University Theatre will present the sexually charged rock musical Spring Awakening, composed by Duncan Sheik with book and lyrics by Steven Sater. Performances will be at UGA’s Fine Arts Theatre April 10-12 and 15-18 at 8 p.m. with 2:30 p.m. matinees April 13 and 19.
Tickets, are $16, $12 for students, and can be purchased at http://www.drama.uga.edu/box-office, by phone at 706-542-4400, in-person at the Performing Arts Center or Tate Center box office or at the door before the show. This production contains adult content and is not suitable for all ages.
A recent hit on Broadway, Spring Awakening adapts German playwright Frank Wedekind’s 1891 Spring Awakening: A Children’s Tragedy, which was a commentary on the era’s climate of sexual repression.
Director Richard Garner, co-founder and artistic director of Georgia Shakespeare, calls Wedekind’s work “a landmark play in the history of modern drama that gave us a pained look into the confused youth who had to make their way through a claustrophobic world that denied them a satisfactory understanding of the storm that was raging within their own adolescent bodies.”
Scandalous at the time, Wedekind’s original play was banned, censored, threatened with closure and deemed pornographic.
“The times may have changed,” Garner said, “but the angst of coming to terms with the adolescent transformation of our very physical being remains true through the ages, and sometimes just as controversial.”
This musical adaptation maintains the tone of the original while adding concert moments with original songs written by popular rock musician Duncan Sheik. During spoken dialogue, the play is set firmly in late 19th-century Germany, while during the songs, the style shifts and the characters perform in a present-day concert environment with interactive media effects.