Andrew Panton’s new production of Tony award winning
musical, Spring Awakening, was a triumph when it opened at the Royal
Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow last week. It was probably co-incidence,
but the first night of this ambitious co-production between the RCS and Dundee
Rep also coincided with the twenty-second anniversary of the Dunblane massacre,
when a lone gunman went on a shooting spree, killing sixteen pupils and their
teacher.
As the show’s young cast of musical theatre students
prepare for this week’s run at the Rep itself, it may be worth considering the
fact that writer Steven Sater and composer Duncan Sheik’s musical adaptation of
Frank Wedekind’s study of troubled youth has its roots in similar tragedies.
Following the recent shootings at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in
Parkland, Florida, Sater and Sheik’s play also has a renewed resonance.
“When I began the show in 1999, it was in the wake of
the terrible shootings at Columbine High School,” Sater explains, “and my aim and
my direction was to touch the troubled heart of youth. Now, with the Parkland
shootings, some of those remarkable young students who survived, and who are
speaking out in the Never Again movement, it turns out they’re rehearsing a
school production of Spring Awakening.”
Sater is talking about Cameron Kasky, the
seventeen-year-old who started the Never Again movement with other drama kids,
including Emma Gonzalez. While Gonzalez made an inspirational speech calling
out the politicians who refuse to introduce regulations on guns, Kasky publicly
asked an American senator if, in the wake of the shootings, he would not take
any more donations from the National Rifle Association. In Parkland, Kasky is
playing Melchior Gabor, the show’s troubled lead in a play that shows what can
happen when grown-ups overseeing a repressive society don’t make the world safe
for young people. As a recent article in the New York Times makes clear, it is
sex rather than guns that is the show’s unregulated weapon.
Even so, as Sater observes, “You feel you’ve created
something that’s become part of the social fabric.”
The origins of Sater and Sheik’s take on Wedekind’s
play date back to Sater’s own schooldays growing up in America’s mid-west.
Sater was ill a lot as a child, and was forced to stay home a lot.
“I discovered my imagination early on,” he says. “I
wrote plays, and would put them on with kids in the neighbourhood. I saw plays
when I came to New York when I was about 13 or 14, and loved them.”
A friend of Sater’s was kicked out of a play at high
school, and his teacher asked Sater to step in.
“When I tasted the Kool-Aid,” he says, “that was it.”
Sater also spent a lot of time in libraries, where he
discovered Spring Awakening.
“I thought it was the most extraordinarily scandalous
thing,” he says, “but it stayed in my head.”
While at university, Sater suffered severe injuries
after being forced to jump from his balcony in the midst of a fire in his
apartment.
“I was laid up for a long time,” he says, “and I felt
that what I’d been doing up until ten was ephemeral. I wanted to do something
that would last.”
Sater taught himself ancient Greek and read Homer.
“I don’t think there’d be a Spring Awakening if it
wasn’t for what I learnt from the Greeks,” he says. He also read Shakespeare,
Chekhov, Moliere, Racine and all the other greats.
“I’m a playwright, and that’s what I love,” he says.
“Musical theatre I fell into.”
That happened when he met Sheik.
“We met as Buddhists chanting together,” says Sater.
“A couple of songs we wrote I put in a play I was doing, which Duncan came to
see and liked it. I said we should write a play together, and he pulled a face
and said, what, musical theatre? I said, if we do something cool it might work.
The original play of Spring Awakening was full of the pains and joys of young
people, and one of the things young people today find solace in is rock and pop
music.”
It took eight years to get Sater and Sheik’s version
onstage.
“Three of those we couldn’t get arrested,” says Sater,
for whom vindication came following the show’s huge success on Broadway a
decade ago.
“It felt like an answered prayer,” he says,
“especially when people were ready to write off the younger generation as being
post-literate. I wanted Spring Awakening to be like a concert and a classic
play, so audiences could see both on the same night. It’s literally post-modern,
and it touches people because it strikes chords about first love, loss,
friendship and fighting the system.”
More recently, Sater has worked with System of a Down’s
Serj Tankian on a musical of Prometheus Bound, as well as a collaboration with
Burt Bacharach on a piece called Some Lovers. Based on an O. Henry short story,
the show is Bacharach’s first original score for theatre since Promises,
Promises half a century ago,
“Burt is the most amazing man,” says Sater. “He’s
turned 90, but he’s still the coolest person in the room.”
One of the songs from Prometheus Bound, The Hunger,
was recorded by Edinburgh-born singer and front-woman of Garbage, Shirley Manson.
“I saw Prometheus as being the world’s first prisoner
of conscience,” says Sater, “and Amnesty International came on board as the
show’s partner. At the end it became an activist event, and I thought we should
release a single to make some money for Amnesty. My agent knew Shirley, and she
said yes to singing it, and I’ve met her a few times now.”
While the success of Spring Awakening has clearly
opened doors for Sater, “I wish I could say it’s made my life easier, but in
the world of commercial theatre, I’m still the guy writing Greek tragedy with
the guy from System of a Down.”
However Sater sees his canon, it’s a spirit that
continues to make Spring Awakening such a breath of fresh air that has tapped
into the spirit of the age.
“Here’s the thing,” he says. “It’s a sad truth that
Frank Wedekind’s play is as resonant now as it was when he wrote it. It’s not
just about guns. It’s about listening to young people and trusting them. It’s
telling that the UK has the strongest regulation on guns, and now here in
America these young people have dared to stand up to what’s going on. Because
of their determination, I hope and pray that things will change because of
them. I feel at once tremendously sad that things haven’t changed since we
first did Spring Awakening, but I also feel proud to have a voice.”
In this sense, as audiences in Dundee this week should
see, Sater’s show goes beyond specifics to create something universally
recognisable.
“I think Spring Awakening touches your heart, whatever
age you are,” says Sater. “You have all these young people onstage offering you
their hearts. It’s full of the anguish of being young, but also the heady joy,
and for older people watching it, it takes you back to that time, and you still
identify with these young people and the pain they’re going through. Out of
that that comes a sense of responsibility and empathy through remembering what
it was like.”
Spring Awakening, Dundee Rep, March 22-24.
The Herald, March 20th 2018
ends
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