Two weeks ago, the musical Ragtime came under fire at a high school in Cherry Hill, New Jersey for its deployment of racial slurs in telling a anti-racism story that is intended to evoke the evolving nature of what it means to be American, blending the stories of white, black, and Jewish characters according to the template set by E.L. Doctorow’s best-selling novel from 1975. Following efforts to censor its language, which would have resulted in the rights to the show being withdrawn due to unauthorized edits, Ragtime will go in Cherry Hill, serving not only as entertainment but education about the prejudices of the past which, sadly, remain with us today.

With a book by Terrence McNally, music by Stephen Flaherty and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, Ragtime was hardly the first musical to address American history, politics or identity – that had been the basis for shows ranging from The Gershwins’s Of Thee I Sing and Strike Up The Band to Sherman Edwards and Peter Stone’s 1776. Was it more frank than many of the prior works? No doubt, as standards of what is considered progressive and acceptable on stage evolved, and has continued to change, right up through Hamilton.

Lynn Ahrens (Photo by Howard Sherman)

For Ahrens, the historical elements of Ragtime, which are woven through the fictional saga of slowly blending families, were not exactly new territory for musicalization. In fact, more than a decade before she gained attention as the lyricist of such shows as Lucky Stiff, Once On This Island and My Favorite Year, Ahrens was part of the core group that created the much beloved Schoolhouse Rock, seen on ABC TV during its Saturday morning cartoon block. It wasn’t just Ahrens’s lyrics that helped to make up this series of short cartoons – her music and her voice were heard as well.

For those who managed to entirely miss the 44 year legacy of Schoolhouse Rock, or came to it only in its endless reruns, compilations or stage version, Rock was a series of short, musical cartoons that sought to educate the kids glued to TV sets for such intellectually stimulating fare as Jabberjaw, Scooby-Doo and Dynomutt, Superfriends, and The Krofft Super Show. Arranged around the subjects one might find in elementary school or middle school, the original curriculum was multiplication, grammar, American history and science. Money was tackled in a new set of shorts in the mid 90s, and the environment was given the Schoolhouse Rock treatment in 2009. Rather than being part of an ABC effort to add educational programming, Schoolhouse Rock was created by an ad agency, McCaffrey and McCall, which used it as a vehicle to flog breakfast cereals for one of its clients, General Mills.

Ahrens was working as a secretary at the agency and often played her guitar on lunch breaks, leading one of the execs to invite her to try her hand at a Schoolhouse Rock song during the second round of cartoons, grammar. The original 1973 series, on multiplication, had been written solely by Bob Dorough. While some reports have that initial entry as being “The Preamble” (to the U.S. Constitution), other sources say it was “A Noun is a Person, Place or Thing,” which is more consistent with schedules of original airdates. Whatever their birthdates, Ahrens sang on both.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qk4N5kkifGQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHp7sMqPL0g

Given the themes of Ragtime, another Ahrens composition (sung by Lori Lieberman), seems to have somewhat prefigured that show. It is as timely as it ever was, if not more so given recent executive orders, although some of its cartooned racial caricatures are rather unfortunate.

All told, Ahrens wrote three “Grammar Rock,” five “America Rock,” six of the nine “Science Rock,” one “Money Rock” (the patter song “Tax Man Max” with her theatrical songwriting partner Stephen Flaherty), and four contributions to “Earth Rock.”

Leaving aside the Ragtime link, yet another Ahrens contribution seems especially vital these days, given the degree to which the separation of powers and constitutional rights are part of the 24-hour news cycle.

While Ahrens is currently at work with her Ragtime collaborators McNally and Flaherty on Anastasia, a mixture of Russian history and conjecture,a special screening of some of her Schoolhouse Rock work might be worth setting up in Washington right now. It seems there are people in that town who could still learn a lot from Lynn, especially people with short attention spans who are given to flipping through TV channels on a whim.

Walking through Covent Garden, I always imagine a site-specific production of My Fair Lady (or Pygmalion), with the opening scene played out on the very ground where it was first conceived to occur. This same flight of fancy has always held for me as well when I visit Independence Hall in Philadelphia, and dream of John Adams and Benjamin Franklin singing in the building where the musical 1776 is set and key moments in American history took place.

So when I received a press release about a concert of the musical Ragtime to be held on Ellis Island, the first stop for some 12 million immigrants to the US in the late 19th and first half of the 20th century, I couldn’t scramble fast enough to secure a ticket.

I didn’t stop to fuss over who was producing, directing or performing, I just wanted to be there. I’ve been a great fan of the Lynn Ahrens, Stephen Flaherty and Terrence McNally show since I first heard the original recording. My affection was reinforced when the show landed in New York. The novel on which it’s based, by E.L. Doctorow, is also a favourite; I read it when it was new, while I was in my teens.

As it happens, the production was the vision of a 22-year-old tyro director named Sammi Cannold, heretofore unknown to me. She had apparently made a splash in California directing a site-specific production of the musical Violet on a bus while in college. She’ll repeat the production next year at Massachusetts’ American Repertory Theater.

Cannold’s concert was designed as a test run for a possible full production of Ragtime on Ellis Island. Held in the Registry Room for an audience of some 450 people, it featured a good-sized cast led by Laura Michelle Kelly and Brandon Victor Dixon, with narration and anecdotes from Brian Stokes Mitchell, who created the role of Coalhouse Walker on Broadway.

Perhaps a dozen songs from the expansive score were performed. Despite its relative brevity, the logistics must have been a challenge, since every element had to be brought to the island by ferry, including the audience.

Unlike my imagined My Fair Lady and 1776 productions, Ragtime had a particular resonance for me beyond the obvious historical link: all four of my grandparents came to America through Ellis Island. I watched this fictional story, which could have been that of my own forbears, unfolding in a building that I knew they had walked through, three leaving Tsarist Russia, a fourth having come from Marseille.

I never knew the specifics of their voyages – my parents, now deceased, never told me any details, my maternal grandparents died when I was an infant, and my father’s parents were taciturn and stern, never given to saying any more than absolutely necessary.

Monday’s water voyage to Ellis Island was vastly shorter than that of those arriving by boat more than 100 years ago, but the verisimilitude of approaching by water, of watching the Statue of Liberty loom ever larger, brought site-specific and slightly immersive work to a whole new level. Even without the book scenes acted out, I found myself moved to tears at one point by the confluence of art and history, and had a sense of being closer to my grandparents than I ever was in their lifetimes.

Of course, Ragtime is not the story of a single family of Eastern European immigrants, but also the story of black Americans and white Americans, their lives intertwined by fate, racism and forgiveness.

At a time when our Republican presidential nominee and the Brexiteers want to close borders to immigrants, Ragtime is a vivid reminder that immigrants and migrants are essential parts of the story of almost every country, even if the musical doesn’t represent every race. While its message will likely be evergreen and surely pertinent should a full production be realised, its resonance in 2016, even in a suite of songs, is impossible to miss.

As someone who has not travelled a great deal internationally, I have always said that it is the theatre that has taken me to places I’ve never been, in addition to being a time machine that has taken me to eras other than this one. Ragtime on Ellis Island was, for me, a singular experience in a lifetime of theatregoing as a result of the convergence of the show, the place and my own heritage.

But with 12 million immigrants having passed through its doors, I am surely not alone, as a second-generation American, in appreciating its hold. Ragtime on Ellis Island is a terrific argument for more theatre happening outside of theatres, in places where the stories truly or imaginatively took place, making the case both for the value of art and emphasising the humanity and truth that lies within art, merging invention and reality far from any proscenium.