On Jan. 24-26 students will put on a production of “Fiddler on the Roof.” Directors needed to find people who could take on a role and interpret it through song and dance as well as acting. Choral director Dwayne Dunn explains what makes a good performer and what they are looking for in lead roles.

Q: How have you liked your first few months teaching at LHS?
A: “It’s been good. It’s been very busy. Students are very hard-working. I think that it’s going to go well.”
Q: What is your prior experience with directing musicals?
A: “Well, I’ve been involved with musical since high school myself. I have been involved as music director, as conductor, as a performer and as an accompanist. I have probably about 50 shows under my belt.”
Q: What are you most excited about coming up to Fiddler on the Roof?
A: “Well, Fiddler on the Roof is a great show. It has wonderful music. It has a lot of parts to feature a lot of different students. It has an interesting story and history lesson that’s part of it, and I think it’s one of those shows that in addition to providing an opportunity for students to perform, it kind of gives them a mini history lesson about that particular time.”
Q: What sort of things did you see in auditions from actors?
A: “Well they have to go through three parts of the audition. They sing a song, then they have to do a monologue from the script and then a dance audition and some movement. So we are looking for the combination of those three things. That needs to be strong. Some kids are a little better singers, some a little better actors.”
Q: What characteristics make for a good actor in a musical?
A: “It has to be somebody that can make us believe their that character. We don’t want to see a Lawrence High School student pretending to be someone else, we want to see the character from the show. And so they have to start thinking about the obstacles that this character has to overcome, what are the emotions that they may feel in this situation, and then how can they express those things in their facial expressions, in their body language, in the way they use their voice, all of those things.”
Q: In this particular play, how big of a role does music play among other aspects?
A:“It’s pretty big. You know a lot of the main character, we hear his thoughts. He has a lot of conversations with himself. He is trying to figure out how important it is to hold up the tradition of the past versus changing to accommodate things that are going on now. He does this a lot through music. He has these musical moments where he is thinking through his thought process. We hear his thought process, but it is all done through music.”
Q: What do you think will be some of the bigger challenges when preparing the music for the production?
A: “There are a lot of people involved, so we have a lot of schedules involved in trying to get everybody together to work and accomplish things. That will be challenging. We’ll have challenges with our stage. It’s not quite as big as it needs to be for the size cast the we have, so everyone has to figure out how not run over each other, to not bump into each other out there.”
Q: What is the difference between this play here at LHS and other productions that you have worked on?
A: “I came here from a school where music theater and the theater department was much bigger and did a lot more productions. Here there is a musical every other year, whereas there we did a big school musical every year, plus we had a music theater class that did other productions during the year, and so, it’s different here, because there’s not as many students involved in the theater program. We have a lot of first-timers, so this will be their very first show.”
Q: Do you have any predictions based on anything you have seen so far — at auditions or in class — that would tell you how the production will go?
A: “We have very good singers, so I think the music part will hold up very well. I think we will have to see as we get into rehearsals how the acting and dancing parts will go. The students are all very willing and anxious to try and explore things. You can do a lot with people who are willing to work at it. So I think they will be just fine.”