Firmly and parentally clutching his tiny daughter's hand, Latvian immigrant Tatau arrives at Ellis Island believing he has reached a land where anyone can achieve prosperity. It is his fatherly mission to offer the diminutive, emaciated ragamuffin that is his little girl a better life in America. Having spent many-a-dangerous night sailing the lonely Atlantic on a flimsy raft, Tatau can barely contain himself when he arrives in New York, singing about his chance at Success, as the song in Ragtime, Broadway's epic turn-of-the-century musical, is appropriately titled.

Jericho resident Dara Paige Bloomfield makes a far less treacherous trip to New York twice a week, chauffeured via car by her father or mother to the Ford Center for the Performing Arts, where she plays The Little Girl in Ragtime's Wednesday and Saturday matinees. Her character may be nameless, but the Cantiague Elementary School fourth grader has certainly made a name for herself. And while Bloomfield never has to worry about going hungry, like Tatau's child does, being the alternate "Little Girl" in this critically-acclaimed, two-year-old show does satisfy her craving to perform.

"I wanted to be an actress since I was three years old," said Bloomfield. Around that age, she said, she would watch the cloying Olsen twins of Full House and think to herself, "I can do that any day...I said to my mom, 'I really want to do this,' and that's how this really got started."

Then, several years later, Bloomfield viewed the Broadway musical Cats , "and I said, 'I like that. I like what they're doing out there. So next week, I was singing around the house, and my dad...found something in my voice. So that's how I really started singing," said Bloomfield, whose amiable, precocious personality seems diametrically at odds with the mousy, quiet character she plays. With her mother, Debbie, a casting agent, and her aunt Gweneth also in show business, Bloomfield was always exposed to other children who were acting, and she wanted a part of that too.

And so she got it. With a dire need to find an alternate when Ragtime's regular "Little Girl" went on vacation, Ragtime producers and directors selected Bloomfield late in 1998 after merely two auditions; usually more are standard. Bloomfield later became the permanent alternate.

"Dara possesses an extraordinary combination of innocence and vulnerability, combined with mature sensibility," said Stafford Arima, resident director, who was partially responsible for casting Bloomfield.

Joining a show which already was running full-steam, Bloomfield, like all stage actors who enter a show mid-run, was not benefited with ample rehearsal time. She had two intensive weeks to pull everything together.

"When you looked at the rehearsal sheet, you kind of thought, wow!" recalled Bloomfield. And forget learning lines. Bloomfield spent her first week trying to memorize the names of the performers in Ragtime's giant cast. But soon, said the girl, "all the names started to click in, and when I see them now I know everyone's names."

She also had to quickly develop a close rapport with the man playing her father, John Rubenstein, an actor who found his "Corner of the Sky" playing Broadway's original Pippin. Fortunately, said Bloomfield, Rubenstein made her feel at ease.

"He is a really nice guy. He's one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet. Because it was my first Broadway show, he used to let me stay with him in his dressing room just before we'd go up [on stage]." In an odd coincidence, Bloomfield eventually discovered that Rubenstein knew her aunt, who works for the Schubert Organization in New York.

Aware that it was her first foray into stage performing, Rubenstein understood that Bloomfield's stomach was the perfect habitat for butterflies. He tried to net as many of those anxiety-producing insects as possible.

"This is Broadway, there's a history here. There's a reputation to uphold," said Rubenstein, describing the pressures of the Great White Way.

Bloomfield said that she had little trouble controlling her nerves, because she was confident in her lines. "I knew it from the beginning, I knew this whole entire part...And, like, I can do the whole entire show. So I knew what to do."

Even so, one would think there would be some jitters, considering that Bloomfield's opening performance was only the second time she ever set foot on the theater's actual stage, the only other time being a five-minute walk-through.

The epic story of Ragtime takes place in turn-of-the-century America, a time when the charm of life's innocent pleasures - the melodic, offbeat rhythm of popular ragtime music and flamboyant entertainers the likes of Evelyn Nesbit and Harry Houdini - sometimes obscured an era of underlying prejudice toward blacks and immigrants.

As the latter, the artist Tatau and the Little Girl, quickly learn the cold lesson that for many, America's streets are paved with poverty, not gold. And for a while, Tatau's dream of the good life sours when his business, drawing people's silhouettes, flounders.

It was a stark reality check from how the pair first envisioned American life, demonstrated as a chorus of immigrants in the Ellis Island scene sing the jovial number, A Schtetl Iz Amereke.

"It's Yiddish," explained Bloomfield, who was supplied with a translation sheet. "[It means], America is now our country; it's our home."

Though Bloomfield's character appears alongside Tatau in almost every scene in which Rubenstein appears, which is quite often, the Little Girl does not speak that much. Therefore, Bloomfield has to speak volumes with her expressions and gestures, a challenge she readily accepts.

"I really don't care if I don't have lines or not," said Bloomfield. Recently performing in her acting school's production of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, "I usually had to use my hands to communicate. Once I did that, I [figured I] can probably do this, which is standing up there and looking up at [Tatau's] face with different expressions.

"There has to be a presence, especially with a girl who doesn't have a lot of dialogue," said Arima.

When attending the Tony Awards last year, before her stage career, Bloomfield was among many in the Radio City Music Hall audience to view a clip from Ragtime. The segment left her puzzled. Bloomfield instead hoped that The Lion King would triumph as Best Musical, which it did.

Then after she was cast in Ragtime, she realized, "I rooted for the wrong team." After reading the entire script and viewing the show live, Bloomfield then understood what Ragtime was all about. It has now become one of her favorite shows, along with Les Miserables, the producers of which were ready to cast her as Young Cosette just after see had signed on to play the Little Girl.

At Bloomfield's opening performance, approximately 40 family members and friends were on hand to cheer her debut. Her mother says the show remains a favorite topic among the family, including Dara's two very patient and understanding sisters, Sam and Katarina.

Every Wednesday and Saturday since, audiences are applauding a beautiful young girl with no name.

And why, for that matter, no name? "They probably thought it was better that way, making it a mystery," said Bloomfield. But it's no mystery to Dara. She has a name that she picked out herself, as part of a character study exercise. She named the Little Girl Sadie, after her great-aunt's sister who emigrated to America.

Unlike those Olsen twins, Bloomfield may never have starred on Full House. So instead, she performs for a full house.