Morgan State University Fine Arts Department Joins Forces with Local Maryland Schools for Their Annual Spring Musical

Baltimore, MD ---The world-renowned talents of Morgan State University Fine Arts Department are currently working with local middle, high school and college students, to bring to musical life, one of America’s most beloved and admired novels of modern times, E.L. Doctorow’s “ Ragtime ”. RAGTIME, The Musical , directed by Shirley Basfield Dunlap, MSU Theatre Arts Coordinator , and music direction by Melvin Miles Jr., Director of MSU Band, and choreography by Timoth Copney, can be seen in the Carl J. Murphy Fine Arts Center, on the stage of the Gilliam Concert Hall, March 30th through April 2nd. Performance times are Friday and Saturday, at 7:30pm and Sunday at 3pm.

“I am thrilled that the Fine Arts Department will have the pleasure of working with talented local middle, high school and college students; from schools such as Dumbarton Middle, Park School, Patapsco High School and Center for the Arts and Towson University, just to name a few. This is a new venture for Morgan State University. Productions such as RAGTIME, The Musical, a Tony Award winning Broadway musical, provides opportunities to students to perform in such a setting that will prepare them professionally; and , for the general public to participate in performances that they would not otherwise have the occasion to do in such a space as The Gilliam, ” states Ms. Shirley Basfield Dunlap. “Additionally, students now have an opportunity to combine talents in the theatre and in music which had not been previously done. This process will open the way for future students who would have chosen not to attend Morgan because there was not a direct opportunity for them to be in musical theatre.”

Choosing RAGTIME, The Musical for its musical appeal, history lessons and message on social justice in America is an approach chosen by MSU Fine Arts Department to attract the general public’s awareness and appreciation of the arts. RAGTIME, The Musical was proclaimed “the Best Musical of the Year” by USA Today (1996) based on E.L. Doctorow’s authoring a cavalcade of the dawning of a new age in America at the turn of the twentieth century. This historical “fiction” blends the families of Blacks in Harlem; Jewish and European immigrants; and upper-middle class White Anglo-Saxon Protestants with historical characters such as Henry Ford, Harry Houdini, Emma Goldman, J.P. Morgan, Evelyn Nesbit and Booker T. Washington.

Audiences will view this performance differently as they visit the campus of this historically Black institution where race talk is still addressed in course work to teach students the struggle prevailed to have such a campus, along with the dialogue necessary to keep the institution.