After such a long hiatus from theatre, I couldn’t wait to get back into it with Our Miss Brooks, but what I really wanted to do was another musical. My mom also wanted to do a musical and she had decided to audition for Fiddler on the Roof at Westminster Community Playhouse. Unpopular opinion: I’m not a huge fan of the show. I don’t hate it, but it’s far from one of my favorites; however, I really wanted to do another show with my mom so I figured I’d go audition too.

Naturally, wanting to do a musical, I really wanted to sing. I wanted to play either Hodel, so I could sing, or Chava, for the really good acting scene. I’m a pretty good singer, but I’m a really strong actor so I tend to get the good acting parts, which is fine by me. However, I got neither of the parts I wanted and was cast as Tzeitel, the non-singing part. Since I really only auditioned to do a musical and work with my mom, I figured I’d just do it for the experience.

I wasn’t really surprised to be cast as the oldest daughter because I was so obviously the oldest girl auditioning for one of the daughters. The original girl cast as Hodel was 17, so that made sense, and I was certain that Emily (Chava) was 16 when I first saw her. Cue me feeling really old just as I was approaching yet another birthday.

The rehearsal process was challenging. We had no budget for the show so many cast members helped the director to make or alter costumes. With such a huge cast and various conflicts, we didn’t even have a full rehearsal with the entire cast until the Tuesday before we opened.

While the process was tedious and stressful, the final product was amazing. We received nothing but rave reviews about the performance and I hope we were all happy with the result. I feel particularly blessed because I made some truly amazing friends during this production and I want to keep them in my life forever. I also had the pleasure of working with some long-time friends who I had never had the opportunity to work with before.

Every experience has its ups and downs, including, but not limited to, a castmate who made many, including myself, uncomfortable and scared a few. I definitely learned a lesson about working with different types of people and how to work through situations that are entirely out of your control. Thankfully, I bonded right away with all the sisters and a few others so I had a wonderful support system backstage through it all.

Overall, it was a very special experience that I will always treasure. (Although, I’ll be perfectly happy to never have to listen to “Matchmaker” ever again.) Let me know about your most memorable theatre experience in the comments!