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As lively music begins to play, three clearly-separate groups enter the stage. They sing of an idealized past and the “distant thunder” of an all but certain future.

Performed by the choir Feb. 26 to March 1, “Ragtime” tells the story of three groups – the African-Americans, the upper-class white suburbanites and the Eastern European immigrants – in the early 20th century.

Senior Nick Harkness, who played the role of Father, said the discord of the time period plays a crucial role in the musical, which takes place in 1906.

“The civil war was only about 40 years before then, and Jim Crow laws and the whole thing was still very alive and well in the country,” Harkness said.

Harkness said the character Father is a man stuck in a world of change yet set in his own ways.

“Father is kind of like the stereotypical patriarch. He is very controlling and demanding of his family,” Harkness said. “Throughout all the show he’s just trying to deal with this change and connect with it and bring his family back to how they were before all this happened.”

One source of this change is Coalhouse Walker Jr., a man who seeks justice for the wronging he has endured, such as the murder of his lover. Senior Jesse Ziesel, who played Coalhouse, said his favorite part of the performance was seeing the change his character undergoes throughout the musical.

“My favorite part of the performance was probably seeing how different Coalhouse is in the first act compared to the second act, because he goes from being kind of sweet and longing for Sarah to being a crazed madman,” Ziesel said.

Sophomore Maddie Cook said she enjoyed the theatrical skill of the choir and the historical message within “Ragtime.”

“I really liked it,” Cook said. “It was really good acting. It dealt with issues that were relevant in the 1900s but that are also true today.”

The choir performance of “Ragtime” marked the end of more than three months of rehearsal, according to senior Rebecca Robbins, who played the role of anarchist Emma Goldman.

“We practiced in class and then we had rehearsals on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays,” Robbins said. “The week of the show we had rehearsal every day after school until eight at night.”