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<\/a>At the Tenth Avenue Arts Center through Oct. 12, you may hear Joplin rags played live and learn everything you always wanted to know in Robert Barry Fleming\u2019s reverential, meticulously researched bio-play with music, \u201cScott Joplin\u2019s New Rag: The Life and Times of the King of Ragtime Writers,\u201d produced by Mo`olelo Performing Arts Company. George Y\u00e9 directs the rag-rife work in which Fleming plays all the parts, dances, raps and tickles the ivories.<\/p>\nThe production, set amid a jumble of piano parts, a spinet and musical scores, is enhanced by historic projections as well as chapter headings invented by Fleming to give the feeling of watching a silent movie, though this production is anything but silent. Fleming dances, plays the piano and raps in a kind of rhyming, metrical Victorian poetry, some of it written by the composer and some written, one presumes, by Fleming, perhaps to show how close to rap Joplin really was.<\/p>\n Born into a family of musical laborers in the years immediately following the Civil War, Joplin received piano and music theory lessons from a German Jewish immigrant in Texarkana, where he was raised. He found a publisher in Vidalia, Missouri that began publishing his ragtime compositions, most famous of which were \u201cMaple Leaf Rag\u201d and \u201cThe Entertainer.\u201d The lost opera, \u201cA Guest of Honor,\u201d concerned President Teddy Roosevelt\u2019s White House dinner invitation to Booker T. Washington. During a tour, the road manager absconded with the profits, and all Joplin\u2019s goods were confiscated, including the opera\u2019s score (some historians dispute this).<\/p>\n The second opera, \u201cTreemonisha,\u201d concerns the education of a slave girl and was performed only in fragments during Joplin\u2019s life. Bits and pieces were discovered and assembled much later, and the opera was eventually mounted at Wolf Trap in 1972, at Houston Grand Opera in 1975, and briefly on Broadway. It was recorded and televised in 1985.<\/p>\n Though his ragtime music was bright and upbeat, Joplin\u2019s life was not. He buried an infant girl, divorced, remarried and then buried his beloved wife of only two months. He struggled to find acceptance as a composer, battling prejudice and ultimately syphilitic dementia.<\/p>\n When Fleming\u2019s play begins, Joplin is deep in that dementia, during which he burned much of his music. Thus, the piece is unrelentingly tragic despite the bright and wondrously played music and the creative movement vocabulary devised by the playwright, who is supremely gifted. Would that he were able to depart from reality \u2014 the kind that has plagued many artists from time immemorial \u2014 and find a few lighter relationships and moments. Alas, they did not exist, and apparently that is not the show\u2019s purpose. Without a compass, African American composers still find it challenging to be accepted in the Euro-centric arts. Perhaps, had he lived long enough, Joplin would have made a breakthrough.<\/p>\n In addition to Fleming\u2019s stunning talent, David F. Weiner\u2019s set, Jason Bieber\u2019s lighting and Jeannie Galioto\u2019s costumes enhance \u201cScott Joplin\u2019s New Rag.\u201d Mo`olelo and sound designer Joe Huppert have yet to conquer the Tenth Avenue main stage\u2019s acoustical problems, but kudos to all for having the guts to present Fleming\u2019s important, earnest world premiere.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>