Il violinista sul tetto - Author's notes

The musical is a type of performing art born in the United States in the 20th century, in which many experiences of musical theatre and theatre with music from the old continent found an American synthesis. One genre which certainly made a great contribution is the Yiddish Theatre. It brought with it a crosso-over of styles, with no regard for the schematic separation of styles or the use of different expressive means together. Text, music, acting, singing, song-acting, gesture, dance and ritual all co-inhabit the stage of the Yiddish Theatre, with the anarchy of equal dignity.

"Fiddler on the Roof" is one of Broadway's most famous musicals, its numerous and varied stagings are beyond counting, most of them intending to take advantage of an enormous success through its commercial circulation. Our production would like to propose a different perspective: to take the most representative story from Eastern-European culture, that of Tevye the milkman, born from the brilliant pen of Sholem Aleichem and on which the musical is based, and relocate it in its original context. The songs and text are preserved in their entirety, but they are sung in Yiddish instead of English, and the ideas and structure of the Direction are inspired by the stylistic example of Yiddish Theatre.

Particularly, the construction of the scenic writing is developed along the lines of certain theatrical poetics which we have been experimenting for some years now. At the heart of these poetics we have the presence of musicians on stage, with dramatic and actoral functions. These Actor/Musicians constitute a sort of people-chorus, which interacts with the actual theatrical characters, both as a group (a choral character) and as an individual counterpoint to them, in a constant circle of presences and emotions. Within the context of the musical, this small chorus of Actor/Musicians will weave its own scenic movements in the form of little dances and improvisations, together with that of the professional dancers, creating choreographic forms which are paradoxical, even grotesque. All this, at the service of one of the most significant show events of the second half of the 20th century.

Moni Ovadia