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Welcome to the Raggedy Ann Revival Effort homepage!
The Raggedy Ann Revival Effort (or R.A.R.E.) is an online volunteer effort dedicated to preserving, archiving, and eventually reviving the 1986 Broadway musical Raggedy Ann.
Our goal is to restore and revive the show by recovering and cleaning up the script, re-creating missing orchestrations for the music, and recovering any lost content we can find, so that hopefully we may one day put on the Raggedy Ann musical ourselves! We started in February of 2021 and operate mainly on Slack, with a central hub of organizers who archive and support the work done by the larger community.
Come explore our archives, learn a little about the show, and join us if you like! You can follow us on the social media listed to the right, or send us an email at theraggedyannrevivaleffort@gmail.com
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Thank you so much for joining us! Here's to a sucessful first workshop!
Top: Presley Ellison, Gwyneth Gaunt, Michael Mylen (Andy), Sarah Biernacki (Raggedy Ann) Hazel Hawlik, & Mckenah Rose
Bottom: Notion, Molly McHugh (Marcella)
RARE Theatricals proudly presented a staged reading of Rag Dolly: The Raggedy Ann Musical from February 6-8, 2025, in four sold-out performances at Ohio University’s School of Theater Lab Show Program. This historic event marked the first authorized performance of the musical since its original Broadway debut in 1986, and was part of our ongoing mission to revise and revive the show. We could not have anticipated a stronger audience reaction, and we are honored and humbled by the love and support shown by the cast, crew, and attendees of this production.
Photos:
All photos in this section provided by Sarah Comer. Please contact for use.
Laila Christian (Teddy), Katie Price (Baby), Michael Mylen (Andy), Sarah Biernacki (Raggedy Ann) & Molly McHugh (Marcella) in The Light
Atlas Nilsen, Dora Gehrum, Lucian Loyvé (Doctors) & Jaimon Lovins (Camel)
Cameron Hess (General D.), Jaimon Lovins (Camel), Laila Christian (Teddy), Katie Price (Baby), & Michael Mylen (Andy)
Molly McHugh (Marcella) & Emma Mayes (Mommy) in Shooting Star
Ella Langiotti (Bat), Cameron Hess (General D.), & Andrew Falkosky (Wolf)
Sarah Biernacki (Raggedy Ann) & Molly McHugh (Marcella) in Rag Dolly
Sarah Biernacki (Raggedy Ann) & Emma Mayes (Witch) in What Did I Lose/Somewhere
Molly McHugh (Marcella) & Alexzander Hanks (Poppa)
What's next?
Press, revisions, and more workshops!
For starters, we plan on releasing the proshot of the Ohio University staged reading in whatever capacity we are able to. This is still an ongoing discussion, but we are taking every opportunity we can to make our performance accessible to everyone. With evidence of a successful production and positive audience response, we hope to gain more traction and support for future workshops.
Revisions! Using what we've learned from seeing the work performed live, we can make educated choices on what needs to be changed about our script. Our sheet music is still in an early state, so future arrangements and the orchestrations will take up much of our energy between now and the next step-up.
Even with bigger plans on the horizon, our near future will be workshops of a similar scale: small, free staged readings produced through donations. Each different cast and audience teaches us more and more, and we want to make Rag Dolly the best it can be before asking for hundreds of thousands of dollars (not an exaggeration) to be put into the larger-scale production required to complete our licensing goal. Until we have confidence in our material, more experience under our belt, and the attention of industry supporters, we will continue to experiment on a workshop scale. We hope it will be less than a year before our next opportunity to perform, so stay tuned and sign up to our email to get updated!
