The Spring Awakening Project

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A talking dress isn't out of place in the world of iconic figures peopling this play about lies parents tell their children; Santa, the stork, and the tooth fairy make appearances here, as do characters from the grave, sometimes in nightmares or fantasies. Characters, alive and dead, speak freely to one another, voicing their confusions about how babies are made and whether masturbation is a sin. What is love? Will everyone abandon me if I'm gay? Should I kill myself today? Or tomorrow? Is death any more lonely than life?

The Spring Awakening Project is loosely based on the Wedekind work that shocked 1891 Germans, when adolescent sexuality wasn't acknowledged. Today, a beautifully realized gay love scene doesn't shock theatergoers--at least in Ann Arbor. Sebacher developed TSAP partly from journal entries written by actors in this production, which in turn were inspired by thematically related prompts Medelis gave them during rehearsals. Partly to prevent actors from wallowing in their own experiences, a trademark of the self-indulgent Method school of acting, Medelis cast actors in roles created from the experiences of others in the cast. In this reimagining of Spring Awakening, Sebacher also drew dialogue from Wedekind and from his own imagination, and he created a new structure for all of it.