“Ragtime” crushed Brandon Uranowitz’s dream. Now his wounds are healing.

In 1997, Brandon Uranowitz was 10 years old from West Orange, New Jersey, and dreamed of being on Broadway. He got a little foot in the door that year when he replaced Paul Dano in the role of wide-eyed young boy Edgar in the musical “Ragtime” during its run. Premiere in Toronto.

A year later, “Ragtime” opened on Broadway, and the musical — about three families navigating turn-of-the-twentieth-century America and based on the 1975 El Doctoro novel — was mostly popular. Toronto teama strong roster that included Audra McDonald, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Peter Friedman, Maren Mazzei, and Lea Michele. But Oranovic was not chosen to make the move. (Alex Strange was cast in the role instead.)

Uranowitz, 38, said this disappointment remains an “open wound.”

“It was just, 'See you, thank you for coming,'” he added. “It felt incomplete.”

Starting Wednesday, Uranowitz hopes to finally close that open wound when “Ragtime” is revived, not on Broadway but at City Center, the home of Lear d’Ebussonnet’s new play. production Is to start the shows. Uranowitz, who returns to the show for the first time since his Toronto nomination, will play Tate, the Jewish immigrant father's protector, a role for which Friedman was nominated for a Tony Award.

The revival runs through November 10, and also stars Joshua Henry, Nichelle Lewis and Casey Levy as labor activist Emma Goldman, and Tony Award-winning composer Shayna Taub (“Suffs”).

During a recent rehearsal break at City Center, Uranowitz got emotional as he talked about revisiting “Ragtime” — which won four Tony Awards, including Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Aherns’ score and Terrence McNally’s book — and what the show and time have wrought. I taught him about Broadway acts and the need for self-care. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

What does your presence in “Rag Time” mean to you after all these years?

I feel a lot of things, mostly gratitude, mostly luck. I have a complicated relationship with this show. When I did, it represented the ultimate dream come true. In the end, it was the shattering of those dreams. He taught me at a young age what this business can do to someone, the highs and lows and the predictable mania it causes for actors at a really young age. I didn't talk about it until recently. I had a lot of shame around it.

Why?

I'm only now starting to unpack it. They were doing things physically to make me fit the role. They bleached my hair and eyebrows twice a week. There was this effort to hide my true identity behind this persona. The reasons I was demoted were, for lack of a better term, that I was either too Jewish or I wasn't good enough. Both choices are extremely shameful for a child, and for me even now as an actor.

I feel like that word gets thrown around a lot, but there was trauma associated with that experience that has followed me throughout my career. They offered me an alternative, something I found out later, but I think my parents felt like being demoted like that and not being on stage, it wasn't worth it to them. They told me you wouldn't go to Broadway, which I now realize was a smart parenting decision.

Do you have a memory of watching the show backstage as a kid?

I'll be off stage waiting for the audience, and I always see Audra coming to the wings stage left. She was bending over to prepare emotionally. She looked disheveled, with tears streaming down her face, and it felt so real and raw. I never forgot her.

When I was doing “Leopoldstat” I found myself, before the final act, sitting down and preparing myself for it. [Pause, as he begins to tear up.] It didn't occur to me for a while that I learned from it just by watching.

You are now in the starring role.

To be back in it now in a role that is so aligned with my identity after going through a very twisted journey around my Jewish identity, and finally getting to a place where I'm truly proud of it — that feels very cathartic.

How is healing done?

It's just that I knew on some universal level that I would return to it, especially since there was a role like Tate. I believe healing centers specifically around my Jewish identity. They were trying to physically remove my Jewishness. Furthermore, my family belonged to a conservative temple while I was growing up, and I was in the closet [about being gay]hiding that other part of my identity that didn't seem to align with my Jewish identity. I come to this now with pride.

Immigrant experiences and anti-Semitism are central through lines in “Ragtime.” They also continue to make headlines.

The gift of this show is that it is timeless. There are a lot of themes in it — police brutality, immigration — that are present now. We will do this during the election, which seems hot and volatile but absolutely necessary. I can't imagine doing anything else at this time.

The fact that Kamala Harris made it [unofficial] The tagline is “We'll never go back” and in the eleventh hour of this show there's a woman saying “We can never go back” – it just feels prescient.

What would your younger self think right now?

He says: It is better for you to hold on to it. [He pauses as tears fill his eyes.] I think he would be really proud. It's hard for me to be proud of myself often. This work is brutal. But I'm grateful I learned that at a young age. This show is very important to me. I don't think I realized how much I needed it.