Teacher’s a star
Parkland faculty member gets special Tony Award.
Melody Herzfeld found out she was getting a Tony Award for teaching drama while she was teaching drama.
Just before Mother’s Day, Herzfeld — who is a member of the faculty of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, the scene of a mass shooting on Valentine’s Day — got the call that she was going to receive the 2018 Excellence in Theatre Education Tony Award.
“A strange number came across my cellphone while I was in class taking attendance,” Herzfeld recalls. “And this voice says, ‘Can you please hold for the Broadway League?’ And I’m thinking, ‘OK, what is this about?’ Then, the president [of the League] got on the phone and introduced herself and yada, yada, yada ‘Tony Award,’ and my jaw just dropped. Everything ended when I heard ‘Tony Award.’ I don’t think I heard another word. And then, it was followed up with an email, thank God, because I wouldn’t have remembered anything.”
Herzfeld will attend the 72nd annual Tony Awards tonight at Radio City Music Hall in New York. The ceremony will be broadcast on CBS beginning at 8 p.m. Herzfeld’s award comes with $10,000 for the theater program at Stoneman Douglas and two tickets to the Tonys and the post-show gala.
“Tomorrow, I guess I’ll go to Nordstrom and get a dress,” Herzfeld said on Monday. “That will be very exciting, to feel good for a second. We’ve been wearing our school shirts here like a badge of honor every day. It doesn’t feel right to put on anything else, to be honest.”
Herzfeld has been teaching at Stoneman Douglas since 2003, and has produced more than 50 productions at the school. Her son Richard is a special-education teacher at Stoneman Douglas, and her son Alec is a sen-