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Orlando Sentinel News

(K. SHANE WAGES/WEKIVA RIVER PLAYERS)
By Jill Duff-Hoppes | Special to the Sentinel Posted October 7, 2004 SANFORD --

When the Wekiva River Players community theater group opens its 2004-05 season Friday, it will do so at a new venue.

The group will present the popular musical /Fiddler on the Roof/ at Millennium Middle School in Sanford. For the past four years, the group has performed at the Helen Stairs Theatre in Sanford.

However, they left that venue this summer, after the theater stopped negotiating special lease deals with local performing-arts groups. The theater's policy change meant a marked increase in rental fees for Wekiva River Players.

K. Shane Wages, director of /Fiddler/, describes Millennium Middle School's auditorium as a beautiful, state-of-the-art facility with amazing acoustics.

The venue seats about 500 people and has a bigger stage and more dressing-room space than the Helen Stairs Theatre, she said. "We are still doing the same quality shows that we've done before," Wages said. "We haven't changed anything in regard to that. We're just in a new home." This isn't the first time the group has switched venues. Prior to performing at the Helen Stairs Theatre, Wekiva River Players staged many shows at the Winter Park Ninth Grade Center. The organization, founded in 1993, has also performed at other locations in Central Florida.

This also isn't the first time the group has produced /Fiddler on the Roof/, a show about family, values and tradition. The Wekiva River Players first presented the musical in 1998, starring Nick Ricci as Tevye, a poor dairyman with five daughters. Ricci is back as Tevye in the current production. "I guess I just enjoy it so much because there's so much emotion involved with Tevye," said Ricci. "It just runs the whole gamut," he said. /Fiddler/, set in 1905 Czarist Russia, was created by Jerry Bock, Sheldon Harnick and Joseph Stein. Tevye tries to instill in his daughters the traditions of his tight-knit Jewish community but is faced with changing social mores and growing anti-Semitism. The Tony Award-winning show includes memorable songs such as "If I Were a Rich Man" and "Matchmaker." The musical was later made into a movie and is currently enjoying a revival on Broadway.

Although the show's setting is historical, the story can still resonate with modern audiences. "The problems and the concerns and all of that are really not unlike things you run into today in raising children," said Ricci, who has a daughter. For Wages, /Fiddler /hits close to home in at least one way. "It has a personal meaning for me because it's Tevye and his five daughters, and I'm the oldest of five girls. So it's kind of a cool family thing," she said.

/Fiddler /kicks off the community theater group's 12th season. Carol Sissom, the show's music director, was also music director of the 1998 production. The current version has a cast of 37 adults and children. The show will run through Oct. 17, with performances at 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays. Millennium Middle School is at 21 Lakeview Drive. Tickets are $15. A portion of proceeds from ticket sales will benefit the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Reservations: 407-262-1801 or visit wekivariverplayers.org or ticketleap.com