Phaedra Michelle Scott ’14 is carrying around a thick binder at the world premiere run of her musical, Stompin’ at the Savoy. The binder contains the original loose-leaf script and has blue and orange Post-it notes sticking out, marking seemingly every page. The script itself is stuffed with replacement pages, handwritten notes, and even more Post-it notes. There are lines crossed out and new dialogue written in the margins with arrows pointing to where it should appear. 

At this point in the process of bringing her work to the world, the show has already been performed several times in front of an audience at the Delaware Theatre Company in Wilmington, Scott’s hometown. After each of these preview performances, Scott has continued to tweak the script, learning what works and what doesn’t from how the theatregoers react and from feedback from the cast, musicians, and the director. The actors learn the new lines and stage directions in rehearsals the following day and try the new version that night.

After these preview nights of the run, Scott’s changes are locked in, and the premiere continues for two weeks unchanged. By the end of its premiere run, it was clear: Scott and all of her collaborators on stage and off had hit their mark. 

Stompin’ at the Savoy is an adaptation of a book by the same name, written by Alan Govenar in conversation with Norma Miller, the dancer and protagonist of the biography. Miller grew up in Harlem in the 1920s and ’30s and set out to become a dancer from a young age, inspired by the jubilant new form of swing dance that was being developed at the Savoy Ballroom. The Savoy was an iconic venue in Harlem that could host up to 4,000 patrons at a time and occupied 10,000 square feet on the second floor of a building that stretched a full city block. 

Miller, her sister, and her mother lived in an apartment across the street from the back of the ballroom, and she would watch the silhouettes of the dancers on the curtains at night. Scott’s Stompin’ at the Savoy evokes this detail, introducing the ballroom by projecting silhouettes of dancers onto the set. 

Scott structured the play in a way that follows Miller’s experience. At first, the audience is kept outside the Savoy, along with Miller, who is too young to enter the club. The first scene opens on the sidewalk in front of the club with jump rope and hand-clap games, such as “Miss Mary Mack.”

“[Miller] picked up rhythm first,” Scott explained the opening. “It is really cool we’re able to tell the story musically as well.” 

The music and dancing become more sophisticated as the plot unfolds. The music evolves from hand claps to a full 10-piece band and two vocalists who repeatedly drew enthusiastic applause from the audience. The complexity of the dancing progresses from hopscotch to two-steps with swings and finally to more acrobatic moves.

This progression of the dance and music works alongside Scott’s approach to the narrative, which shows a clear path from passionate youth to successful dancer, with setbacks and social constraints along the way.

Scott began adapting Miller’s story when Govenar decided he needed a younger collaborator with a theatre background. One of Scott’s first suggestions was that a stage version needed to shorten the timeframe of the original story so it could have the greatest impact on the audience.

“Our collaboration, so much of it was really deep conversation. I truly love history, and so does Alan,” Scott said. “I definitely have the theatrical expertise, and he trusted me in crafting a more focused world. I had to pinpoint the most dramatic moment, the moment that propelled everything for Norma.”

The musical dramatizes just one pivotal year, when Miller becomes a member of the Savoy’s swing dance troupe. Govenar’s book spans Miller’s entire life, from her father’s passing just before she was born to her reflections in old age. The musical also fictionalizes people and events for dramatic effect. 

The play draws out larger themes in Miller’s life that Govenar’s book doesn’t make explicit. The musical guides audiences’ attention to racism, integration, and overcoming fear while still including the personal themes captured in the book: Miller’s passion for dance, her determination, and her mother’s unwavering, if slightly conflicted, support. Through this distillation of her experiences, the play focuses on moments that help audiences take lessons and inspiration from Miller’s life.

“What I really loved was the dedication of Norma Miller,” Scott said about her first impressions when Govenar brought her onto the project. “I was so excited by a girl protagonist who was so passionate and knew what she wanted and just had to figure out how to get it.”

At 15, Norma Miller became the youngest of the Savoy Ballroom’s Lindy Hoppers, a mixed-race dance troupe showcasing the most innovative dance steps at the height of the swing era. Although it was illegal at the time for Black and White people to dance together in New York and many other places in the United States, the Savoy had a strict non-discrimination policy, and its clientele and the Hoppers were integrated in the ballroom. 

“There is something so beautiful and earnest about that, the ripple effects of what they did,” Scott said. “They showed what you could do with dance, normalizing a Black person and a White person dancing together.”

When the Lindy Hoppers later went on tour, however, only the Black members could perform, and Stompin’ at the Savoy captures the absurdity and injustice of the rules and their impact in a memorable scene when the troupe enters a dance competition. The Black dancers are blocked from using the venue in any way other than performing, and the White members of the Lindy Hoppers try to ease everyone’s discomfort, including their own, by fetching water and otherwise acting as gofers backstage.

What Scott’s play does so effectively is address the realities of American racism while maintaining space for positive interracial friendships. The way the Lindy Hoppers are comfortably and intentionally integrated on stage creates a space for the audience to embrace the joy of swing music and dance in a setting that treats supportive interracial interactions as the norm. 

However, when that positive space is shattered in shocking moments imposed on the Hoppers by the outside world, it reveals how racism is alien, gut-wrenching, and deeply unfair, yet also commonplace and banal. The first scene of this sort, when a White beat cop harasses some of the dancers on a Harlem sidewalk, drew gasps from the audience.

The power of theatre to imbue historical events with emotional power is one of the things that Scott values about the art form. She said she hopes audiences leave Stompin’ at the Savoy educated, intrigued, and perhaps inspired to do more research. 

Since graduating from Washington with a double major in history and theatre, most of Scott’s writing projects have been inspired by historical events. She has written six other plays, including DIASPORA!, which won the 2024 Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding New Play. She’s also a screenwriting instructor at the Juilliard School and has a new world premiere, PLANTATION BLACK, scheduled for February 2026 at InterAct Theater Company in Philadelphia. 

—Mark Jolly-Van Bodegraven