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New York (AP) — It’s been nearly 30 years since Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens wrote the music and lyrics for the musical “Ragtime,” an American epic tracking the intertwining lives of three families in New York at the turn of the 20th century.

Staged at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater, the musical is in its third run on Broadway — and earned 11 Tony nominations, including for best revival. It’s resonating the most with audiences this time, they said. “Three is the charm,” Ahrens said.

“When we originally did it on Broadway, which was 1998, I think a lot of people, if not most people, were thinking about this piece as a period piece,” Flaherty said. “I think now, people are responding to it as a contemporary story.”

Adapted from the 1975 novel by E.L. Doctorow, the show’s book is by the late playwright Terrence McNally. It depicts a wide swath of the American experience in New York at the turn of the 20th century, from Black Americans in Harlem to Jewish immigrants on the Lower East Side to the white upper-class residents of the suburbs of Westchester County.

The story that unfolds is fiction, but features historical figures like activist Emma Goldman, educator and leader Booker T. Washington, banker J.P. Morgan, auto founder Henry Ford and illusionist Harry Houdini. The show’s breadth — encompassing immense tragedy as well as great optimism — and the depth of the actors’ performances has been bringing Broadway audiences to their feet, often mid-act.

It also has people returning. “They’re like, ‘I’m coming back with my parents,’ ‘I’m coming back with my grandchildren,’ ‘I’m coming back with my grandparents,’ and it’s not even like they have to see it. They want to experience it with them,” said Brandon Uranowitz, who had his own return to the show, decades after he acted as a child in the pre-Broadway production.

Now, he’s nominated for best lead actor in a musical for playing the role of Tateh, a Jewish immigrant from Latvia. “I think it’s sort of speaking to this generational reckoning that we’re having with America and our national identity.”

‘Ragtime’ at the Tony Awards

The original production lost the best new musical Tony Award to “The Lion King,” but Ahrens and Flaherty took home the prize for best original score, McNally best book and William David Brohn best orchestrations in a competitive year. It also won Audra McDonald, the Tonys’ most decorated performer, her third award. A 2009 revival received six nominations, but lost best revival to “La Cage aux Folles.”

This could be the year it finally wins a best show award: “Ragtime” is a front-runner for best musical revival, against strong competition from “Cats: The Jellicle Ball” and “The Rocky Horror Show.” Among its other nods are nominations for all three leads, and for featured performers Nichelle Lewis and Ben Levi Ross.

Portraying a range of American experiences

Joshua Henry, nominated alongside his costar for best lead actor, plays Coalhouse Walker Jr., a celebrated Black pianist at the center of his community in Harlem. Caissie Levy, nominated for her role of Mother, is the matriarch of a wealthy white family in a suburb outside New York City.

A cast of supporting characters, and a large ensemble, flesh out the lead trio’s lives, relationships and eventual connections: Lewis plays Sarah, Coalhouse’s beloved; Ross is Mother’s Younger Brother and Colin Donnell her husband, Father; Shaina Taub is Goldman, the real-life activist.

Emotions in the first act peak during “Wheels of a Dream,” Lewis’ iconic duet with Henry, which draws standing ovations, mid-song, nearly every night.

“She is a person who represents women — especially women of color — who don’t have a voice, women of color who are fighting to have a voice, women of color who find strength in other ways because we weren’t allowed to have it,” Lewis said of Sarah. But above all, she said, the character represents the power of trust, love and hope as a buoying force.

That hope is also what propels Uranowitz’s Tateh. “Despite everything he goes through, despite the rejection, despite the oppression, despite the othering, despite antisemitism,” it’s what persists.

In the song “Journey On,” his character arrives in New York with his young daughter just as Mother’s husband, Father, leaves on an expedition to the North Pole.

“You depart on a ship from a country like this,” Tateh sings, watching Father leave. “Why on Earth would you want to be leaving?” The two men are perched on separate, moving staircases on a sparsely furnished stage, but sing from the same height, emphasizing the valley between their experiences.

Like many of the characters, Father and Tateh (also “father,” in Yiddish) are nameless. The intention, Uranowitz said, is for aspects of Tateh’s journey — from immigrant artist to successful moviemaker — to reflect the experience of Jewish Americans, and to resonate with people from other backgrounds as well. “If you pan out, which ‘Ragtime’ does so beautifully, it also holds just a capital ‘I’ immigration experience. And I think that’s really important for people to see right now.”

Holding a mirror to the current moment

The musical feels so relevant to 2026 that audience members have asked director Lear deBessonet, also Tony-nominated, if the creative team rewrote the script for this production. Lyrics by Ahrens and dialogue by McNally about the discrimination and brutality that Black Americans and immigrants face can seem straight out of the current moment. There are also references to keeping the country “great,” and commentary on celebrity culture and the power of industry leaders.

But the text hasn’t changed. “We, in the audience, are hearing it differently,” deBessonet said. “There’s something that actually, I think is very unifying about coming together with a community of our time to look at this other time, and to look at the promise and the wound of America right next to each other.”

A 2027 tour, with deBessonet and the Broadway run’s creative team at the helm, will bring the show to a wider audience around the country.

“It does not feel like we’re looking back. It feels like we’re looking in a mirror at ourselves,” Flaherty said.

There is one small change, however. When “Wheels of a Dream” is reprised in the final number, the ensemble sings “Our son will ride on the wheels of a,” and then takes a long pause before a final, resonant, “dream.” The goal is not to prescribe a particular emotional response, but to allow viewers — and the actors themselves — space for their own interpretations.

“In that moment, every single actor, every artist on that stage is invited to fill that moment with whatever feels honest to them that night,” deBessonet said. “Sometimes you can really feel that there is exuberant hope in the air. And sometimes there is grief or rage or confusion,” she added.

Ahrens said it’s been a “revelation” to see how audiences have responded to the production, before and after the 2024 presidential election — and throughout this Broadway run, which concludes on Aug. 2. “It’s such a visceral thing,” she said. “I don’t think we’ve ever experienced anything like it.”

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This story was first published June 6. It was updated on June 8 to correct that “Ragtime” won Audra McDonald her third Tony, not her first.

BERLIN (AP) — A pop-up art show featuring contemporary art, including video and audio installations, photography and traditional oil paintings, is set to open at Germany’s Bellevue Palace this week before the German presidential residence closes for renovation.

At a press preview on Monday, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said he was pleased that the mostly emptied-out Berlin residence was being opened to art and to the public.

“We need art,” Steinmeier said. “A democracy without free art loses its capacity for self-criticism, and art without freedom loses its social relevance.”

The former Prussian royal palace, built in the 18th century, is set to undergo extensive renovations, including a repair of the roof, a new air conditioning system and upgraded offices. The work is expected to last eight years, meaning Steinmeier is not expected to return to the residence. His second and final term ends next year.

The pop-up show Freiraum Kunst, which roughly translates as “free art space,” was organized by the city’s Academy of Arts.

The president of the academy, Manos Tsangaris, thanked Steinmeier for the opportunity to use “these wonderful spaces.”

“An opportunity like this to truly bring art to life is something we greatly appreciate,” he said.

It opens to the public Friday and runs until June 28. During this time, the president’s residency, which is normally not freely accessibly, will be open to anyone who manages to book a free ticket online.

People’s interest in getting a glimpse inside the official presidential residence was so great that the website crashed just a few hours after it went live last month.

The temporary art show is also certain to attract a lot of interest with works by well-known artists Katharina Grosse, Wolfgang Tillmans and Monica Bonvicini, among others.

Upon entering the building, visitors will be able to see two paintings by artist El Bocho. The first one is an oversized portrait of a young woman with bright orange hair called “Die Bundespräsidentin,” or The Female President.

Across from it hangs a painting of three faceless men in suits called “Die Alten” or “The Old Ones.” The question the artists wants to raise, said curator Anh-Linh Ngo, is why Germany has never had a female president so far.

In general, all artists were given a free hand in what messages they wanted to convey to the public and many used the opportunity to interact with the normally political space, the organizers said.

Artist Karin Sander created a miniature sculpture of Steinmeier which she placed on a pedestal in the “political speeches room” — the only space the artists were asked to not alter as it has to stay untouched until moving day — in case the president needs to give an ad hoc political speech.

So now, a 36-centimeter (14-inch) tall sculpture of the president made of plaster stands on a pedestal in the center of the room under sweeping chandeliers and framed by light-blue silk curtains. It will keep that position until the real Steinmeier, whose role is largely ceremonial, either needs to give a speech or officially opens the president’s interim residency near Berlin’s central train station.

The overall move, which has already started, is expected to be finished by the end of the summer.

Before visitors finish their art tour, they pass through the former lobby, where film screenings, dance and music performances and readings will take place. They will also be able to meet with the artists.

NEW YORK (AP) — The most infectiously joyous of awards shows, the Tonys often feel like a summer camp reunion — make that a theater camp reunion — except with tuxedoes and gowns replacing the shorts and tees.

That was certainly the vibe on Sunday night, where the crowd delighted in familiar Broadway heroes finally winning their Tonys, and where the biggest award went to a Broadway musical that celebrates, well, Broadway musicals: “Schmigadoon!”

There were reunions within the reunion, too. For example, the original cast of “The Book of Mormon,” including Josh Gad, Nikki M. James and Andrew Rannells, was on hand to perform a number marking the show’s 15th anniversary — a definite highlight of the night, especially seeing Gad move to the song “Man Up.”

As for the acceptance speeches, many moms and dads and spouses and kids were thanked, of course. But one winner refreshingly thanked all the babysitters that made their career possible.

Some highlights of the night:

Pink sure got that party started

In the show’s first bit, new host Pink, who has not performed on Broadway, pretended she didn’t know what she was doing, and dangled uncomfortably from a wire, trying to be Peter Pan. Then Neil Patrick Harris, who’s hosted multiple times, came out and told her she just needed to be herself: “You’re Pink! You can do anything,”

Of course he was right. The consensus was that Pink killed it, starting with the opening number, where she led an enormous ensemble of some 170 Broadway performers in a version of “Lady Marmalade” that was a love letter to this season’s shows, with current casts performing onstage and lots of actors name-checked in the audience, too. As in: “Gitchie Gitchie Lesley Manville, Gitchie Gitchie Carrie Coon.”

The number was written by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (the duo behind “Dear Evan Hansen” and “The Greatest Showman”) and Mark Sonnenblick (who co-wrote “Golden” in “Kpop Demon Hunters”), and the reaction in the theater was ecstatic.

Thank you for … canceling us?

This was a new kind of thank-you. When “Schmigadoon!” won best musical, producer (and “Saturday Night Live” creator) Lorne Michaels spoke first, saying “Sometimes singing, dancing, jokes and a happy ending are all you need.”

Then producer Christine Schwarzman spoke and thanked Apple TV for canceling the third season of the TV show it was adapted from.

“Without them dropping it, we couldn’t have picked it up and ran with it. So, thanks Apple TV,” she said, to laughs.

A voice teacher gets a deserved thank-you

There was no award that had the audience cheering louder and longer than when Joshua Henry finally won a Tony, after four nominations during a stellar Broadway career.

Henry won best actor in a musical for his career-topping turn as Coalhouse Walker Jr., a Black pianist who suffers the horrors of racism in the current revival of “Ragtime,” an adaptation of E.L. Doctorow’s novel.

In addition to his wife and kids, Henry thanked his first voice teacher, which got huge applause from the crowd. He also thanked Audra McDonald and Brian Stokes Mitchell, legendary Broadway actors who preceded him in the 1998 run of “Ragtime.”

Babysitters deserve gratitude, too

Henry’s “Ragtime” co-star, Caissie Levy, was waiting for him for a long hug backstage. Levy, who was the original Elsa in the Broadway version of “Frozen,” had just won her own first Tony, for leading actress in a musical. In her own speech, Levy thanked a lot of people, but one unusual shoutout was to her family’s babysitters: “Thank you to … every babysitter who’s made it possible for me to be both a Broadway actor and a mother.”

Levy, a mother of two, plays the character called Mother.

A play about history makes some of its own

The winner for best play, “Liberation” by Bess Wohl, toggles between the present time and the ’70s, exploring the roots of second-wave feminism through a consciousness-raising group that meets in an Ohio gym.

But it was a different kind of history that playwright Wohl addressed in her acceptance speech — the fact that she was the first American woman to win the category since Wendy Wasserstein won for “The Heidi Chronicles” in 1989.

She told women and girls who were listening; “May you speak your truth and may the world be wise enough to listen.”

“Liberation” also won the Pulitzer Prize this year.

If anyone can make ‘Oedipus’ funny, it’s Cole Escola

There is literally not one single thing that is funny about the story of Oedipus, the Sophocles classic tragedy with a shocking ending.

But Cole Escola, the mastermind behind the hit comedy “Oh Mary,” found a way. Presenting along with Maya Rudolph, who is now playing Mary Todd Lincoln in Escola’s play, the writer-actor noted of Oedipus:

“(It’s) a play that asks the question: Can women really have it all?”

If you don’t get the reference, ask Manville. The veteran British actor won for leading actress in a play for her devastating turn as Jocasta in Robert Icke’s modern retelling of the tragedy — her Broadway debut. As she noted in her own speech, she plays Oedipus’ wife and, also, it turns out, his mother.

To which someone in the audience called out: “Spoiler!”

This is New York. They support the Knicks

When actor John Leguizamo introduced a segment on the show, he couldn’t resist ending his remarks with “Knicks in four!”

The crowd at Radio City Music Hall gave a huge cheer. You thought they were going to root for the other guys?

The Knicks lead the San Antonio Spurs by 2-0 in the NBA Finals.

Learning some moves during commercial breaks

The audience at Radio City Music Hall doesn’t just sit there in silence when the Tony telecast goes to commercials. There’s usually something happening, and this time, there were opportunities to learn some moves.

During one break, the audience was instructed on how to use the paper fans that many found under their seats, meant for the number featuring “Cats: The Jellicle Ball,” which reimagines the 1980s feline musical as a celebration of queer ballroom culture.

And during another break, the crowd was shown how to dance to the upcoming “Time Warp” number from “The Rocky Horror Show.”

Raised in the rural Montana community of Big Sandy, Jeff Ament got hooked as a teenager on skateboarding at a time when not much more than only a handful of ramps were available in the state.

Ament’s first love was a “terrible” clay wheel skateboard and his passion blossomed on a family trip to California, where he skateboarded and felt the g-forces on urethane wheels on paved asphalt streets and then poured through the pages of Skateboarder magazine on the 20-hour drive home to Montana.

Ament found pictures of decks and ramps that he used as inspiration for designs that his dad, George, would help him build — like how to craft a kick tail and create the perfect tail radius — and took his skateboard to compete in larger contests around the state.

“I think the idea that he was helping me build something was the most important thing to him,” Ament said. “He gave me a life skill.”

Ament’s other major life skill, as bassist for the Pearl Jam band he co-founded, also has served him well and provided him with the means to help fund the creation of world-class skateboard parks in Montana. Many are in small, isolated communities, including at least one on every state Native American reservation by the end of the year. Construction starts in two weeks for one on the last reservation on the list, Northern Cheyenne.

“I think a lot of people don’t understand artists,” Ament said on a Zoom with The Associated Press. “I think skateboarding is probably even more of an art than it is a sport.”

Ament has found the parks can help kids survive and thrive outside of daily isolation, a message spread in the short documentary “Paving the Way.” Ament created original music for the film — which captures skateboarding’s power to foster creativity, challenge stereotypes and build community, spotlighting Indigenous youth on the Flathead Reservation — that premiers Sunday at the Tribeca Festival in New York.

The film tells the story through skater and artist Alishon Kelly, who perseveres with her love of skateboarding even with a broken foot. “Paving the Way” is directed by Keelan Williams and was nominated for the Big Sky Award at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival.

“I think what he captures really well is just, when you have that thing inside of you, you just feel the need to be created,” Ament said. “I think it explains it really well, how cathartic it can be, how it helps you understand other aspects of your life.”

At the film’s backbone is a partnership between Jeff’s Montana Pool Service — a nod to the large bowl at the center of a skate park — and the Confederated Salish & Kootenai Tribes, as five new skateparks rise across the Flathead Reservation.

“We’re reminding people of our first peoples,” Ament said. “I think most people in this country have no idea that they even exist. I think there’s even been certain people in our government that are trying to kind of rewrite history, erase history. You even hear young people, say, younger people than me, talk about the Native people as if they’re immigrants.”

The 63-year-old Ament delivered the commencement speech at MSU-Northern in Montana last month and touched on the importance for the graduates to be being open to getting out and seeing the world, even if they come from areas that can seem disconnected from their rural hometowns. He met with some of the students after the ceremony and found the experience “gave me hope. I think sometimes I don’t always see the best of the younger generation. They’re almost to a person, so gung-ho about getting out, getting after it.”

There also are plans in the works to get “Paving the Way” out in the world — Ament hoped for distribution beyond Tribeca, where Pearl Jam singer Eddie Vedder was the focus of a film in the festival last year — now available on YouTube or PBS — but wanted to make sure the film is somehow available to those in Indigenous communities and to show them the hope, resilience and joy that can be found at the skateboarding parks.

“These parks are where we come together and where we look out for each other,” said Terrence Lozeau, a skater featured in the film. “You see little kids watching the older ones and learning.”

As for Ament’s day job, Pearl Jam returns in September to headline the Ohana festival in Dana Point, California, in its first performance since drummer Matt Cameron left the band in May after 27 years. The band has kept the identity of his replacement under wraps and will make it official at the Sept. 27 festival.

“I think the big question is, if it’s going to work out that this is our future drummer,” Ament told the AP. “It’ll be the first show, so there’s a little bit of a trial happening. It’s exciting. It’s taken a little bit longer than we thought it would take. We’re not in any massive rush either.”

Ament said the band has started writing new songs but would like to play a few dates with the new drummer before Pearl Jam hits the studio again next year.

“I think we need to get out and play like 10, 15 shows with whoever our drummer is and just kind of get that part going before we make a record,” Ament said.

ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE (AP) — Pope Leo XIV ackowledged Saturday he is competing for attention with another VIP in Madrid this weekend, and the pontiff declared his preference in Spain’s biggest soccer rivalry.

Puerto Rican sensation Bad Bunny is performing two shows of his 10-concert Spanish tour in the capital.

Speaking to reporters aboard the papal plane before his arrival in Madrid on Saturday morning, Leo acknowledged the appeal of Bad Bunny when he referred to anecdotal reports of a newfound spiritual awakening, especially among young people in Spain.

The American pope said he understood that young adults are sensing a lack of meaning in their lives and mused that his visit might help “awaken” something in them.

“If they are confronted with the question ‘Do you want to go see Bad Bunny or do you want to go to see the pope?’ I think many will see Bad Bunny,” Leo said. “But I think there will also be a few here to see the pope. And that says something, you know.”

He’s wasn’t wrong: About 500,000 people, many of them young Spaniards, poured into a Madrid plaza for an evening prayer vigil on Saturday. They shouted “This is the youth of the pope!” as Leo zoomed around in his popemobile, and then jammed to a Spanish rendition of the 1970s American musical “Godspell.”

Leo is opening a weeklong visit to Spain on Saturday. After Madrid, the trip will also take him to Barcelona and the Canary Islands. He’s hoping to bring a message of unity in a country polarized with political and church scandals.

Leo was also asked about news that plans are moving ahead for his beloved Chicago Bears to move to Hammond, Indiana. The board of the team voted this week to move forward with a stadium development project in Hammond.

Asked if he had any words of consolation for Illinois, the Chicago-born pope quipped: “That’s out of my pay (scale).”

In other sporting comments, Leo confirmed that he would root for the United States in the upcoming World Cup, and showed his true team colors when asked about whether supports Real Madrid or the Barcelona soccer team: “That’s easy,” he said. “The pope is for all teams, but Prevost is Real Madrid,” he said, referring to his birth name.

Pope recalls his father’s service on D-Day anniversary

Leo fielded a host of questions as he greeted journalists traveling with him. He spoke about Ukraine and Lebanon and his recent proclamation that the Catholic Church’s “just war” doctrine — which establishes the criteria when war can be morally justified — was “outdated.”

With Saturday marking the 82nd anniversary of the D-Day landings on June 6, 1944, Leo also told a French journalist that he would like one day to visit Normandy, France, as pope.

“My father was there,” he said.

It was a reference to Leo’s father, Louis Prevost, who served in the U.S. Navy during World War II and participated in the D-Day landings at Normandy as part of Operation Overlord, according to the Pentagon.

Prevost also commanded an infantry landing craft, and after 15 months overseas, attained the rank of lieutenant junior grade, according to a note on the Pentagon website published soon after Leo’s election.

After the war, Prevost became a teacher and school principal in Chicago, got married and he and his wife, Mildred, had three boys. The future pope, Robert Prevost, was the youngest, born on Sept. 14, 1955.

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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

King Charles III and his wife Queen Camilla were among senior members of Britain’s royal family who donned elegant hats, tailcoats and dresses to attend the wedding of Charles’ nephew Peter Phillips on Saturday.

Phillips, the son of Charles’ sister Princess Anne, wed Harriet Sperling, a nurse working for the National Health Service, in a church ceremony in the southwestern English village of Kemble.

They were joined by more than 100 guests including Prince William, Princess Catherine, Princesses Eugenie and Beatrice and other royals.

The bride wore a high-neck lace gown designed by Emilia Wickstead.

Phillips, 48, is the son Anne and her first husband Mark Phillips. He is the late Queen Elizabeth II’s eldest grandson, and William and Prince Harry’s first cousin.

Phillips split from his first wife Autumn Kelly, with whom he has two children. His engagement to Sperling was announced last year.

Well-wishers cheered when the bride and royals arrived, and after the ceremony guests held umbrellas in heavy rain to throw rose petals over the couple as they left the church.