By Stuart Miller
21 Dec 2009

	Quentin Earl Darrington and the Ragtime cast
	photo by Joan Marcus

Ashley says that as Memphis moved from La Jolla to Seattle to New York, the rewrites kept recalibrating the show's focus. "Prejudice is the villain of the show and we kept trying to go there more and more." (Interestingly, the La Jolla performances coincided with the Proposition 8 controversy about gay marriage in California; Ashley says the audiences there saw this show's forbidden love as a parallel.)

Not all of these shows are new, of course. Finian's Rainbow was a hit in 1947 and Ragtime earned 13 Tony nominations in 1998. Ahrens says they didn't rewrite Ragtime to make it timely, but "it has a resonance now. The characters talk about change. There's a line about dreaming what this century could be."

She also says that Ragtime is not just about race but about class and immigration and "how people struggle toward the American dream."

Letts echoes that sentiment — Superior Donuts deals more with the American dream than it does with race. His play has a working-class setting because that is often where whites and blacks interact and thus where racial tension often surfaces.

His inspiration, however, came not from the election but from changes within the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, where he is a member. "Steppenwolf has diversified in the past few years and I felt a responsibility to try and write for the entire company — I was wary of us segregating into white plays and black plays."

Grier says that he's sure some whites have have had enough. "They are saying, 'Is it over yet, do we have to talk about it again?'" But he adds that Mamet's main goal is "to be entertaining — if he's not then no one will take away anything."

Grier is sure that Race might make some people unhappy — "some will say it goes too far and some will say it doesn't go far enough" — but ultimately he thinks the play will stir conversation, and that's a good thing.

Everyone involved agrees that it's a healthy sign for the theatre that its lineup is not only timely but thought-provoking.

Ashley, who says Memphis is making a genuine effort in its marketing to reach a diverse audience, says: "If we're talking about what the country is talking about, then that's great for Broadway."