On a regular boring Monday, an interesting display titled “Musical Madness” popped up on the Theater hallway bulletin board. While some may have been confused by the bracket a la March Madness, many loyal theater students knew what was coming. It’s time to reveal the 2024 Lafayette winter musical.

Being one of the only art-oriented schools in FCPS, Lafayette has a reputation for putting on glamorous theater shows that have always been hits. During the 2022-2023 school year, the Theater department has put on 3 shows, The Old Man and The Old Moon in the fall, Beauty and the Beast in the winter, and Newsies in the spring. They have also had smaller productions featuring Theater 3 and 4 classes, such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Trojan Women, and One Stoplight Town.

The board started with 32 potential shows for Lafyaette’s thespians to put on, ranging from cult classics to movie-inspired productions. Every Monday, shows were narrowed down from 16 to 8 to 4 to 2 to finally, the show we have all been waiting for. Mrs. Howard, Mr. Kent, Mrs. Kisling, and Mrs. Gorell convened to select the perfect production.

“There are a lot of different factors that go into choosing the show…what are we going to grow, what are we going to explore, what kinds of things do we think will be fun for the students to learn about and experience artistically…”, said Gorell.

The Final Four announced on May 1st consisted of Chicago, The Addams Family, Legally Blonde, and Fiddler on the Roof. The following Monday, The Addams Family and Fiddler on the Roof were announced as the final 2.

Gorell remarked, “It’s been a really, really hard decision for us as a team. There are all kinds of shows that have different pros and cons and we are really excited about what we landed on.”

On May 15th, 2023, the Theater department unveiled their winter musical for the 2023-2024 school year: Fiddler on the Roof.

Fiddler on the Roof is based on Sholom Aleichem’s book “Tevye and His Daughters”. It tells the tale of poor dairy farmer Tevye and his family who live in Anatevka, a small town in Russia where the Jewish and Russian populations live in a delicate balance. Both Anatevka and Tevye hold strong traditional values, but throughout the play, we see Teyve’s daughters go against tradition for their futures. Suddenly, the Tsar of Russia disrupts the townspeople’s life when he displaces the Jewish villagers. Fortunately, Teyve and his fellow villagers resist and fight to restart their lives somewhere new. Fiddler on the Roof is a commentary on oppressed communities all over the world, especially Jewish people facing anti-semitism in their daily lives, and gives strength to fight for justice.

“It’s gonna be great…It’s a show that we are very excited about and it’s going [to have] a lot of people involved,” added Gorell

Before Musical Madness began, students and staff were encouraged to submit their brackets showing who they thought would win. Every round, submitted brackets would accumulate points based on the number of correct answers. The number of correct points was then ranked to see who would win the most points. In the end, Mrs. Simonds won the highest amount of points for the staff and Millie Matthews for the students.

As with all previous productions, the theater department’s rendition of Fiddler on the Roof is sure to be a smashing success!