Anatevka

I choreograph high school musicals. I have had the honor to do Fiddler on the Roof three times.

Fiddler has this amazing arc, where the first act is nearly all comic, and then the soldiers break up the wedding at the end, and the second act is progressively darker and darker. It’s a giant ocean liner of a musical, and somehow the cast has to get the audience to change course, stop laughing and start feeling their hearts break. Somehow, the kids in the cast need to get the kids in the audience, many of whom aren’t used to shows that change in mood, to sober up.

The song where the ocean liner really, finally, has to make the turn is Anatevka. When we’re close to opening night, I give a little talk:

At the beginning, in Tradition, Tevye talked about Anatevka, where everybody knows who he is and what God expects him to do. It’s like being in a play, really, where you know who you are, and what the director, and the choreographer, and all of the cast members, expect you to do.

This is about how you feel when that ends. It’s not about some people in Russia at the turn of the twentieth century who had to move away from their homes. It’s about you. You have been in rehearsal for six weeks. You know who you are, and what you are expected to do. You know that the entire show falls apart if one of you misses a rehearsal, or a cue. You know you are important. You know you are valuable, and valued. You know who your friends are, and you see them every day. But in SIX DAYS, it will be closing night, and we will NEVER, EVER be together as a group again. Never. Our community will scatter. We will be lonely. We will miss rehearsing, we will not know what to do with ourselves, and homework and laundry will not fill that hole in our hearts. Our community will be DESTROYED, forever.

About this time, the most sleep-deprived girls usually begin to weep. And by opening night, everybody gets pretty misty singing Anatevka. And the audience comes along.

My former company was sold today. Those friends of mine who hadn’t already been laid off will all be unemployed in 60 days, some a little later than that. I have been back only twice, to pick up a couple of packages. Granted, I am grateful not to have worked there this last agonizing year, not to have had to shut it down myself. But there was, until today, a place where a fair number of people I care about congregated. There will no longer be such a place. I will continue to be in touch with the individuals I am fondest of, but the community will no longer exist.

This diaspora happened at the end of college. It happens all the time. I'm a person who puts down deep roots. The breakup of a community makes me grieve.