Spring Awakening at Ball State University
Dramaturgical Book
Spring Awakening is set in a time and place that looks and feels extremely foreign today. However, it explores some the underlying feelings of teens in an undeniably truthful way. It takes a look at the angst of adolescence that will leave its imprint on a person forever. Even in college, only a few years later, those feelings can linger. They can also seem like a distant dream. But it’s important to remember what those feelings were, and how intensely they were felt.
Let’s be honest, it sucks being a teenager. Everything is important, life or death. Parents and adults want you to grow up and take responsibility, but they also want to keep you sheltered from things. It’s so easy to feel trapped. Teenagers can have opinions, but they’re not often taken seriously. After all, what do they know? They don’t have the life experience. So parents and teachers go on doing what’s “best”, even if it slowly kills on the inside. In Spring Awakening, teens can’t be trusted with information. Although how different is that today? Add on top of this, a society that takes what is “best” to the extreme. They tie the bonds so tight there is no escape.
After all, being a teen, whether it be in the 19th century or the 21st is largely the same experience isn’t it? Just because their culture was more obvious about restrictions doesn’t mean the chains aren’t still there today. The feelings are the same. Student suicides are still being reported in the news. Teens are still getting pregnant. We still can’t control who we get a crush on. Child abuse, though a crime now, still occurs. Every two minutes someone is sexually abused. Every day we attempt to navigate the treacherous path that exists between childhood and adulthood. Adolescents exist in this weird sort of limbo, where everything is felt intensely, and everything is both extremely real and unreal all at once. At least today we have ways to answer our questions that they wouldn’t have had back then. But we’re still trying to figure out who we are. Today the mold may be different, and slightly less rigid, but there is still a mold. And we are expected to fit inside.
So many are so busy trying to stay within the lines, and it’s destroying them. Or when they do fail, it’s like they’ve proved a point, an inevitability. Never mind that everyone fails. Never mind that keeping you so locked in, so restricted you can’t breath makes you want to break out all the more.
You’re just children. What do you know? Nothing apparently. Which is probably why no one hears the scream. After all, teens exaggerate. But then, why does it hurt so much? What is that ache in the chest? Why are you being taught not to feel anything at the very point in our lives when everything is felt so truly and deeply? It’s okay to want, to desire, to wonder. It’s the high point of discovery and exploration and curiosity. But instead of exploring and learning, memorizing by rote is the way to go, being taught to a test. Learning what we are expected to be.
There is an intense longing to which you can’t put a name. All that’s certain is, you want so much. More than anything, you want to truly connect with another human being. It’s easy to feel alone, that no one can understand the confusion, anger, and pain. And that’s the greatest irony of all. Because that hurt is the common thread. So what makes one feel so isolated actually brings people together. Taylor Swift might sing about the “teardrops on her guitar,” and it seems sentimental or even stupid, forgetting how awful it feels to not be wanted when you want so much. Or how confusing and exhilarating the opposite can be, to be wanted by someone for the first time. The thrill. The novelty.
In many ways Spring Awakening serves as a cautionary tale. All of the extra heartbreak was avoidable. The play builds an extremely rigid, unforgiving society. It’s easy to call it repressive, more accurate to call it soul killing. But even here, the adolescent spirit finds a way to endure, to express itself. In music, the rules don’t apply. The world can be torn down, and the words adolescents been screaming inside their heads for hundreds of years escape. And that angst is timeless. The scenes lure the audience into a false sense of security. After all, these events are horrible, but they were so long ago. Two centuries later we know better. Then the music reminds us that might not be the case after all, and all bets are off. Spring Awakening takes place in a very specific time and place, but the resonance it carries for adolescents, and even adults, today is undeniable.
Teens truly are fucked aren’t they? ‘Cause even playing by the rules isn’t good enough. And they’re going to end up choking on all the words never said, simmering under the surface. You can only suppress so long until you explode. And then the game is up. Everyone’s just pretending anyway. Lying to the adults that you agree and understand. Lying to yourself that they don’t care, don’t feel it. You’ll explode, becoming the moody, irresponsible teenager in some perverse self-fulfilling prophecy. And maybe it’s better to explode. Because if not, you’ll implode, and the broken pieces will cut you up from the inside.
But, despite everything, for the most part, we believe and we endure. We have to believe that it will get better. That the pain will ease. The longing subside. The world might start to make sense. Because, if we don’t believe this, all hope is gone. There’s nothing to cling to. Nothing to dream of. And then it’s over.
Welcome to the dramaturgical book for Ball State University's production of Spring Awakening. We’re going to build and explore this world of amplified teen angst within 19th century Germany together, while also remembering it all runs directly parallel to the feelings of American teens today.
Let’s be honest, it sucks being a teenager. Everything is important, life or death. Parents and adults want you to grow up and take responsibility, but they also want to keep you sheltered from things. It’s so easy to feel trapped. Teenagers can have opinions, but they’re not often taken seriously. After all, what do they know? They don’t have the life experience. So parents and teachers go on doing what’s “best”, even if it slowly kills on the inside. In Spring Awakening, teens can’t be trusted with information. Although how different is that today? Add on top of this, a society that takes what is “best” to the extreme. They tie the bonds so tight there is no escape.
After all, being a teen, whether it be in the 19th century or the 21st is largely the same experience isn’t it? Just because their culture was more obvious about restrictions doesn’t mean the chains aren’t still there today. The feelings are the same. Student suicides are still being reported in the news. Teens are still getting pregnant. We still can’t control who we get a crush on. Child abuse, though a crime now, still occurs. Every two minutes someone is sexually abused. Every day we attempt to navigate the treacherous path that exists between childhood and adulthood. Adolescents exist in this weird sort of limbo, where everything is felt intensely, and everything is both extremely real and unreal all at once. At least today we have ways to answer our questions that they wouldn’t have had back then. But we’re still trying to figure out who we are. Today the mold may be different, and slightly less rigid, but there is still a mold. And we are expected to fit inside.
So many are so busy trying to stay within the lines, and it’s destroying them. Or when they do fail, it’s like they’ve proved a point, an inevitability. Never mind that everyone fails. Never mind that keeping you so locked in, so restricted you can’t breath makes you want to break out all the more.
You’re just children. What do you know? Nothing apparently. Which is probably why no one hears the scream. After all, teens exaggerate. But then, why does it hurt so much? What is that ache in the chest? Why are you being taught not to feel anything at the very point in our lives when everything is felt so truly and deeply? It’s okay to want, to desire, to wonder. It’s the high point of discovery and exploration and curiosity. But instead of exploring and learning, memorizing by rote is the way to go, being taught to a test. Learning what we are expected to be.
There is an intense longing to which you can’t put a name. All that’s certain is, you want so much. More than anything, you want to truly connect with another human being. It’s easy to feel alone, that no one can understand the confusion, anger, and pain. And that’s the greatest irony of all. Because that hurt is the common thread. So what makes one feel so isolated actually brings people together. Taylor Swift might sing about the “teardrops on her guitar,” and it seems sentimental or even stupid, forgetting how awful it feels to not be wanted when you want so much. Or how confusing and exhilarating the opposite can be, to be wanted by someone for the first time. The thrill. The novelty.
In many ways Spring Awakening serves as a cautionary tale. All of the extra heartbreak was avoidable. The play builds an extremely rigid, unforgiving society. It’s easy to call it repressive, more accurate to call it soul killing. But even here, the adolescent spirit finds a way to endure, to express itself. In music, the rules don’t apply. The world can be torn down, and the words adolescents been screaming inside their heads for hundreds of years escape. And that angst is timeless. The scenes lure the audience into a false sense of security. After all, these events are horrible, but they were so long ago. Two centuries later we know better. Then the music reminds us that might not be the case after all, and all bets are off. Spring Awakening takes place in a very specific time and place, but the resonance it carries for adolescents, and even adults, today is undeniable.
Teens truly are fucked aren’t they? ‘Cause even playing by the rules isn’t good enough. And they’re going to end up choking on all the words never said, simmering under the surface. You can only suppress so long until you explode. And then the game is up. Everyone’s just pretending anyway. Lying to the adults that you agree and understand. Lying to yourself that they don’t care, don’t feel it. You’ll explode, becoming the moody, irresponsible teenager in some perverse self-fulfilling prophecy. And maybe it’s better to explode. Because if not, you’ll implode, and the broken pieces will cut you up from the inside.
But, despite everything, for the most part, we believe and we endure. We have to believe that it will get better. That the pain will ease. The longing subside. The world might start to make sense. Because, if we don’t believe this, all hope is gone. There’s nothing to cling to. Nothing to dream of. And then it’s over.
Welcome to the dramaturgical book for Ball State University's production of Spring Awakening. We’re going to build and explore this world of amplified teen angst within 19th century Germany together, while also remembering it all runs directly parallel to the feelings of American teens today.
Table of Contents: Topics and Subsections
Expressionism
- Expressionism as an Artistic Form
- Wedekind
- Spring Awakening
The Musical
Education
- Atmosphere and Discipline
Sexuality
- Masturbation
- Homosexuality
Adolescence
Religion
The Dark I Know Well
- Abuse
- Suicide
- Abortion
Glossary
Visit www.springawakeningbsueducational.weebly.com/ for the educational website also developed for the production.