How a Banned Play, Buddhist Chanting and Sense of 'Fun' Made Spring Awakening Bloom on Broadway

Look that the “Blue Wind” has brought to the Great White Way: Deaf West’s revival of Spring Awakening! The new production, which features deaf actors and is performed simultaneously in spoken English and American Sign Language, bows September 27 at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre. The story behind this new take on a modern classic spans 150 years, two continents and eight Tonys. Let’s get started.


Frank Wedekind is born in Hannover, Germany, though he spends a good chunk of his youth in a castle in Switzerland. Wedekind moves to Munich in 1884. He has an eclectic work history: advertising manager, circus secretary, journalist for a satirical weekly and cabaret performer. “Mostly,” John Simon explained in his review of Wedekind’s diary, “he would rise at noon, see people in the afternoon, have dinner with friends, go to a theater or cabaret or opera house, then drink in good company till early morning.”


He also produces his own plays. At his own expense, Wedekind publishes his first play Frühlings Erwachen. (You might know it as The Awakening of Spring or Spring Awakening.) The shockingly blunt drama covers the sexual awakening of three adolescents. However, the play doesn’t hit the stage until 1906 when it is produced at Berlin’s Kammerspiele. (Wedekind also plays the Masked Man.) Despite the content—and attracting the annoyance of German censors on this and his other works—the play stays in the repertoire for 20 years and makes Wedekind a household name.


Spring Awakening is published in the United States, but its path to the stage is as laborious as it was in Germany. The first production is three years later at New York’s Irving Place. The Times dismisses the German-language production—its “lax construction” and subject matter doom it to obscurity. In 1917, an English-language production comes to the Thirty-Ninth Street Theatre. The City Commission of Licenses demands the production shut down just before curtain. The New York State Supreme Court intervenes. The first and only performance features walkouts as well as “rollings of the eye” and “many sniggers,” according to The Times.


Time does not increase Spring Awakening’s mainstream appeal. When the English Stage Society puts the show on privately, it is still “heavily censored” by the Lord Chamberlain. A year later, the National Theatre’s attempt to mount a “full version” is so riddled with discord that there’s a “permanent split” between its board and creative team, led by Laurence Olivier. In 1974, the National Theatre finally produces the first uncensored version in British history. A 1986 production in Toronto, starring children in the leading roles instead of professional actors, features walkouts during previews. “I expected to be arrested when I put this on,” director Derek Goldby says. “One-hundred [walk-outs] a night is nothing.”


Singer-songwriter Duncan Sheik and writer Steven Sater were brought together by a higher power. Both belonged to the same NYC Buddhist organization. "I came to his house to chant with him," Sater told American Theatre, "and I stayed for five-and-a-half hours." First, the pair collaborates on a song for Sater’s new play, Umbrage. That, in turn, inspires Sheik’s 2001 album, Phantom Moon. What will they do next? Sater mentions working on a theater project, a prospect that holds little interest for Sheik. “There is a pandering aspect to a lot of musicals, the sense that they ought to be fun with a capital F,” Sheik later tells The New York Times.”


Sater persists. What if they did something “cool”? Sheik is game, but only if “the music is relevant to the culture at large.” At that moment, Sater recalls Spring Awakening, a play he first read in high school and later used for auditions. After reading the play, Sheik is sold. The pair snags a commission from the La Jolla Playhouse in California, but there’s a shift in leadership. Thanks to cutbacks and the events of September 11, 2001, the Roundabout Theatre Company and Connecticut’s Longacre Theater bow out. For two years, the musical has no producer. “It was a very difficult and arduous process,” admits Sheik, who frequently regrets getting involved.


Spring Awakening director Michael Mayer tells Tony-nominated actor and aspiring producer Tom Hulce about Sheik and Sater’s attempt to meld contemporary songs with the play’s 1890’s Germany setting. Hulce, a longtime admirer of Wedekind’s play, loves the idea. Years later, Sheik contributes the score and two songs (with Sater) to 2004’s At Home at the End of the World. Mayer directs the film, which Hulce produces. The month the film is released, Hulce offers to help the duo “complete the adventure…wherever it might take us.”


With Hulce on board, Spring Awakening gets a concert staging at Lincoln Center’s American Songbook series. That leads to a commitment from the Atlantic Theater Company. After an off-Broadway run, Spring Awakening opens at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre on December 10, 2006. This time The New York Times holsters its ire, calling the new musical a “straight shot of eroticism” and “haunting and electrifying by turns.” Spring Awakening wins eight Tony awards (including Best Musical), launches several careers (Lea Michele, Jonathan Groff), and runs for over two years.


David Kurs, the artistic director of Deaf West Theatre, approaches Michael Arden about directing a show for the Los Angeles-based company. Arden suggests Spring Awakening. Initially, Kurs balks at another production of the popular show, which has made its way to high schools. He comes around. “The musical moments are very clear,” Kurs tells American Theatre. “We have this wonderful dialogue switching into the musical moments, and that really helps our deaf audience understand the story.” The show plays two different engagements in Los Angeles and receives raves. “It's hard to enumerate all the ways in which the Deaf West's Awakening is so very, very good,” The Los Angeles Times gushes. A big fan of the production is Broadway producer Ken Davenport. “About seven seconds after the curtain went up,” he decides Deaf West’s show is headed east.


A roster of new and veteran actors (including Spring Awakening alums Krysta Rodriguez and Andy Mientus) is ready to unveil a bold new interpretation of a Broadway classic. What can audiences expect? “This is a really exciting new way to do the show,” Sheik tells Broadway.com. “And I love that the instruments are so integrated into the choreography. All that stuff has made it much more exciting to watch the show for me, personally.” Adds Arden: “It’s the most excited I’ve ever been about anything ever. It’s a company of 23 Broadway debuts, and so many incredible artists who would probably, unfortunately, never have the opportunity to be seen on a world stage. And now they’re going to be rock stars.”