IU Theatre to perform controversial rock musical

Imagine going through life not knowing what puberty is.

Imagine going through life without ever having the dreaded “sex talk.”

Struggling with the weight of naivety, young Wendla begins a journey seeking out answers to unanswered questions in the Broadway musical “Spring Awakening.”

IU Theatre’s newest production opens at 7 p.m. today at the Ruth N. Halls
Theater.

Tickets cost $25 for adults and $15 for students. Student rush tickets are also available the day of the performance for $10, cash only.

Written by Steven Sater with music by Duncan Sheik, “Spring Awakening” retells the controversial play first written by Frank Wedekind in 1891.

His play was first staged in English in New York City in 1917.

Criticizing the sexually oppressive nature of the 19th century, the play was threatened with closure. However, a New York trial court issued an injunction to let it proceed.

After a myriad of performances, the musical adaptation debuted on Broadway in 2006. It won eight Tony Awards, including Best Musical and Best Direction.

Set in 1891, the story follows a group of teenagers on a journey of self-discovery, love, sexuality, friendship and rebellion.

Wendla, one of the teenagers, lived with a traditional, 19th-century family that doesn’t speak of sex or puberty.

In her quest of self-discovery, she discovers more than she had ever hoped to.

“She grew up in a family where they don’t talk about anything, kind of the typical family of the time period,” said sophomore Maddie Shea Baldwin, who plays Wendla. “In the beginning of the show, she’s asking her mom all these questions because she’s experiencing changes in her body and she’s maturing. She‘s having thoughts she doesn’t usually have.”

Baldwin said she believes Wendla is one of the more innocent characters of the show. She said Wendla doesn’t understand sex and puberty because no one ever told her what they were.

“She’s kind of forced to grow up and learn things herself, which leads into some mistakes that she makes later,” Baldwin said. “She doesn’t know what sex is and she ends up partaking in sex with Melchior and gets pregnant and doesn’t even know what that means. She doesn’t know that sex leads to pregnancy because her mom never talked to her about any of those kinds of things.”

Melchior, a teenager and Wendla’s lover, lived in a nontraditional home.

He is not as innocent as Wendla or other characters in the play, said sophomore Luke Denison, who plays Melchior.

“Melchior is an intellectual,” Denison said. “He has been raised to be open and to question things, to really understand things in a society that frowns down upon that. His mom has always been really open and he’s been able to read books, learn things and figure things out for himself.”

Denison said he discovered a lot of similarities between himself and Melchior after going through the character.

“There’s a line in a song about living in his head and always thinking,” Denison said. “I feel like that’s the type of person I am, where I’m constantly thinking about things. There are twelve thoughts running through my head all the time.”

Getting into character proved a little more difficult for Baldwin, she said.

Baldwin said she had to work to make her character believable to the audience because she had a different experience growing up.

“For me, I had to really explore and really put myself in her head when it comes to the fact that she’s not told anything,” Baldwin said. “My mom obviously told me when I was growing up what puberty was and what sex was, so I knew these things growing up. It’s just really convincing myself every day that someone, even today, could be going through something like that and putting myself in her shoes and then finding the similarities I had with her here and there.”

Director George Pinney said there is a strong contextual relationship between the human condition and social attitudes demonstrated in the musical.

“It is an incredible play experience,” Pinney said. “But it’s also, in the same grasp, treated like a rock concert. It is metaphoric because of the abuse they go through.”

Additional performances will take place at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, 7:30 p.m. Nov. 6-9 and 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Nov. 10.

Though the roles are complex and weeks have been spent perfecting each scene, both Denison and Baldwin look at their roles as gifts.

“I think it’s always an honor to dive into someone else’s life, to really try to tack on someone else that’s not yourself and to make yourself believe that you are someone else so that you’re spreading some story or some news to someone else,” Denison said.