By Kaelyn Christian
Western Herald
The Western Michigan University Department of Music is hosting it’s annual production of TubaWEEN, a festive, themed performance.
The performance will take place on Saturday, Oct. 31 at 8:15 p.m. in the Dalton Center Recital Hall.
TubaWEEN is a production put on by the Tuba, Euphonium, and Horn studios that spoofs popular plays, television shows, and movies.
Themes of the past few years have included “Pirates of the Caribbean,” “Wizard of Oz,” “Into the Woods,” and “Indiana Jones.”
This year, students will be revamping popular Tony-Award winning musical, “Fiddler on the Roof.”
“It’s been going on at various universities for a while now. The Tuba Studio takes a play, TV show, or movie that’s pretty popular and rewrites it,” said Adam Arocho, a senior music major who’s participated in TubaWEEN four years running.
“We keep basically the same outline and characters, and throw in a lot of pop culture references and school of music jokes.”
Students this year have played with the story of “Fiddler,” turning it into “Tuba on the Roof.”
“We’re using a lot of the same music and characters, but ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ is really a sad play so we wanted to make it happier,” Arocho said.
“Basically, the main character, Tevye, wants his daughters to find Tuba playing husbands, but he can’t find any, so they travel around finding husbands.”
Along their travels, Tevye and his daughters run into characters from popular television shows, including The Flintstones and The Addams Family.
Audience members can expect a good time and lots of comedy, including one cross-dressing character.
“It’s tradition to make one male member of the studio play a female part, and they have to grow a beard. This is the second year in a row for me,” Arocho said.
“Last year they made me speak in falsetto the whole time, you were supposed to think I was a woman. This year it’s going to be completely obvious that I’m a man playing a woman.”
You don’t have to be a music major to get the jokes, either.
“My favorite part is having the script be funny for everybody. We make fun of music major stuff, and some people won’t get that, but there’s stuff for everyone.” Arocho said.
“Even if you have never heard of ‘Fiddler on the Roof,’ you’ll find jokes that are really funny,” Arocho adds.
Admission for the show is $1, and proceeds go to the horn studios at WMU.
“Sometimes we use the money to bring in guest tuba players and have them play with us, and sometimes we use it for trips,” Arocho said. “This January we’re flying to Washington D.C. to play at the International Tuba and Euphonium Conference, and some of the money will be used to cover that.”
The show begins at 8:15 p.m. in the Dalton Center Recital Hall.
“We really just want people to have fun with it. It will be awesome!” Arocho said.
