This Thursday evening, Theater Chair John Stefano will be taking the stage for the last show of his professional career. Stefano, the head of the Theatre and Dance department, is playing the lead role, Tevye, in this semester’s musical, Fiddler on the Roof. He will be retiring this summer after 47 years in the theater industry.
Of his career, he says that the thing he will miss the most is the students. He has been teaching since 1975 and his favorite part has been encouraging his students to make new discoveries every day.
“It’s just a joy, knowing that you helped them achieve some of their dreams,” he said.
The show itself is one that tackles the age-old question of tradition versus love. The main character, Tevye, is a man with five daughters. He needs to find a match for each of his three eldest daughters. He tries to make their matches as well as he can, all while following tradition, but his daughters only want to marry the men they have fallen in love with. Tevye is torn over the decision, and at first, he accepts his eldest daughter’s wishes. But when his daughter Chava wants to marry a man who is not Jewish, he will not accept it. He struggles throughout the entire show trying to decide how to deal with his daughters and their wants and his own beliefs.
On Tevye’s conflict over love and tradition, Stefano said, “When you can’t control the weather, and you can’t control your political environment, and you’re not free, the only thing you can rely on is tradition. That’s why Tevye and Golde and the others are so seemingly conservative, because they know in their bones of bones what breaking the traditions means, in terms of what it can do, how it can affect a whole community but also how it can affect their children.“
Natalie Szczerba, a junior musical theater major playing the part of Tevye’s daughter Hodel, however, said, “Change is really important, and it’s really important for the world to grow and if you’re always sticking with tradition, new ideas can’t be brought about, or new ideas will continually turned down if you’re not accepting new ideas, so in this case, love over tradition, then some of the things might not have happened.”
While the theater department did not initially choose Fiddler on the Roof as a way to feature Stefano, he has been enjoying his time working with the students involved.
“We chose to do it because we thought it would be really good for our students. But I’m happy to be doing it, and I’m having a great time, and I hope they are too,” he said.
Stefano’s plans for retirement included reading, traveling and visiting with grandchildren. He also plans to spend more time with his wife.
“I owe her a lot of years, and we’ve been married for 46 years as of this summer.”
The show opens this Thursday, April 7, at 7:30 p.m. There will be shows this Friday, April 8, and Saturday, April 9, at 8 p.m. and a matinee showing Sunday afternoon at 2 p.m. It will also be performed April 14-16 at 8 p.m.
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