Of all the shows I’ve directed, Ragtime at Arts Express is one that has stayed with me most after closing night.

Set in the early 20th century, Ragtime weaves together the lives of a wealthy white family, a Harlem musician, and a Jewish immigrant. The sweeping musical explores race, class, and the American Dream against the backdrop of the ragtime era. It’s a period piece, but the questions it asks about society haven’t gone anywhere. Directing it meant sitting with how little distance there sometimes is between “then” and “now.”

One of the biggest challenges of the show was also one of its most meaningful parts of the process: casting it well. Ragtime calls for a number of African American artists to tell its story with the honesty it deserves. I leaned on relationships I’d built over years of church work in Tucson, and those connections made all the difference in bringing together a cast who could do this material justice.

Ragtime is musically demanding because the score carries so much of the show’s emotional weight. The cast has to meet the material with everything they’ve got and when it comes together, the audience not only experiences a moment in American history, but feels the reverberations of that moment in the present day.

That’s the kind of theater I love to direct: work that asks something of its performers and audience alike, and gives something back in return.