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Spring Awakening, hit Broadway in 2006, and made its way to Cincinnati just a few weeks ago, and I have to admit that it is now battling Wicked for my favorite musical.
SPOILER ALERT: This blog post may give away parts of the plot of Spring Awakening.
The advertisements that showed up on my television screen made the musical out to be a celebration of heterosexuality, a somewhat pukeish chick-flick. But in fact the show actually touches on almost every controversial topic available -- everything from teen suicide, gay teens, sex education and reproductive knowledge, child sexual and physical abuse, teen pregnancy, BDSM, and abortion.
The show starts with an adolescent girl begging her mother to explain to her where babies come from, and when the mother finally agrees to tell her she explains that when a man and a woman are married, the woman loves her husband very much, in a way that only a woman could love her husband and this makes her pregnant.
While this explanation seems funny and ridiculous it's not very different than the sex explanations many of my peers have received. Recently a friend told me that she and her friends were taught that sex could only happen when you were married, and since at age 14 none of her friends were married, they came to the conclusion that their sexual activity could not in fact be sex. Not an illogical conclusion for a 14-year-old to jump to.
While the musical, Spring Awakening hit Broadway in 2006, its based off a controversial play by Frank Wedekind written in 1891. 1891 -- that is what impressed me the most, that these themes, problems, and controversies, still so prevalent today, were present in the consciousness over a century ago. While I have not read or seen the original Wedekind play, I assume that the plot has remained almost the same from the play to the musical. The storyline somewhat follows the pattern of adolescents yearning for education regarding their own brewing sexualities, and the lack of that education has devastating effects.
I really suggest that everyone see it if they get the chance. (And plus our favorite Lea Michele -- Rachel from Glee -- plays the female lead, Wendla.)
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