Awakening Into Adulthood
Duke's Department of Theater Studies presents the play "Spring Awakening" in eight performances.
Many theater buffs know the title "Spring Awakening" because of the smash Broadway musical that won a Tony Award last spring. Fewer know the musical was based on a play that debuted a full century before.
Duke's Department of Theater Studies will present the original play, "Spring Awakening," in eight performances by Duke students this month. "‘Spring Awakening' is a funny, profane, theatrically playful work about young people in the painful process of ‘waking up,'" says Neal Bell, resident playwright and professor of the practice of theater studies at Duke.
Written by German playwright Frank Wedekind, the play deals frankly and provocatively with the sexual awakening of a group of German adolescents in a society the playwright thought to be too repressive. In fact, the play closed after its 1917 debut in New York amid public outrage and charges of obscenity.
While the public's taste has changed since then, the themes addressed in the play teenage desire, pressure to measure up, suicide, abortion, and homosexuality are no less relevant now than they were then.
"It was considered shocking when it was written because of the unflinching way it portrays the sexual confusions and experiments of its young characters. And it still has the power to shock and thrill and exhilarate," adds Bell.
Director Jeff Storer, professor of the practice of theater studies, finds one of the play's storylines about pressure to "make the grade" something to which Duke students can relate.
One of the characters, 14-year-old Moritz, says early in the play, "School makes me wish I was a cart horse! What do we go to school for? We go to school to be examined! And why are we examined? So we can fail. Seven have got to fail simply because the next class room is only big enough for 60."
Apparently the play did resonate with Duke students because they helped select it for production.
"We had an open process for choosing the play," Storer says. "I was very excited about the selection and able to get behind their choice. -- It allows for more ownership when students play a role in choosing."
Theater: Spring Awakening
8 p.m. April 10 thru 12; 2 p.m. April 13 Sheafer Theater, Bryan Center $10 general admission; $5 students Information: www.duke.edu/web/theaterstudies