The play “Lewiston: A New Home,” written for the city’s bicentennial, received rave reviews when it opened in 1995. It even captured a New England theater award.

When a concert version of the show was performed locally in 2006, a man from Japan approached Paul Caron, the person who wrote the music and lyrics, afterward and said, “Thank you for telling my story.”

That caught Caron by surprise.

“We didn’t have a Japanese person in the cast,” Caron said. “We had Irish, French and Italian. It made me think and I realized that the story of immigration is more universal than just Lewiston.”

Inspired by that comment, Caron adapted the play and renamed it “A New Home,” dropping Lewiston from its initial title.

The updated version opens Thursday, Oct. 30, and continues for seven performances the next two weekends Thursday through Sunday (no show on Halloween) at Lewiston Middle School.

A Lewiston-Auburn Community Little Theatre production, the play was moved to the middle school to accommodate the 27 musicians and 31 actors on stage.

The original told the rich history of Lewiston and how the influx of immigrants shaped the city’s identity and culture.

The updated version includes the significant stories of the African immigrants who have settled in the city and the mass shooting two years ago.

“This could be about the city of Biddeford, the city of Waterville, any mill town,” Caron said. “They were all built by immigrants.”

Caron, 69, was born and raised in Lewiston and graduated from St. Dominic High School in 1974. He received his undergraduate degree from Lowell and his master’s and Ph.D from Boston College. He is a professor at the University of Southern Maine teaching Leadership and Organizational Studies and Statistical Methods.

Growing up in a musical family, Caron had a passion for music and worked with the local theater groups.

In 1995, he was asked by the writers of “Lewiston: A New Home”— residents Richard Martin, Michael Rosenthal and Lynne Geiger — to write music and lyrics for the bicentennial. A huge celebration that September weekend also featured Muhammad Ali, who returned to the Lewiston for a banquet, and Steve Perry performed a concert.

“The play was well received, beyond our expectations,” Caron said. “It won a New England award for best original play by a community theater. Then five years ago, I thought it was time to bring it back and focus on the characters rather than the city.”

He wrote four new songs for the adaptation, updated some of the lyrics and shortened a couple of others in order to modernize the production, which is about 2½ hours.

“When I was writing these songs, the mass shooting occurred,” Caron said. “We had to include that in our story. It’s part of our history.”

The song “One More Goodbye” is dedicated to the victims and the families. The 18 actors who sing that song will also perform sign language at the same time to honor the deaf community so impacted by the tragedy.

“I think that anybody that is grieving, whether it is a mass shooting or not, when we lose a loved one, we always ask for a little bit more time,” Caron said.

That the updated production is being performed for the first time so close to the anniversary of the shooting is merely a coincidence, Caron said. The play about Lewiston’s history is chronological, which Caron began adapting three years before the mass shooting. The song about Oct. 25 is the 18th of 19 songs in the play.

The final song, “Lewiston In Me,” is the only time the city of Lewiston is mentioned in the play, even though certain street names will be recognizable. The song was declared the city’s anthem in 1996 by Lewiston Mayor John Jenkins.

Actors Roger Philippon and Paul Lemay are the only performers returning from the 1995 production, as well as three members of the orchestra.

Caron hopes someone takes the helm in 20 to 30 years and updates “A New Home” again.

“No matter what city or town you come from, there’s a sense of pride for what people have created for us, our ancestors and what we can create for future generations,” Caron said. “We take our communities for granted sometimes. Every city or town has its bumps and bruises, its tragedies. But we are resilient. “