Why Spring Awakening?
Last year as we were coming out of the COVID online show experience a few students gathered each Friday after school in the school parking lot to read scripts. We read, we listened to the musical scores and we talked about the content of the shows. We discussed shows that seemed somehow “dated” or hard to connect to or simply offensive in their treatment of humans and then we read the musical Spring Awakening and things just clicked. It presented an incredible opportunity to provide young artists with the space to encounter a pivotal work in the musical theatre canon.
Spring Awakening deals with some tough content for sure but it also provides an amazing platform to talk about the trials and tribulations of youth life. It’s a rare find in the high school musical repertoire where the characters are the age of the people playing them. The experience also afforded us incredible opportunity to work on intimacy for the stage as I became as student of both Theatre Intimacy Education and Theatrical Intimacy Laboratory to find better ways to keep students safe in productions like Spring Awakening. The “Table work” and discussions throughout our process have truly been a time of learning and growth for all of us. I have learned a great deal from these incredible humans. The last scene of the musical jumps us into the here and now because the future is in the hands of these insightful, caring and driven youth.
Our process has also made us take such incredible care of each other and to care for this beautifully tragic/hopeful story that we share with you tonight. We are grateful to share it, sing it, move it and live it with you now.
Great theatre can change lives if you lean in to listen or are not afraid to feel…something…anything.
Smith
Please have a read of this poignant article.
WHY SPRING AWAKENING?
Written by Josh Turner, OnStage Blog >
***SPOILER ALERT***
Spring Awakening is a show that holds no punches. The musical (based on the play by Frank Wedekind) centers around a group of misguided and angsty 19th century German teenagers who struggle through abortion, suicide, and exploring their sexuality.
One of the greatest obstacles they face, though, is their ignorant (and sometimes abusive) parents and teachers. In the song "The Dark I Know Well" two girls sing about the physical and sexual abuse they've faced at the hands of their parents, and how they feel they have no voice to speak out against them. That happens to be a recurring theme in Spring Awakening. The character's struggles, both internal and external, stem from their inability to find a voice.
This is why Spring Awakening is so important. The same way the angry guitar-driven rock jams of the show give a voice to the characters, the show itself gives a voice to teenagers who face the same hardships as the characters they are portraying.
The two main characters of the show are a young man and woman who are exploring a physical relationship together, without any knowledge of the consequences. Their parents refuse to tell them anything about their changing bodies, and their school system has no place for sex education. While the story of these children being betrayed by their role models and caregivers seems just tragic enough for a staged production, this story is one that often plays out in the real world.
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