Central Wyoming College revives one of the best-loved stage and screen musicals Fiddler on the Roof on the Robert A. Peck Arts Center main stage in February and March.

Though the show was hugely popular when it was originally staged on Broadway in 1964, college-aged students are not all that familiar with the show, said CWC Director of Theater Mike Myers.

The show’s underlying messages of racism, segregation and ethnic cleansing will serve as important lessons to the students while they rehearse for the Feb. 26-28 and March 5-7 productions.

“I’ve always been attracted to musicals that have a serious story,” Myers said, explaining the story of a forced Jewish settlement in Tsarist Russia in Fiddler relates to news stories of racial conflict and ethnic genocide that exists today.

Fiddler is about Tevye, a poor dairyman and old-fashioned father who has raised his five daughters to uphold the age-old Jewish customs in the community of Anatevka. As the time comes to find husbands for his three oldest girls, the dowry-less family must rely on the matchmaker to arrange marriages. Tevye soon finds out that his daughters are guided by their hearts and not by religious or family traditions.

The play runs Feb. 26-27 and March 5-6 at 7:30 p.m., with 2:30 p.m. matinees set for Feb. 28 and March 7 in the Robert A. Peck Arts Center Theatre. Tickets are $12 for adults and $10 for seniors and children. It’s rated G.

The musical, with music written by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnic and the book by Joseph Stein, is based on Tevye and his Daughters, written in 1894 by Sholem Aleichem. He was a Jew is Russia who knew about life if a “shtetl,” communities where 19^th century Eastern European Jews were forced to live.

“Anatevka is essentially a concentration camp in Russia,” Myers said. “They weren’t allowed to live elsewhere.”

While Tevye copes with the strong-willed actions of his daughters, he must deal with the edict of the Tsar that evicts the Jews from Anatevka and prepares for a pogrom; riots against the Jews.

Tevye is played by Josiah Sifuentes, and his sharp-tongued wife, Golde, is portrayed by Amara Fehring, both well-honed CWC theater students. Yente the Matchmaker (Candyce Peters) has told Golde that she has matched their oldest daughter Tzeitel (Chloe Skaggs) with Lazar Wolf, an older widowed butcher, played by Joel Williams.

The next two sisters, Hodel (Molly Thornton) and Chava (Adrienne Hanrahan) are excited about Yente’s visit, but Tzeitel is in love with her childhood friend, Motel the tailor (Jeremy Gross).

Hodel soon falls for the radical Perchick (Logan LaCross), who Tevye has tutoring his youngest daughters. They tell Tevye they are engaged, and he is appalled that they are making their own match and he forbids the marriage. The young couple informs Tevye they are not asking his permission but only his blessing and Tevye then relents that the world is changing and he must change with it.

Chava later meets a young Russian man, Fyedka (Kye Funk), and their elopement shatters Tevye because marriage outside the Jewish faith is a line he won’t cross and tells the rest of the family she is dead.

Meanwhile, the Russians begin expelling the Jewish people from their villages and the people of Anatevka have just three days to leave the place that had been their home for such a long time.

Fiddler on the Roof debuted on Broadway in 1964, the multi-Tony Award winning play will never age, Myers believes. “This play will never be old because of the whole idea that people have to adapt, they have to adjust. That will never change,” he said.