DIRECTOR’S NOTE:
This production of Spring Awakening began at the start of 2020, the year that turned the theatre community and the entire world upside down. We held on throughout the darkest times most of us have ever faced. We stuck together, determined to create something truly beautiful and I believe that's what we have done.
Spring Awakening is a timeless coming of age narrative, but the story is so much more than that. It's about knowledge and who has access to it. It's about cycles of misinformation and abuse. It's about the youth of our world constantly pushing for more, hungry to know the truth and willing to risk it all to learn. Life continues to move, the seasons continue to change and we are forced to push forward. It was our goal to take a fresh look at this well known musical while keeping it set in the late 19th century.
The boys and men of the show seem to have all of the knowledge, but the women are left to do household matters. While this is not exactly true in our modern society, there's still a long way to go. Women throughout the ages have beared the consequences of men's actions. Spring Awakening highlights this as well as the disconnect between the adults and the adolescents. We want to shine a stark bright light on the facts that hold true even today - the youth of our world have questions that go unanswered. What would happen if we truly listened to children? What would happen if we worked together between generation, class, and religion to build a better world?
This production has been almost two years in the making. The artists involved in this show have put immeasurable time and care into telling this story. We are delighted to sing, at last, The Song of Purple Summer.
MUSIC DIRECTOR'S NOTE:
One of the dangers of music direction is that in the interest of teaching everyone the correct melodies, harmonies, cutoffs, stylings, and dynamics, it homogenizes voices. Actors want to sing as an ensemble, so they reach a common denominator by mirroring what the others are doing and sounding like one voice. This practice is antithetical to this material.
Spring Awakening tells the story of Melchior, Wendla, and Moritz, but there is a whole ensemble of unique characters that are going through the exact same struggles, only their stories are not told in full. So at every point in this rehearsal process, my team and I have sought to empower individuality. I’ve challenged my singers to sing in their natural voices, blend acoustically without mics, not try to recreate a “Broadway” or “Original Cast” sound, fully embrace and share the quirks, roughness, and individuality of their voices. When two cast members sing a duet, it’s not supposed to sound like one voice; it’s supposed to sound like two very different people with different life experiences who happen to be singing the same words, and isn’t that more interesting?
Singing so exposed is no small feat, and the cast has risen to the challenge to provide you, our audience, with singing that forces us to consider that “children” are not one homogenous pool of young humans; they are each an individual literally bursting at the seams with a unique voice they wish to share with the world.
