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By Julianne McShane Parents just don’t understand.
A rock musical coming to Park Slope this week will dramatize
what kids know across the land, showing the generation
gap as a village where adults are stuck in the 1890s, but their
rock music-loving spawn live in the present day. This version of
“Spring Awakening,” opening at Gallery Players on May 18, highlights
the eternal chasm between parents and their offspring through
live music, according to its director.
“The rock music is a metaphor for the way that parents just don’t
understand their kids,” said Nick Brennan. “The music represents
the way the kids are trying to communicate to themselves and their
parents about what’s happening to them, because the parents aren’t
on their level — it’s a generational difference.”
The musical, based on an 1891 play by Frank Wedekind and
given a rock score by Duncan Sheik in 2006, follows a pack of
teenagers in a religious rural village who take matters into their own
hands (sometimes literally) when their parents refuse to discuss the
birds and the bees, the director said.
“As these kids are hitting puberty and going through their sexual
awakening, they’re in 1890s Christian Germany, which in terms of
sexual thought was a very oppressive place,” he said. “Some of these
parents have told their children that the stork brings the baby.”
In the Gallery Players production, the kids form a band, and
some of the characters — who are almost all played by actors in their
late teens or early 20s — play live music on stage, giving the show
the feel of a rock concert, Brennan said. The young thespians play
acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bass, piano, drums, and the violin, all
while dressed in modern-day threads.
“We’re using all kinds of rock sounds, so it’s going to have a little
touch of the 1890s, but it’s going to feel very modern,” he said.
The songs are only performed by the youngsters, the director
said. The parents — all of them played by just two actors — are
stuck with regular speech, because the music symbolizes the conversations
about sexuality they are trying to avoid. The adult actors
also dress in 19th century garb.
The coming-of-age show will have the feel of a concert, but
the play has plenty of drama — the young characters deal with
gun violence, sexual harassment, and abortion, issues that keep
the more than century-old story relevant to today’s audiences, the
director said.
“We all go through this, everybody goes through the same
thing, everybody goes through that body change,” he said. “Even
though it takes place in the 1890s, it’s very 2019.”
“Spring Awakening” at Gallery Players (199 14th St. between
Fourth and Fifth avenues in Park Slope, (718) 595–0547, www.galleryplayers.
com). May 18–June 9; Thu–Fri at 8 p.m.; Sat, 2 p.m. and
8 p.m.; Sun at 3 p.m. $30 ($20 seniors and kids under 12).
COURIER L 24-7 IFE, MAY 17-23, 2019 87
Kids bop: The young characters
in “Spring Awakening,”
opening at Gallery Players
on May 18, wear modernday
outfits and sing rock
ballads, while their parents
wear 19th century garb and
speak in prose.
Photo by Julianne McShane
Rock of
ages
Teen characters
take the stage in
‘Spring Awakening’
at Gallery Players
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