This sweeping musical portrait of early 20th century America tells the story of three families in pursuit of the American Dream.
Written by the award-winning composer/lyricist team of Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens (Once on This Island, Seussical, Lucky Stiff), noted playwright Terrence McNally, and based on E.L. Doctorow's distinguished novel, Ragtime was the winner of the 1998 Tony Awards for Best Score, Book and Orchestrations, and both the Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards for Best Musical and Best Score, and has now been adapted for high school performers. Called by TIME Magazine "A triumph for the stage," and by the International Herald Tribune "the best musical in twenty years," Ragtime School Edition is filled with pageantry, emotion and hope, bursting onto the stage like no other musical.
At the dawn of a new century, everything is changing… and anything is possible. Set in the volatile melting pot of turn-of-the-century New York, three distinctly American tales are woven together – that of a stifled upper-class wife, a determined Jewish immigrant and a daring young Harlem musician – united by their courage, compassion and belief in the promise of the future. Together, they confront history's timeless contradictions of wealth and poverty, freedom and prejudice, hope and despair, and what it means to live in America.
Ragtime School Edition has become a favorite of schools across the country and a valuable teaching tool with which educators can discuss such issues as class and prejudice, social conditions, immigration and the history of America itself.