, showed
little public support for the
movement. The opportunities
to publically demonstrate
support for the movement
were limited, and even these
limited opportunities
presented a great danger to
the individual demonstrators
as well as their entire Jewish
community.

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Timeline
“History doesn’t repeat itself. But it
does rhyme.” – Mark Twain
1863 – President Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation; all slaves are now free
1865 – End of the Civil War
1941 – U.S. declares war on Japan
1945 – World War II ends
1954 – Brown v. Board of Education ends segregation in schools marking beginning of the
civil rights movement
1957 – Martin Luther King Jr., helps found SCLC to work toward African American equality
1960 – John F. Kennedy was elected President of the United States
1961 – The Congress of Racial Equality begins to organize Freedom Rides
1961 – Tensions rise in Vietnam; Vice President Johnson pledges support to Diem
1962 – Malcolm X becomes a prominent figure in the civil rights movement
1963 – More than 200,000 people march in Washington D.C. in the largest civil rights
demonstration ever
1963 – MLK Jr. gives his “I have a Dream” speech
1963 – President John F. Kennedy assassinated
1964 – Freedom Summer begins, encouraging African Americans to register to vote
1964 – President Lyndon Johsnon signs the Civil Rights Act
1964 – MLK Jr. is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
1964 – Gulf of Tonkin Resolution initiates official American involvement in Vietnam
+ Timeline of American Civil Rights

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What’s the relevancy of a play
revolving around the civil rights
movement today?
Discussion Questions
Why do you think Kushner chose to
write Caroline, or Change as a
musical instead of straight play?
How would this be different if it
were written as a straight play?
Why is it significant that Kushner
makes a connection between
Jewish identity and African
American identity in the South in
the 1960’s?

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[Street Address]
[City], [State][Postal Code]
[Web Address]
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Glossary
Bupkes
A Yiddish word meaning
nothing.
Gelt
Refers to “Hannukah
coins,” often taking the
form of chocolate coins
wrapped in gold and
silver.
Goyim
A Yiddish word,
sometimes derogatory,
used to describe non-
Jews.
John F. Kennedy
The 35th
President of the
United States; served
from 1961-1963 during
the heart of the Civil
Rights Movement;
assassinated in 1963 by
Lee Harvey Oswald.
Lake Charles, LA
Fifth largest city in
Louisiana, located 200
miles west of New
Orleans; population in
1960 estimated to be
approximately 63,000.
Opera-cal
Tony Kushner’s word for
the combination of a
musical and an opera.