Talkin’ Broadway: Fiddler On The Roof (Jan 21, 2024) Study Guide.
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Fiddler on The Roof (Jan 21, 2024)
Study Guide:
Talkin’ Broadway - Fiddler on the Roof!
January 21, 2024 | 2-4pm
West Bloomfield Library
4600 Walnut Lake Rd,
West Bloomfield Township, MI 48323
Co-Hosts:
Liz Lombard is an acclaimed singer, actor, improv artist, and pediatric occupational therapist. Her career in musicals led her to earn her master's degrees in occupational therapy, specializing in sensory processing and pediatrics. She founded The Sensory Concierge to support neurodiverse families as they step outside their daily routines to attend concerts, shows, and other special events. Favorite roles include Miss Clavel in national tour of Madeline and the Bad Hat, May in Age of Innocence, Merry-Go-Round, Hope in the Fringe Festival’s Storytime with Mr. Butterman, and Tracy Partridge in the Fringe Festival’s The Bardy Bunch. She can be found most evenings performing a variety of show tunes for her 3-year old twins, while her husband dances along (quite well!).
Special Guest:
Ruthy Froch (Most recent Hodel in Fiddler Nat’l Tour). Potentially more members from the cast of Gateway Playhouse on Long Island’s production of Fiddler, currently in rehearsals.
Numbers Featured:
“If I Were a Rich Man,” “Now I Have Everything” Perchik and Hodel, “Far From the Home I Love” Hodel
Fiddler on the Roof is a musical with music by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, and book by Joseph Stein, set in the Pale of Settlement of Imperial Russia in or around 1905. It is based on Tevye and his Daughters (or Tevye the Dairyman) and other tales by Sholem Aleichem.
The story centers on Tevye, a milkman in the village of Anatevka, who attempts to maintain his Jewish religious and cultural traditions as outside influences encroach upon his family's lives. He must cope with the strong-willed actions of his three older daughters who wish to marry for love; their choices of husbands are successively less palatable for Tevye. An edict of the tsar eventually evicts the Jews from their village.
IMPACT:
Fiddler brought ethnicity to the forefront through the setting of Anatevka. It created a distinctly un-American Jewish world on stage without including any cultural bridge characters for the American theatre and movie audiences [8]. Flower Drum Song, released in a similar time period, had a very different message about ethnicity, identity and assimilation. Whereas Anatevka presents the security of Jewish identity and tradition, Flower Drum Song is the story of assimilation into America by shedding part of their Chinese identity and tradition.
Fiddler on the Roof was a trailblazer that charted the course for future musicals to enter into the “community, culture and values of that seemingly foreign world of the ‘other'”[8] whether that be an ethnic group or another seemingly foreign community with a shared identity
Major Awards - Tony Award for Best Musical (Won), Best Book (Joseph Stein – Won), Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical (Zero Mostel – Won), Best Performance by a featured actress in a musical (Maria Karnilova – Won), Best Producer (Harold Prince – Won), Best Director and Choreography (Jerome Robbins – Won), Special Tony Award for Longest Running Musical in Broadway History (Won)
Synopsis:
As the play begins, Tevye, a Jewish milkman, tells of the customs in the little Russian town of Anatevka. It is 1905, and life here is as precarious as a fiddler on the roof, yet, through their traditions, the villagers endure.
At Tevye’s house, his wife, Golde, and their five daughters prepare for Sabbath dinner when Yente, the town’s matchmaker, arrives. She tells Golde she has a possible match for Tzeitel, their eldest daughter. The girls speculate about whom they will marry someday, but Tzeitel says they must take whomever Yente arranges for them. Ironically, she has already secretly pledged her love to Motel Kamzoil, a tailor, who has yet to find the courage to ask Tevye for her hand.
As Tevye makes his deliveries around town, he prays, asking what harm there would be if he were a rich man. He meets and takes a liking to Perchik, a student from Kiev, and offers to hire him as a tutor for his two youngest daughters.
When Tevye returns home, Golde informs him that he is to meet Lazar Wolf, a wealthy butcher who is Tevye’s age, following the Sabbath meal to discuss a proposal. Tevye believes Lazar Wolf wants to buy his milk cow, but soon discovers the proposal is that of marriage to Tzeitel. Though Tevye is not very fond of Lazar Wolf, he agrees knowing that his daughter will never starve. They celebrate with others from the village at the local tavern. On his way home, the Russian constable stops Tevye and warns him of an upcoming “demonstration.”
The following day, Tzeitel and Motel plead with Tevye to rethink her marriage arrangement to Lazar Wolf, and to consider Motel instead. Tevye eventually agrees but how to break this news to Golde? He creates a story where Golde’s grandmother and Lazar Wolf’s late wife, Fruma-Sarah, appear to him in a dream and threaten to curse Tzeitel if she marries Lazar Wolf. Golde believes this is a sign and agrees to the match. Tzeitel and Motel are married in a traditional Jewish wedding ceremony, which is unfortunately disrupted by the constable’s “demonstration.”
Meanwhile, Tevya’s second daughter, Hodel, has fallen in love with Perchik. They break tradition by telling Tevya they love each other and will be married, asking only for his blessing and not his permission. This causes Tevya and Golde to contemplate their own marriage and love for each other after twenty-five years.
Perchik promises to send for Hodel and leaves for Kiev to work for the revolution. He is arrested and sent to prison in Siberia. Hodel decides she must go to him, a decision that her father eventually supports.
Weeks pass, and Tevya’s third daughter, Chava has fallen in love with a Russian villager named Fyedka. She pleads with her father to be allowed to marry him; but marrying outside the Jewish faith is unacceptable to him, and he forbids her to see him again. The next day, Chava and Fyedka secretly elope, and Chava is disowned by her family.
The trouble continues as the Russian constable tells all the Jewish villagers they must pack up and leave Anatevka within three days. Everyone prepares to leave as they reminisce about their miserable little town that so many have called home for so long. Chava and Fyedka come to say goodbye and make peace. Tevye refuses to look at her, but has Tzeitel wish her well before they all depart, the fiddler playing as they exit.
Further reading;
A documentary film about the musical's history and legacy, Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles, was released in 2019
NPR: Yiddish 'Fiddler On The Roof' is a dream come true for its lead actor
Fiddler’s Impact