MHS Theatre’s Community & Education Outreach Encourages Students to Contemplate Tradition, Home, and History

Morristown, NJ—Drawing inspiration from the school’s upcoming production of Fiddler on the Roof, Morristown High School Theatre’s Community and Educational Outreach program has created class projects for students from elementary through high school. In addition, the program is encouraging theatergoers to make donations of blankets and materials to Project Linus. Those donations can be dropped off in the lobby during any of the four performances of Fiddler on the Roof from March 12 to 15.

Project Linus is a non-profit that provides handmade blankets to children 18 and under in the United States who are “seriously ill, traumatized, or otherwise in need.” Inspired by the character of Motel the tailor, MHS Theatre is encouraging members of the program and their friends and family to donate homemade no-sew blankets and supplies, such as yarn, fabric, and shipping materials, to Project Linus.

Fiddler on the Roof is the last show for which senior Abby Higgins will be leading MHS Theatre’s Outreach program. Her efforts have earned her and MHS Theatre multiple award nominations, including for Educational Impact and Community Outreach at Montclair State University’s Foxy High School Play awards (for 2024’s Mary Poppins and Shakespeare in Love), and for Educational Impact at the Paper Mill Playhouse Rising Star awards (for Mary Poppins and 2025’s Les Misérables).

The program will remain in good hands, as Higgins’s younger sister, Caroline, and fellow freshman Valentina Mazur have taken on significant roles in this spring’s efforts, including crafting the educational outreach lesson plans themselves.

Caroline Higgins designed the lesson plans for the elementary and high schoolers. The younger group will cut out paper houses on which they will write about their own family traditions. Those paper houses will then be displayed in the high school lobby during the performances as a “Village of Traditions,” illustrating the richness of our community’s diversity. The high schoolers, meanwhile, will research the specific circumstances of the characters in the musical, learning about the Pale of Settlement, home to the fictional shtetl of Anatevka, and the pogroms that ultimately lead to their emigration from the beloved village.

Mazur handled the lesson plan for the middle schoolers. “I wanted to find a way to make the heartbreak of the song ‘Far from the Home I Love’ feel real to students today,” she says. “I moved past the idea of home as a ‘place’ and asked students to define it through their senses. Home is not a location but something you carry inside you. The goal is to create a bridge from the student’s life to the musical. When the audience sees the students’ collages in the lobby, it will make the characters’ eventual displacement feel more personal to everyone who walks through the doors.”

For both, the elder Higgins was a source of guidance and inspiration. “I have been watching my sister's efforts in community and educational outreach since her sophomore year of high school,” says Caroline. “I have seen her grow this program into the award-nominated one that it is today, and, from watching her, I, too, have grown a passion for helping the community. She has shown us how to go above and beyond expectations and what effort and hard work can do.”

Per Mazur, Abby, “is the reason I wanted to join Ed Outreach. She was always there for guidance, but she still gave us space to try things our own way. She gave us the independence needed to take over when she graduates.”

MHS Theatre will present four live performances of Fiddler on the Roof on the Morristown High School stage, including three evening shows and one matinee:

• Thursday, March 12 at 7:00 pm
• Friday, March 13 at 7:00 pm
• Saturday, March 14 at 7:00 pm
• Sunday, March 15 at 2:00 pm

Tickets can be purchased at https://mhs.booktix.com.