For years, the young actors of Carbondale’s SoL Theatre Company have been asking about “Spring Awakening.”
The coming-of-age rock musical focuses on a group of teenagers in 19th-century Germany who explore their sexuality despite adults’ efforts to keep them in the dark. It also grapples with heavy topics like suicide, abuse and abortion; the show is rated R for content and language.
“It is super challenging material,” said Jennifer Johnson, the executive director of SoL. (The acronym stands for “Stage of Life.”)
But this cast of mostly college-aged actors has proven they’re ready to tackle more difficult work as they’ve grown up performing with the youth-oriented theater company, Johnson said. And while she used to feel the musical was “outdated” — it’s based on a play from 1891, and debuted on Broadway in 2006 — Johnson thinks the show has become timely again.
She’s now directing a two-weekend run of the musical at the Thunder River Theatre in Carbondale, with hopes of educating and sparking conversation in the community.
“Right now, there seems to be a lot of emphasis around the country, honestly, about what information we will and will not share with our students, … and when it's allowed to be taught, and what age our kids are allowed to have this information,” Johnson said.
“At the same time, we're putting a device in their hands that gives them the answer to any question at any time they might need,” Johnson added, “and we're still trying to say that we're behaving responsibly in keeping information from them.”
Associate director and choreographer Luke Ryan also feels a renewed sense of relevance in “Spring Awakening.” The recent overturning of Roe v. Wade — ending the constitutional right to abortion in the U.S. — adds to that timeliness, both Ryan and Johnson noted; the musical confronts the consequences of an unsafe and illegal abortion in the second act.
“Since things have started to shift back into the past, I think it is important now more than ever that we bring this cautionary tale back to the forefront,” Ryan said, “so that we don't need to always be doing challenging, shocking work like this anymore — that it does become a little bit more normal, per se, to be having these conversations with our children and with our students.”
Johnson said it reminds her of a Shakespearean quote about the connection between history and the present.
“It is, ‘what is past, is prologue,’ and I think that says everything you need to know about this show,” Johnson said. “Because (“Spring Awakening” is) from turn-of-the-century Germany, … and it shouldn't be relevant anymore, and (yet) it is.”
Spring Awakening opens July 11, with two weekends of productions at the Thunder River Theatre in Carbondale. It marks the launch of the SoL Theatre Company’s “summer stock” program, which pays actors for their involvement; the cast includes many local young adults who have performed in SoL shows in the past, as well as some visiting actors and local adults.
