Spring Awakening

Wellington Performing Arts Centre, Wellington
From 6 Jun 2008 to 8 Jun 2008

The Critics

"Spring Awakening is both a perfect choice of production for a cast of young actors, and a damned difficult one... the cast is fully committed to the production and their zest for it keeps the audience connected."

- Lynn Freeman, Capital Times

[see full review] 

"...their intelligent understanding of the play and clear subjective connection with the substance of each scene ensures the play's essence comes through. "

- John Smythe, Theatreview

[see full review]

"...director Willem Wassenaar has done an amazing job of directing this group of young actors."

- Georgina Titheridge, Bandwagon

The Pack-in

"I see Green." - Dan Williams, Set and Costume Designer.

Roughly two-hundred square metres of instant lawn, weighing about 3,000 kilograms in total were used in the production of Long Cloud Youth Theatre Spring Awakening. The pack-in, that started in the morning of the opening performance was completed by the early afternoon thanks to a dedicated production team.

Chapman Tripp nominated Designer, Dan Williams utilised the back wall at the Wellington Performing Arts Centre Theatre by allowing characters to write and draw on it throughout the play. This created the effect that the back wall was a giant blackboard.

The Production

Spring Awakening by Frank Wedekind reveals the soul of a teenager with a most gripping touch; showcasing its joys and sorrows, its hopes and despair, its struggles and tragedies.

The play is one of literature’s most controversial masterpieces – a work so daring in its depiction of teenage self-discovery, it was banned from the stage and not performed in its complete form in English for nearly 100 years. Wedekind's references to abortion, homosexuality, rape, masturbation, sadism and so on made the play so scandalous that, although censored versions played long and successful seasons in Germany during his lifetime, the full play wasn't performed on the British stage until 1974.

Spring Awakening is set in a provincial town in 1890s Germany, and is a full-frontal attack on life-hating bourgeois hypocrisy and ignorance. For all the specifics of its time and place, its portrayal of the amoral innocence of adolescent sexuality in collision with repressive authority still resonates with surprising force. When Destiny Church is preaching an anti-gay agenda, when New Zealand has the highest suicide rates amongst youngsters, when US educationalists claim that chastity-led sex education is the way to go, when Amnesty International is condemned by church authorities for supporting abortions for raped women, the idea of "progress" in these issues comes under question. We are more like the 19th century than we care to admit.
 
Spring Awakening concerns a group of fourteen year old boys and girls, all of them feeling the first stirrings of sexual desire. Their confusions and, finally, their tragedies stem from the willful ignorance in which they are kept by their parents and other authorities: the awakening of their bodies drives them to actions they do not understand, and that often bewilders and frightens them.

In the case of Melchior his discovery of the facts of life - through observing dogs and fragmentary reading - leads to a comprehensive disillusion and atheism. His friend Moritz is terrified and ashamed even of his dreams, and for him sex is a horror that can only be escaped through an even more driven obsession with death.

The girls are equally trapped in their own ignorance. Wendla is caught between childhood and burgeoning womanhood; she is desperate to know where her sister's babies come from, but is kept in such ignorance by her mother's explanations that her innocence is impenetrable, even when she is raped.

The Cast and Crew

CAST:
Mrs Bergman:  ALI LAI-CARLYLE
Wendla Bergman:  TAMARA JONES
Ina Muller:  EMERALD NAULDER
Mr Gabor:  MICHAEL TRIGG
Mrs Gabor:  ALLY GARRETT
Melchior:  JACK BUCHANAN
Rentier Stiefel:  MICHAEL TRIGG
Moritz Stiefel:  BEN CRAWFORD
Otto:  MICHAEL TRIGG
Georg LEON WADHAM
Robert:  LEON WADHAM
Ernst  WILLIAM DONALDSON
Lammermeier:  MICHAEL TRIGG
Hanschen Rilow:  RICHARD CHILD
Thea:  ALI LAI-CARLYLE
Martha:  SASKIA RUTHERFORD YMKER
Ilse:  NICOLE STEVEN
Rektor Sunstroke:  EMERALD NAULDER
Calflove:  NICOLE STEVEN
Thickstick:  SASKIA RUTHERFORD YMKER
Starveling:  MICHAELTRIGG
Stickytongue:  WILLIAM DONALDSON
Bonebreaker:  ALI LAI-CARLYLE
Flykiller:  ALLY GARRETT
Catchmequick:  RICHARD CHILD
Pastor Skinnytum:  LEON WADHAM
Friend Goatmilker ALI LAI-CARLYLE
Uncle Provost:  ALLY GARRETT
Diethelm:  WILLIAM DONALDSON
Reinhold:  RICHARD CHILD
Ruprecht:  MICHAEL TRIGG
Helmuth:  LEON WADHAM
Gaston:  WILLIAM DONALDSON

Dr Procrustes:  ALI LAI-CARLYLE
Locksmith:  ALLY GARRETT
Dr Fizzpowder:  SASKIA RUTHERFORD YMKER
A Man in a Mask:  LEON WADHAM

CREW
Directing assistant:  SHARON VAN DER VREEDE
Production manager and design assistant:  SHARON VAN DER VREEDE
Lighting design:  DANIEL WILLIAMS & PAUL TOZER
Sound design:  WILLEM WASSENAAR
Costume construction:  SHAY EVANS
LX and SX Operator:  PAUL TOZER
Producer:  JENNY STEVENSON
Publicist:  RICHARD STEVENSON
Publicity photos:  DANIEL WILLIAMS

The Company

Long Cloud Youth Theatre, run by Wellington Performing Arts Centre, is a unique training and production company for young people aged 16-20 years.

[read more]