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Nerve.com
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Spring Awakening has a lot of things you wouldn't expect from a hit Broadway musical: a song about masturbation, a chorus number called "Totally Fucked" and a first act that climaxes (pun intended) with an achingly realistic moment of penetration. But here's the kicker: all of it is played by actors between the ages of fifteen and twenty-two. The musical is based on, and adheres closely to, the nineteenth-century play of the same name; it tells the story of German adolescents discovering their sexuality, with the kind of dire consequences that tend to befall sexually active characters in Victorian melodramas. What makes the musical work is its ingenious structure: the characters wear period costumes and speak authentic dialogue, but their inner thoughts take the form of modern, bass-driven rock songs with titles like "The Bitch of Living." After an eight-year development process — which began after Columbine, was stalled by September 11th and was re-invigorated by Bush's abstinence campaign — Spring Awakening opened on Broadway to sold-out houses, critical praise and a cult of devoted teenage fans. Nerve spoke to bookwriter and lyricist Steven Sater about the
challenges of re-writing hundred-year-old sex scenes, and the importance of acknowledging teenagers' sexuality. — Gwynne Watkins
So why Spring Awakening? What was your attachment to the original material?
I've known the play since I was a teenager myself; it really resonated with me. I felt the play was like an opera in waiting. For the past few generations, the place that kids have found release from their anguish and longing and sexual frustration and rage against the system has been in rock music, so it seemed like a good fit with [composer Duncan Sheik's] music. And the idea that we can all go be rock stars in our bedroom, which is kind of how the show functions, but then at the end of the day you have to still come down to dinner, you still have to go back to school, you still have to be a good kid. It just felt like a timely metaphor to me, for how we were not paying attention [to our kids]. And sex is part of that, because sex is the thing that we want to keep in the dark. I think it's really difficult as a parent to recognize the sexuality of your child.
Did you have kids when you started writing?
I did, but they were very young. But the reason, I think, for the success
"There was grave concern it would push the mainstream audience out of their seats." |
of the show, is that everyone who sees it recalls their own adolescence. Nobody really watches it from the point of view of a parent. I mean, I think you do feel for the parents in the show, but I think by and large the experience of seeing this play is to remember the longings, that desire, that confusion, that frustration. There's a woman who came up the actor playing Melchior the other night, I don't know how old she was, looked like she was in her fifties, and she said, "You sang that song 'I'm Gonna Be Wounded,' and I remembered that moment: 1978, across the bar at Studio 54. I saw him and everything changed."
Was it always your plan to have the teenage characters played by actual teenagers?
It was. It just always made sense to me that that's what you would do. We even thought of casting much younger, and that didn't work. Fortunately, we did a workshop and an off-Broadway run so the kids had time to learn their roles and find their way into what was difficult material, and
Michael Mayer, the director, is very understanding of that. And then just the fact the kids are going through a lot of stuff that they're portraying.
Did you run into any problems with it hitting too close to home with either the kids or their parents?
You know, we didn't. We asked that everyone read the script and that that their parents read the script before they audition, and there were those who chose to pass and not come in, but by and large the people who came in knew what they were getting into. And Lea, our female lead, has been with the show for six and a half years now. So she started doing this when she was fourteen. And the first two workshops she did, she would not allow her parents to come. She was just too embarrassed. And I don't know how she understood this, I don't know how she understood at fourteen what it meant to be asking a boy to beat her. I think she just lived the confusion that the character lived. And now, being older, I think she's able to portray it.
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