THEATRE DISTRICT, Manhattan (PIX11) — Opening night for any Broadway show is usually a tense and anxious time, but for “Parade,” perhaps even more so.

There was a visible police presence and tightened security Thursday night after a group with neo-nazi ties demonstrated in front of the theatre on the first night of previews spewing antisemitic slurs. There were no demonstrations on opening night Thursday.

“They are not worth talking about,” Eddie Cooper, a cast member, told PIX11 News. “I don’t want to give them my energy.”

Another cast member spoke about why the story of Leo Frank needs to be told.

“History, if we don’t learn from our mistakes, we repeat them,” Aurelia Williams, another cast member, told PIX11 News.

Parade depicts the true story of Leo Frank, who was falsely convicted of the rape and murder of a 13-year-old girl in Georgia in 1913. Frank was wrongly accused. After his sentence was later commuted, Frank was lynched by an antisemitic mob.

In the decades since, he has been exonerated. The state of Georgia posthumously pardoned him.

Ben Platt plays Leo Frank in the contemporary revival of “Parade.”

“I feel affirmed,” Platt told PIX11 News. “I got to go visit his home in Brooklyn. As for the demonstrations, it was a good reminder that this is the right time to tell the story.”

Micaela Diamond plays Frank’s devoted wife, Lucille.

“We are taught hatred as human beings, the anger, the fear, the neo-Nazis, who hanged Leo Frank,” Diamond told PIX11 News. “I try to tell the story with more love.”

The red carpet was filled with celebrities and Broadway stars who wanted to convey that hate has no place on Broadway or anywhere else.

“It’s really interesting that people in the younger generation see where our policies came from and how we can maybe move things forward,” actress Krysta Rodriguez told PIX11 News. “History is very cyclical.”

The musical first came to Broadway in 1998 and there were no demonstrations then.