HOME





Ragtime (musical)
''Ragtime'' is a musical with music by Stephen Flaherty, lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, and a book by Terrence McNally. It is based on the 1975 novel of the same name by E.L. Doctorow. Set in the early 20th century, ''Ragtime'' tells the story of three groups in the United States: African Americans, represented by Coalhouse Walker Jr., a Harlem musician; upper-class suburbanites, represented by Mother, the matriarch of a white upper-class family in New Rochelle, New York; and Eastern European immigrants, represented by Tateh, a Jewish immigrant from Latvia. The show also incorporates historical figures such as Harry Houdini, Evelyn Nesbit, Booker T. Washington, J. P. Morgan, Henry Ford, Stanford White, Harry Kendall Thaw, Admiral Peary, Matthew Henson, and Emma Goldman. Production history Original Toronto and Broadway production The musical had its world premiere in Toronto, where it opened at the then-called Ford Centre for the Performing Arts (now the Meridian Arts Centre) ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Stephen Flaherty
Stephen Flaherty (born September 18, 1960) is an American composer of musical theatre and film. He works most often in collaboration with the lyricist/book writer Lynn Ahrens. They are best known for writing the Broadway musicals ''Ragtime'', which was nominated for thirteen Tony Awards, two Grammy Awards, and won the Tony for Best Original Score; '' Once on This Island'', which won the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical, the Olivier Award for London's Best Musical, and was nominated for a Grammy Award and eight Tony Awards; and '' Seussical'', which was nominated for the Grammy Award. Flaherty was also nominated for two Academy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards (with Lynn Ahrens) for his songs and song score for the animated film musical ''Anastasia''. Biography Flaherty was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He began studying piano at the age of seven. When he was twelve, he knew he wanted to write musicals and by age fourteen he had already composed his first musical s ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Latvia
Latvia, officially the Republic of Latvia, is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is one of the three Baltic states, along with Estonia to the north and Lithuania to the south. It borders Russia to the east and Belarus to the southeast, and shares a Maritime boundary, maritime border with Sweden to the west. Latvia covers an area of , with a population of 1.9million. The country has a Temperate climate, temperate seasonal climate. Its capital and List of cities and towns in Latvia, largest city is Riga. Latvians, who are the titular nation and comprise 65.5% of the country's population, belong to the ethnolinguistic group of the Balts and speak Latvian language, Latvian. Russians in Latvia, Russians are the most prominent minority in the country, at almost a quarter of the population; 37.7% of the population speak Russian language, Russian as their native tongue. After centuries of State of the Teutonic Order, Teutonic, Swedish Livonia, Swedish, Inflanty Voi ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Livent
The Live Entertainment Corporation of Canada, better known as Livent, was a theatre production company based in Toronto, Ontario. Founded in 1989 by former Cineplex Odeon executives Garth Drabinsky and Myron Gottlieb, the company initially found success with its production of '' The Phantom of the Opera'' at its Pantages Theatre in Toronto. In 1993, they brought '' Kiss of the Spider Woman'' to Broadway, winning the Tony Award for Best Musical. They became known for lavish productions with their 1994 revival of '' Show Boat'' (estimated to be the most expensive production in Broadway history at the time), and their ambitious 1998 original musical ''Ragtime''. In 1998, Livent announced the discovery of "accounting irregularities". Revised financial statements showed previously undisclosed losses, and the company filed for bankruptcy protection. As a result, the company's stock price plummeted, and its assets were eventually sold off in 1999. The company's collapse led to crimin ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




Garth Drabinsky
Garth Drabinsky (born 1949)Charlebois, Gaetan, and Anne NothofDrabinsky, Garth Canadian Theatre Encyclopedia. Athabasca University. Anne Nothof, ed. "Ontario-based entrepreneur, born in Toronto in 1949." is a Canadian film and theatrical producer and entrepreneur. In 2009, he was convicted and sentenced to prison for fraud and forgery. The sentence was reduced from 7 to 5 years in prison, on appeal to the Ontario Court of Appeal, and the Supreme Court of Canada declined to hear a subsequent appeal. In April 2023, a judge dismissed Drabinsky’s defamation lawsuit against American Actor’s Equity for placing him on their ‘Do Not Work’ list, and in July 2024 the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed this dismissal, along with his claim that the union's conduct violated antitrust law. Drabinsky has attempted 3 comebacks all resulting in failure and millions of investor dollars being lost. Early life Drabinsky contracted polio at age 3 and had multiple operations until he was 12. ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Playbill
''Playbill'' is an American monthly magazine for Audience, theatergoers. Although there is a subscription issue available for home delivery, most copies of ''Playbill'' are printed for particular productions and distributed at the door as the show's Programme (booklet), program. ''Playbill'' was first printed in 1884 for a single theater on 21st Street in New York City. The magazine is now used at nearly every Broadway theatre as well as many Off-Broadway productions. Outside New York City, ''Playbill'' is used at theaters throughout the United States. its Magazine circulation, circulation was 4,073,680. History What is known today as ''Playbill'' started in 1884, when Frank Vance Strauss founded the New York Theatre Program Corporation specializing in printing theater programs. Strauss reimagined the concept of a theater program, making advertisements a standard feature and thus transforming what was then a leaflet into a fully designed magazine. The new format proved popu ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Meridian Arts Centre
The Meridian Arts Centre is a Performing arts center, performing arts venue in the North York district of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It opened on October 16, 1993, as the North York Performing Arts Centre and was designed by Canadian architect Eberhard Zeidler (architect), Eberhard Zeidler for musicals, theatre productions and other performing arts. At opening, North York awarded management of the centre to Livent, which sold the naming rights in 1994 to Ford Motor Company of Canada. It became the Ford Centre for the Performing Arts. Later, it debranded as the Toronto Centre for the Arts. In January 2019, TO Live (formerly Civic Theatres Toronto, a City of Toronto agency which manages and operates the St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts, Toronto Centre for the Arts, and the Sony Centre for the Performing Arts) announced a new sponsorship deal with Meridian Credit Union, which saw the theatre rebranded in September 2019. Facility The building originally housed three theatres: the Mai ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman (June 27, 1869 – May 14, 1940) was a Russian-born Anarchism, anarchist revolutionary, political activist, and writer. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the 20th century. Born in Kaunas, Lithuania (then within the Russian Empire), to an Orthodox Judaism, Orthodox Lithuanian Jews, Lithuanian Jewish family, Goldman immigrated to the United States in 1885.University of Illinois at ChicagBiography of Emma Goldman . UIC Library Emma Goldman Collection. Retrieved on December 13, 2008. Attracted to anarchism after the Chicago Haymarket affair, Goldman became a writer and a renowned lecturer on anarchist philosophy, women's rights, and social movement, social issues, attracting crowds of thousands. She and anarchist writer Alexander Berkman, her lover and lifelong friend, planned to assassinate industrialist and financier Henry Clay Frick as an act of propaganda of the deed. ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Matthew Henson
Matthew Alexander Henson (August 8, 1866March 9, 1955) was an African American explorer who accompanied Robert Peary on seven voyages to the Arctic over a period of nearly 23 years. They spent a total of 18 years on expeditions together.Deirdre C. Stam, "Introduction to The Explorers Club Edition," ''Matthew A. Henson's Historic Arctic Journey: The Classic Account of One of the World's Greatest Black Explorers''
Globe Pequot, 2009, pp. 3–6
He is best known for his participation in the 1908–1909 expedition that claimed to have reached the geographic North Pole ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Admiral Peary
Robert Edwin Peary Sr. (; May 6, 1856 – February 20, 1920) was an American explorer and officer in the United States Navy who made several expeditions to the Arctic in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was long credited as being the discoverer of the geographic North Pole in April 1909, having led the first expedition to have claimed this achievement, although it is now considered unlikely that he actually reached the Pole. Peary was born in Cresson, Pennsylvania, but, following his father's death at a young age, was raised in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. He attended Bowdoin College, then joined the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey as a draftsman. He enlisted in the navy in 1881 as a civil engineer. In 1885, he was made chief of surveying for the Nicaragua Canal, which was never built. He visited the Arctic for the first time in 1886, making an unsuccessful attempt to cross Greenland by dogsled. In the Peary expedition to Greenland of 1891–1892, he was much be ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Harry Kendall Thaw
Harry Kendall Thaw (February 12, 1871 – February 22, 1947) was the son of American coal and railroad baron William Thaw Sr. Heir to a multimillion-dollar fortune, he is most notable for having murdered the renowned architect Stanford White in front of hundreds of witnesses at the rooftop theatre of New York City's Madison Square Garden (1890), Madison Square Garden on June 25, 1906. Thaw had harbored an obsessive hatred of White, believing he had blocked Thaw's access to the social elite of New York. White also had a previous relationship with Thaw's wife, the model and chorus girl Evelyn Nesbit, when she was 16 or 17. This affair began with White allegedly date rape, plying Nesbit with alcohol (and possibly with drugs) and then raping her while she was unconscious. In Thaw's mind, this relationship had "ruined" her. Thaw's trial for murder was heavily publicized and called the "trial of the century". After one hung jury, a second jury found him not guilty by reason of ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Stanford White
Stanford White (November 9, 1853 – June 25, 1906) was an American architect and a partner in the architectural firm McKim, Mead & White, one of the most significant Beaux-Arts firms at the turn of the 20th century. White designed many houses for the wealthy, in addition to numerous civic, institutional and religious buildings. His temporary Washington Square Arch was so popular that he was commissioned to design a permanent one. White's design principles embodied the " American Renaissance". In 1906, White was murdered during a musical performance at the rooftop theatre of Madison Square Garden. His killer, Harry Kendall Thaw, was a wealthy but mentally unstable heir of a coal and railroad fortune who had become obsessed by White's alleged drugging and rape of, and subsequent relationship with, the woman who was to become Thaw's wife, Evelyn Nesbit, which had started when she was aged 16. At the time of White's killing, Nesbit was a famous fashion model. With the public n ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Henry Ford
Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947) was an American Technological and industrial history of the United States, industrialist and business magnate. As the founder of the Ford Motor Company, he is credited as a pioneer in making automobiles affordable for middle-class Americans through the system that came to be known as Fordism. In 1911, he was awarded a patent for the transmission mechanism that would be used in the Ford Model T and other automobiles. Ford was born in a farmhouse in Springwells Township, Michigan, and left home at the age of 16 to find work in Detroit. It was a few years before this time that Ford first experienced automobiles, and throughout the later half of the 1880s, he began repairing and later constructing engines, and through the 1890s worked with DTE Electric Company, a division of Edison Electric. He founded the Ford Motor Company in 1903 after prior failures in business, but success in constructing automobiles. The introduction of the Ford M ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]