Content for this page was contributed by Patrick Mullen, Spring Awakening dramaturg.

In 1891, this guitarist wrote the play upon which Spring Awakening is based, Fruhlings Erchawen. Wedekind’s characters speak with poetic lyricism. Because of this, scholars frequently associate him with German Expressionism. Wedekind enjoyed a relationship with Bertolt Brecht, an influential artist in the development of Epic Theatre.  

“At his funeral, in Munich, there was a riot worthy of a rock star. Many of Germany’s leading literary lights, including a young Bertolt Brecht, were at the cemetery, but so was a mob of the young—members of a cultural and sexual bohemia that had recognized in Wedekind a freak with the courage of his freakdom—and these mourners stormed across the graveyard, rushing for good places beside the open grave. An unstable poet named Heinrich Lautensack … threw a wreath of roses on the coffin and then jumped into the grave, shouting, ‘To Frank Wedekind, my teacher, my model, my master, from your least worthy pupil!’ while a friend of Lautensack’s, a moviemaker from Berlin, filmed the whole thing for posterity.” 

It was Wedekind’s fervent supporters who pushed a judge to overturn the ban on Fruhlings Erwachen in 1912. In his ruling, the judge wrote, “The play shows how the forces of real life affect innocent young people at the age of puberty, with particular reference to their own incipient sexuality and the demands made on them by life, and especially by their schooling. They perish in the ensuing conflict, because their appointed mentors, their parents and teachers … fail to guide them with proper understanding, because they are prudish and lacking in worldly wisdom…”

Patrick Mullen, Spring Awakening dramaturg

In 2010, Egyptian theatre artist Laila Soliman staged Spring Awakening in Cairo, Egypt. Soliman envisioned the production as an intercultural collaboration and worked closely with her partner, German dramaturg and video artist, Julie Schulz.

To understand the experience of Egyptian adolescents, Soliman and Schulz spent months interviewing teenagers in Mokattam, southern Cairo. They interviewed both students attending Egyptian secondary schools as well as students attending a German language secondary school.  

Based on these interviews, Soliman rewrote much of the text, in favor of writing new scenes that oriented the work in the present, providing the characters the opportunity to discuss gender and sexuality within a contemporary context. To draw in her audience, she centered an early scene around discussion of a text commonly used in Egyptian schools to teach sex education, Science and the Life of the Human Being.  

Soliman and Schulz also cut the adult roles, reducing the presence of adults to disembodied voices. Adults spoke their lines from offstage, projecting their voices through amplified microphones.   

With the consent of the secondary school students, Soliman and Schulz also broadcast clips from the student interviews at various points throughout the performance.

In 2015 Michael Arden and artists of Deaf West Theatre revived Spring Awakening at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre on Broadway. This interpretation differed from those that became before it, as the artists conceived of the production as a bilingual one, intended for both deaf and hearing audiences.  

By integrating ASL into the choreography, scholar Cara Tovey argues, the artists amplify the kinesthetic quality of the performance, engaging the audience physically, and therefore eliciting what scholars Matthew Reason and Dee Reynolds have termed “kinesthetic empathy.” 

Tovey also sees the incorporation of ASL as a formal decision that mirrors the musical’s portrayals of the challenges of interpersonal communication. Audiences might think of this production in which form and content complement and reinforce each other.  

When thinking of how ASL changed the performance, Alex Boniello, one of the actors notes, “my favorite [scene] is probably the moment when Moritz interacts with his dad after he’s failed. The entire thing is signed, and I’m completely convinced that even if we didn’t have supertitles, everyone would know what’s going on in that scene.”