Ragtime - Shaw Festival Theatre

“
It was the
music of
something
beginning, an
era exploding,
a century
”
spinning...
-Ragtime
The Story
RAGTIME
The rhythms of ragtime weave their way through this powerful and sweeping
musical epic about the beginnings of contemporary America. We see the
struggles and successes of the country through the eyes of three archetypal
American families—a white, upper-middle class family in New Rochelle, an
African-American musician in Harlem, an Eastern European immigrant and his
daughter in the Lower East Side. Intertwined with their stories are the successes,
scandals and stars of the period—like magician Harry Houdini, civil
rights leader Booker T. Washington, political activist Emma Goldman, mogul
J.P. Morgan, inventor Henry Ford, and Evelyn Nesbit, the famous Girl on a
Swing.
Through each of the families and the rise and fall of these characters, the
musical reveals how they all connect, with each other and with history. The
family in New Rochelle—we only know them as Mother, Father, Younger
Brother and Little Boy—learn to cope as Father leaves to travel to the Arctic
with explorer Admiral Robert Peary. When Mother finds an African-American
baby abandoned in her garden, she meets Sarah, the mother who can’t or
won’t speak. Coalhouse Walker, a ragtime musician in New York, searches for
Sarah, the woman he loved and when he finds her and his son, he sets out to
win them back. Tateh, a Jewish immigrant from Latvia, comes to New York
with his daughter and a dream—but life is harder than this artist expected,
until he creates a little ‘movie’ and becomes part of the burgeoning movie
business.
We experience this America through the hope of immigrants to a new
country, the magic of Harry Houdini, the amazing financial success of J.P.
Morgan, the politics of Emma Goldman, the fight for freedom of Booker T.
Washington—but also through the music that this Tony Award-winning score
- from the ragtime rhythms of Harlem and Tin Pan Alley to the klezmer of the
Lower East Side. And while this musical may have been written sixteen years
ago, the themes in it feel almost more true, more important, more relevant
now—hope and hardship, the possibilities of great economic success and the
realities of those who don’t have enough; celebrity scandals and the hope
that an African-American leader can bring to a country.
TEACHERS, PLEASE NOTE:
This play deals head-on with the problem of racism in the early 19th century. You
and/or your students may find some of the language in this play uncomfortable to
hear.
Click on http://www.shawfest.com/education/study-guides/ragtime/ to hear Shaw
Festival Company members discussing the power of racist language. You could use
this as a springboard for a class discussion.
C
4
ONNECTIONS
Shaw Festival Study Guide
ONNECTIONS
Shaw Festival Study Guide