Children in Crisis: the Intimacy of Spring Awakening In the rock opera musical Spring Awakening by Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik, based on the play by Frank Wedekind, young teenagers in 1890s Germany confront the most intimidating parts of human nature: sexuality, violence, and growing up. These kids struggle to understand the world around them and constantly battle with their aged counterparts in a upheaval for knowledge. With so much being withheld from them, these kids turn to each other in hopes of understanding their world and themselves. In the end, the musical touches on the theme of intimacy. I say this word not only meaning the physical intimacy between Wendla and Melchior, but the intimacy of sharing knowledge, being open to another
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As for the acting in Spring Awakening, I believe the actors supported the characters and their states of mind well. I am thinking specifically here of Alex Golden, the young lady who played Wendla, and her acting during the sex scene. In between the small lines of dialogue, she and Brendan Trybus (Melchior) were to navigate the treacherous and controversial waters of the final scene in Act I and the subtleties that
Golden adopted to support her character’s state of mind did quite a bit to make the scene successful. For example, after unbuttoning her shirt, she looks down at her breasts and then up again at Melchior, inviting him nonverbally to touch her. This acting choice supports the character’s want for intimacy — as she describes it later in the show — and her sexual desire. In addition, the beats in this scene felt well developed and supporting of the wavering Wendla’s character does between consenting and not consenting. Specifically in a choreographic sense, the boys of the cast (Brendan Trybus,
Rodney West, Chris Gregory, Anthony Le, Alex Wade, and Patrick Newhart) did an excellent job embodying the predicament the boys find themselves in during
As for the acting in Spring Awakening, I believe the actors supported the characters and their states of mind well. I am thinking specifically here of Alex Golden, the young lady who played Wendla, and her acting during the sex scene. In between the small lines of dialogue, she and Brendan Trybus (Melchior) were to navigate the treacherous and controversial waters of the final scene in Act I and the subtleties that
Golden adopted to support her character’s state of mind did quite a bit to make the scene successful. For example, after unbuttoning her shirt, she looks down at her breasts and then up again at Melchior, inviting him nonverbally to touch her. This acting choice supports the character’s want for intimacy — as she describes it later in the show — and her sexual desire. In addition, the beats in this scene felt well developed and supporting of the wavering Wendla’s character does between consenting and not consenting. Specifically in a choreographic sense, the boys of the cast (Brendan Trybus,
Rodney West, Chris Gregory, Anthony Le, Alex Wade, and Patrick Newhart) did an excellent job embodying the predicament the boys find themselves in during