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Spring Awakening

Sewer Rats Productions

Details

Categories: Theater

Dates: September 8, 2023 - September 17, 2023

Run Time: 120 mins

Venue: Plays & Players Skinner Studio

Overview

What happens to children when they can’t see a path to growing up?

Sewer Rats’ production of Spring Awakening by Frank Wedekind, directed by Sarah Billings, interprets Wedekind’s underproduced tragic gem by turning a new eye on its classic themes, bringing this turn-of-the-century script into the present moment with an emphasis on the agency and personality of its well-wrought young characters. Embracing the play’s surprising sense of humor and darkly vivid fantasies, Sewer Rats brings out both poetry and humanity in Wedekind’s landmark play.

Spring Awakening is the original source material for the musical of the same name. It is also a stirring, resonant, and ever-relevant dramatic script with more than a few unexpected delights for those who haven’t had the pleasure of seeing the original play.

Failed by an education that refuses to prepare them for their adult lives, Wedekind’s characters make their way with little guidance as they push for independence, reach out for love and friendship, and seek out self-knowledge on the thorny path to adulthood. Troubled by issues of class, sex, discipline, morality, and sexuality, each young character is caught in a struggle to define themselves against a system that tells them they have no future if they fail their Latin exam.

Wedekind’s frank but poetic treatment of controversial subjects including suicide, sex, and abortion has often caused this play to be banned or censored. However, although originally subtitled “A Children’s Tragedy,” Spring Awakening is ultimately life-affirming, full of stolen moments of beauty shining out from a confusion of pleasure and pain.

About the Artist

Sewer Rats Productions is an organized collaboration of theatre artists.


We are dedicated to producing and developing works that offer a multitude of perspectives on art as a whole.


We embrace or reshape convention in order to express the unmistakable beauty in this world despite its persistent ability to turn things upside down.


We pool together our artistic resources in order to create something unique and special.

Credits

  • Sarah BillingsDirector
  • Matthew DeCostanzaDramaturg
  • Sophie Porter-HyattLighting Designer
  • Troy SchipdamSound Designer
  • Sarah BillingsCostume Designer
  • Sarah ButlerSet Designer
  • Kelci SchlierfProducer
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