"Little Women" to Take the Morristown High School Stage This Fall

Morristown, NJ—The award-winning Morristown High School Theatre Department will stage a dramatic production Little Women this fall, with four performances from November 21 to 23.

MHS Theatre’s student production of this timeless classic is an original adaptation of the novel by MHS’s own award-nominated director George LaVigne, with input from the students, and is sure to delight theatergoers of all kinds.

A coming-of-age story set in a time of great upheaval and division, Little Women is, in LaVigne’s words, “an endearing story of family, the bond of sisters, and their struggle in trying times, through poverty and loss.”

The play’s strong female characters are what attracted LaVigne to Little Women. Jo, the second-oldest March daughter, is the exemplar. Creative, ambitious, free-spirited, and proudly feminist at a time when that term was new, Jo has no patience for society’s expectations or limits on what girls and women can or can’t do, nor does she care to be restricted by her gender, proudly declaring herself “the man of the house” while her father is at war.

“This story is so empowering for women,” says Brooks Seibold, who will play Jo in the MHS production. “It’s beautiful to see Jo be her own person. At a time when strong women are supposed to be ‘cool girlboss untouchable,’ it’s refreshing to see Jo, a very unconventional activist, be vulnerable and act like a real girl, even though she’s a feminist and powerful. This story is so ahead of the times in that sense.”

A treat for the holiday season, Little Women spans several Christmases in the lives of the March sisters and their mother, Marmee, who instills a spirit of independence, charity, forgiveness, and compassion in her daughters.

A landmark in American literature, Louisa May Alcott’s 1868 novel has been adapted countless times, and for good reason. Those adaptations include at least seven feature films, four television mini-series, two operas, two musicals, and even multiple anime interpretations. MHS’s production reaches back past all of those descendants to the original novel and Alcott’s words to get to the heart of what has made Little Women endure for more than a century and a half.

As Jo, the book’s stand-in for Alcott herself, asks her mother, “What can there be in a simple little story like that to make people praise it so?”

“There’s truth in it,” her mother responds. It also has “humor and pathos,” per Marmee, and MHS’s production is sure to be a heartwarming reminder of “how much genuine happiness can be had in a plain little house.”

MHS Theatre will present four live performances of Little Women on the Morristown High School stage, including two evening shows and two matinees:

• Friday, November 21 at 7:00 pm
• Saturday, November 22 at 2:00 pm
• Saturday, November 22 at 7:00 pm
• Sunday, November 23 at 2:00 pm

The MHS Theatre program will also host the "March Family Children's Party" for young theatergoers from noon to 1 pm on November 22, prior to the Saturday matinee performance. The children's party is a separate admission from the play.

Tickets for the performances and for children's party can be purchased at https://mhs.booktix.com.