In a corner of the stage, two girls are teaching another a patty cake-adjacent hand game. Near center, a group of boys are working out the finer points of a choreographed dance, and behind them a group of older, bearded (or, at least convincingly-prosthetically-bearded) men are laughing to each other.
The scene is moments before the start of a Tuesday dress rehearsal for Springfield Little Theatre's production of Fiddler on the Roof, which opened Friday. The musical follows Tevye (played by Todd Smith), a poor milkman who tries to instill his daughters with traditional values in a small Jewish village on the fringes of Czarist Russia.
In charge of the music is Michael Brill, who’s conducted in a tour of Fiddler. Directing the show is Jack Laufer, a working actor who’s appeared in shows like Mad Men and Masters of Sex. He splits his time between Los Angeles and Springfield, and got involved in the production after running into Little Theatre's business manager at Costco.
“This is a story about real people. People who the author Sholem Aleichem, who wrote the Tevye stories, knew,” said Laufer.
Fiddler on the Roof runs through September twenty-fourth. Tickets and information on Springfield Little Theatre's website.