Coalhouse Walker Jr. - real person?
Coalhouse Walker Jr. - real person?
#0Coalhouse Walker Jr. - real person?
Posted: 3/10/05 at 8:44pm
Hey everyone. I just got cast as Father in "Ragtime" at the Timber Lake Playhouse in Illinois. My first professional job! Whoohoo! It's one of four shows I'm doing with them this summer.
Anyway, having seen "Ragtime" on Broadway years ago, I think I remember reading that Coalhouse Walker Jr. really was a real person, or was at least loosely based on one. Is this true? I think I should know if I'm going to be doing the show...Thanks.
#1re: Coalhouse Walker Jr. - real person?
Posted: 3/10/05 at 8:47pmi dont believe so
"Picture "The View," with the wisecracking, sympathetic sweethearts of that ABC television show replaced by a panel of embittered, suffering or enraged Arab women" -the Times review of Black Eyed
broadwaystar2b
Broadway Legend Joined: 3/28/04
#3re: Coalhouse Walker Jr. - real person?
Posted: 3/10/05 at 9:29pm
hey we read this in english just last month so i know a little about it lol. Coalhouse is fictional HOWEVER, he is loosly based on Scott Joplin (jazz composer). Some of the similarities include where they come from (St. Louis i believe), the time in which they came to New York, and perhaps the most interesting was that Joplin wrote an opera called TREEMONISHA. In this opera, a black baby is found under a tree (just like in the novel/musical). This baby eventually becomes a black culture icon (i forget the whole synopsis). This is not unlike Coalhouses Son in the NOVEL. Tateh uses his son in his motion pictures in a movie about a white kid and a black kid who become friends and rise above racism (or something to that nature).
haha so longwinded..... sorry.
In conclusion, he is fictional but loosely based upon Joplin
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kjklo
Broadway Legend Joined: 7/29/03
#4re: Coalhouse Walker Jr. - real person?
Posted: 3/10/05 at 9:43pmThe character was also conceptually related to the title character of Heinrich von Kleist's 19th century German novella "Michael Kohlhaas." You can easily find more information about this work in libraries or on the internet.
#5re: Coalhouse Walker Jr. - real person?
Posted: 3/10/05 at 9:44pm
HOLD UP
When I was in NYC 1.25, we were in some subway place across from tthe Carnegie Hal ltheatre, and there were names of the people would had performed there or who had appeared there...and I could have SWORN they had Coulhouse Walker up there........
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