The Seacoast Repertory Theatre Will Kick Off the New Year with RAGTIME

The Seacoast Repertory Theatre will kick off the new year with fireworks. Ragtime, the award-winning musical depicting America's tumultuous social vibrancy, will set the stage for year of theater considering where modern society has come from and where it is going.

Ragtime opens January 30. It will be by most measures the Seacoast Rep's most ambitious production yet, with 35 ethnically diverse actors cast from New York and New England playing 65 characters, and one of its largest orchestras ever.

"This is intended to be the fireworks that start our 2020 season," said Ben Hart, who is co-directing the production with his longtime partner Brandon James. "Everything is bigger than anything we've ever done. It's going to blow the top off the building. The voices alone are absolutely going to shake the I-beams of the theater."

Ragtime is the first installment of a year-long theme called "Hindsight 2020." Many of the productions are Broadway classics that showcase historically significant concepts or values.

"Everything that we're presenting this season speaks to moments in human history that we don't want people to forget about in this election year," James said. "We're not trying to be so heavy handed as to make any statements, but we're highlighting these moments in history that, when we step into the ballot box, we all should remember."

The other shows on the Rep's mainstage this year are: A Chorus Line, Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Urinetown, Hello Dolly, Cabaret, The Crucible, Sweeney Todd and the Sound of Music. They deal with themes including fascism, class divisions, gay rights, civil rights and social justice. "This show encapsulates a message from every show this season," James said of Ragtime.

Ragtime also marks the beginning of the Seacoast Rep's first full year under James and Hart's artistic leadership after being named co-artistic directors. Under the moniker Mad Men of Oopsy Daisy Inc, James and Hart have for several years put a vibrant stamp on numerous mainstage productions at Rep and run its adult Red Light series.

Ragtime is based on a 1975 book of the same name by E.L. Doctorow, which is considered one of the best novels of the 20th century. The story looks back to the first two decades of the century, and tells of the intersecting lives of three families - one white upper class, one black and one Jewish and newly immigrated from Latvia. It brings in historical characters ranging from Harry Houdini to Booker T. Washington, Henry Ford and political anarchist Emma Watson.

The musical's initial Broadway run lasted 12 years and won four Tony Awards, including for its score and book.

The musical is set in an era in which ragtime music was giving black cultural expression its first big inroads into white culture. Everything about the show reflects the energizing syncopations that drove the music and revolutionized American culture. "This new music came and it made everybody look at things in a different way," James said. "It opens the door to 'well what else is there, and what comes from that?'"

Hart and James are putting their stamp on Ragtime in several ways, but perhaps most dramatically, in depicting the events as part of an American history that has played out once and for all. The stage is set as rubble, the aftermath of an unspoken calamity that wrote the country's final chapter, while the characters, with a ghostly disembodiment, act out their drama some unknown number of years earlier.

"You so often forget that it's past tense. It transports you into a present tense," James said. "All of the issues that they were dealing with from the early 1900s - immigration, police brutality against black people, women's rights and the upper one percent and class issues -- they are all very present in our modern day."

Describing the monumental effort put into the show, James noted the unusual involvement of three choreographers, a fight captain, and a dramaturge literary adviser. "It's just been a really eye-opening and enlightening experience," James said.

It will also be eye-opening for audiences, he said, "You're going to feel a lot of things when you come to watch the show. You're going to have a lot of opinions and you're going to have a lot of new questions presented to you. And you're going to enjoy yourself but it's going to challenge you in in a lot of ways. It's uncomfortable, it's beautiful, it's moving, it's sweeping. It's everything you want."

Ragtime runs January 30- February 19. Show times are generally Thursdays at 7:30, Fridays at 8 pm, Saturdays at 2 pm and 8 pm, and Sundays at 2 pm. Tickets are available through the Seacoast Rep box office at 603-433-4472, or online at Seacoastrep.org/tickets. For student discounts, call the box office.

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