Given the sweeping, presentational nature of the source material, E.L. Doctorow\u2019s 1975 novel of the same name, it couldn\u2019t have become such a success any other way. Now, DTC and Meadows are taking on the Brechtian masterpiece, setting the stage for the launch of a musical theater institute at SMU.<\/p>\n
The plot lines first revealed in the nine-minute \u201cPrologue: Ragtime\u201d revolve around three families in turn-of-the-century New York from very different backgrounds: the upper-class Mother, Younger Brother, Father, Little Boy and Grandfather, who have just built a mansion in suburban New Rochelle with the proceeds of Father\u2019s fireworks, flags and bunting business; Harlem jazz musician Coalhouse Walker Jr. and his estranged lover Sarah, the mother of their child, who moves in with Mother as Father leaves for an Arctic expedition; and Jewish artist Tateh and his Little Girl, fresh off the boat from Latvia and soon headed to Boston to try their luck there. <\/p>\n
News Roundups<\/p>\n
By signing up, you agree to our\u00a0Terms of Service<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Privacy Policy.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cThe lyrics are totally in unison, three different factions all wanting the same thing and saying what they want in the exact same way but circling around each other, in each other\u2019s way,\u201d explains Bri Woods, who has just joined the DTC resident acting company. Woods received her master\u2019s degree in acting from Meadows last year and is starring as Sarah alongside 10 current SMU theater students, making up almost half the cast.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s one of most beautiful opening numbers because if you just got along, everybody would get exactly what they want,\u201d she continues. \u201cBut they can\u2019t. There are too many census boxes at play, too many economic, racial and religious differences, places of origin. We all, at our core, want to have a place to go to be ourselves and feel safe doing so, and none of them do.\u201d<\/p>\n The meticulous process of turning Doctorow\u2019s historical novel into a musical started with playwright Terrence McNally, who wrote a 60-page treatment in 1994. Then some of the most famous composers or composing teams in musical theater were asked to write four potential songs in just a few days. Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens, at the time only known for Once on This Island, won the audition.<\/p>\n Before premiering in Toronto in 1996, then moving to Broadway two years later with talent like Audra McDonald as Sarah and Brian Stokes Mitchell as Coalhouse, Ragtime spent months in workshops as composer Flaherty and lyricist Ahrens completed the songs. McNally wrote the book.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s the best history class,\u201d says Joel Ferrell, who is heading up the Sexton Institute for Musical Theatre at SMU and directing the production. \u201cIt\u2019s a reminder that Doctorow, Ahrens, Flaherty and McNally achieved the impossible. I\u2019m not smart enough to argue about whether the show is perfect or great or whatever. But for a show that people could easily go, \u2018It\u2019s just too big, let\u2019s never do it,\u2019 they\u2019re always trying to get back to it because it\u2019s obviously an American musical-theater classic, like Fiddler on the Roof or West Side Story. It\u2019s so utterly American.\u201d<\/p>\n Alongside the big group numbers characterized by the prologue, Ragtime features intimate solos, duets and trios.<\/p>\n Tiffany Solano as Mother and Blake Hackler as Tateh star in the Dallas Theater Center and SMU Meadows School of the Arts co-production of “Ragtime.”<\/p>\n Andy Nguyen<\/p>\n The favorite of DTC company member Blake Hackler, who is theater chair and head of acting at Meadows and stars as Tateh, is the third number, \u201cJourney On.\u201d His character, arriving in New York harbor on a rag ship with his daughter, first crosses paths with Mother and Father, though they don\u2019t actually meet until later.<\/p>\n \u201cThat is such a powerful, gorgeous, heartfelt melody, the excitement of these three people who are starting out on a journey, both a literal and a metaphorical one,\u201d Hackler says of \u201cJourney On,\u201d citing Flaherty as the finest current writer of musical theater melodies. \u201cIt\u2019s such a hopeful song and then almost immediately all hope is taken away.\u201d<\/p>\n He\u2019s talking about the storyline of Coalhouse and Sarah. Desperate and out of options, Sarah tries to bury their baby alive in the New Rochelle family\u2019s backyard, only to be taken in by Mother. Coalhouse finds Sarah and en route to try to reconcile, he\u2019s harassed by a white mob for driving his new Model T.<\/p>\n Bri Woods stars as Sarah in “Ragtime,” a co-production of the Dallas Theater Center and SMU Meadows School of the Arts.<\/p>\n Andy Nguyen<\/p>\n Neither character survives the show, Sarah dying during her attempt to defend him with the president of the United States, but not before their classic duet \u201cWheels of a Dream.\u201d It\u2019s one of Woods\u2019 favorite Ragtime songs.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s that moment when they come together, aligning for the first time,\u201d she says. \u201cThey\u2019re trying to figure out, \u2018Where do we stand now? Are we moving forward? Can you dream this with me?\u2019 They have such high hopes.\u201d<\/p>\n But those hopes go unrealized. In the song \u201cTill We Reach That Day\u201d at Sarah\u2019s funeral, Black mourners plead for justice while Mother, Father, Younger Brother, Tateh and the real-life political activist Emma Goldman weep. <\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re just asking for one day of peace, one day where they don\u2019t have to worry about their circumstances, where they can just breathe,\u201d Woods says. \u201cThat\u2019s all they want, like everybody. That\u2019s the American dream, right?\u201d<\/p>\n Goldman is among the historical figures that interact with the fictional characters, or help contextualize them. Other figures include Booker T. Washington, Henry Ford, J.P. Morgan, Evelyn Nesbit, Stanford White, Harry Kendall Thaw, Matthew Henson and Harry Houdini, who acts as a kind of double for Tateh.<\/p>\n Ragtime has been revived in New York a few times, mostly recently last year at Lincoln Center. Ferrell remembers the buzz that built around it as it first moved from Toronto to Los Angeles to Broadway. It was his and Hackler\u2019s idea to approach DTC about a co-production.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s instantly brilliant not only because it\u2019s beautiful and I can hum everything, but you can\u2019t tell exactly what decade it was written in,\u201d Ferrell says. \u201cI can\u2019t tell whether it\u2019s from 1940 or 2000.\u201d<\/p>\n While the syncopated rhythms of ragtime are woven throughout the show, especially for the Harlem characters, Flaherty also includes brass-band marches and parlor songs for the New Rochelle family, Klezmer for the immigrants, along with jazz, gospel and musical theater-style ballads.<\/p>\n Music director Bowling, who doubles as pianist and conductor from the center of the stage, the eight other musicians and 20-plus actors arrayed around her, half-jokes how much her hands hurt from rehearsing the stride style that evolved from ragtime.<\/p>\n \u201cThe whole piece, but especially the prologue, where we\u2019re introducing New Rochelle and Harlem and the immigrants, has these different styles, but the ragtime flavor is there throughout,\u201d Bowling says. \u201cIt\u2019s woven into so many different aspects of the show that it becomes its own language.\u201d<\/p>\n Details<\/p>\n March 27-April 19 at Wyly Theatre, 2400 Flora St. $30-$160. dallastheatercenter.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n Zo\u00eb Kim\u2019s \u201cDid You Eat? (\ubc25 \uba39\uc5c8\ub2c8?)\u201d is a one-woman show about growing up Korean American.<\/p>\n Doug Wright\u2019s 2022 \u201cGood Night, Oscar\u201d is about a celebrity\u2019s appearance on \u201cTonight Starring Jack Paar.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The prologue that opens Ragtime loudly announces the musical\u2019s epic ambitions as its nine fictional characters and six…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":223135,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,103,17884,5351,7284,2509],"class_list":{"0":"post-223134","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-dallas","9":"tag-dallas-headlines","10":"tag-dallas-news","11":"tag-dallas-theater-center","12":"tag-performing-arts","13":"tag-smu-mustangs","14":"tag-theater"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223134\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Tiffany](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/EFFQ667YZNGZRLG3HW26L6YXSA.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Bri](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/NET3D5ZWXBGYZCCSRKTG5P7J2Y.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Zo\u00eb](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1774620308_521_7B5OXK26GFECFA6THRJJA5EEYA.jpg\")
<\/a>Fort Worth play explores what it means to belong and be loved<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Backstage](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1774620309_463_LCSGXXCS4VGKNDT2TL2JPR4HMU.jpg\")
<\/a>Dallas native\u2019s play written for \u2018Will & Grace\u2019 star comes to Addison<\/a><\/p>\n