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��������Ƶ students bring the Tony Award-winning musical “Fun Home” to the stage, navigating a nonlinear story of family, identity, and memory.

Memory isn’t linear. Neither is “.” 

��������Ƶ students are bringing the Tony Award-winning musical to the stage, taking on a story that moves through time, revisits moments from multiple angles, and asks performers to hold past and present at once. Based on “Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic” by Alison Bechdel, the musical traces her coming-of-age alongside her relationship with her father—an English teacher and funeral director whose hidden life shapes the emotional core of the story. 

Set across shifting timelines, “Fun Home” follows Alison at three distinct ages, a structure that reflects how memory works: fragmented, recursive, and often unresolved. For student performers, that means building a character not as a straight line, but as a series of echoes—moments that repeat and gain meaning over time. 

Designing Memory on Stage 

That nonlinear structure extends beyond performance into the design of the production itself. Brooke Rose, a senior Theatre Design and Technology major with a concentration in scenic design, says designing the world of the show required rethinking how space functions onstage. “Designing ‘Fun Home’ posed an interesting challenge—how do you create fully realized spaces within something that isn’t linear?” Rose says. “We ultimately set the story inside Alison’s brain, which allowed us to explore how memories appear as she’s drawing and moving through them.” 

At its center is a deeply personal story about identity, family, and what remains unspoken. As Alison begins to understand her own identity, she also begins to see her father more clearly: a closeted gay man whose life was defined by repression and control. The musical returns to key moments—childhood snapshots, college discoveries, moments of recognition—each time revealing something new. 

For performers, that structure shapes how relationships unfold across time. Lucas Clinton, a first-year Musical Theatre BFA student who plays Roy, approaches his role as part of a larger emotional puzzle. “Roy only interacts with young Alison, but the older version is watching the memory unfold,” Clinton says. “Even without direct interaction, there’s still a connection—he becomes part of how she understands her father.” 

Building One Character Across Time 

That layered storytelling extends to the ensemble as a whole. Assistant Director Maybelle Patterson, a senior theatre directing major, says the process has required actors to build characters collaboratively across timelines. “There has been a lot of dramaturgical work between the three actors playing Alison to track how she grows,” Patterson says. “That shared process helps the story feel continuous, even as it moves through time.” 

The story’s exploration of queer identity across generations continues to resonate with students and audiences, offering both reflection and recognition. 

Visually, the production leans into abstraction while grounding each moment in specific detail. “When you enter the space, you’re stepping into something abstract—pink pipes that reference the brain, with light moving through them like memory,” Rose says. “It creates a kind of open environment where specific places come to life through furniture and details, rather than a single fixed setting.” 

For Columbia students, that work is active. In rehearsal, they are not just performing the story—they are shaping how it unfolds, building connections across timelines and bringing emotional continuity to a fragmented narrative. 

That work comes together in a fully realized production at the Courtyard Theatre. Directed by Elizabeth Swanson, with choreography by Tanji Harper and music direction by Colte Julian, “Fun Home” runs April 30 through May 9, 2026, at the Courtyard Theatre in the Getz Theatre Center, 72 East 11th Street. 

• Theatre and Dance

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