Spring Awakening

It’s never easy being a kid growing up.

All those hormones. All those urges and questions and doubts. All those adults with no— or wrong—answers.

Spring Awakening (book and lyrics by Steven Sater and music by Duncan Sheik, famous for his '90s hit “Barely Breathing”), is a rock-musical adaptation of Frank Wedekind's 1891 controversial (and frequently banned) play The Awakening of Spring, about such subjects as child abuse, puberty, sex, rape, abortion, suicide and the sexually oppressive culture of Germany at the time—which he blamed for such ignorance and tragedy. We're so much more enlightened now, right?

Falcon's Eye Theatre will present Spring Awakening from Thursday, April 10, through Sunday, April 13, at the Harris Center for the Arts at Folsom Lake College. It's the first play the combination campus and community-theater company really wanted to put on the main stage at the center, said David Harris, Falcon's Eye founder and Folsom Lake College theater department chair.

Still, it's daunting. First, there's the cost: Falcon's Eye, despite its association with the college, still has to rent the theater. Then there's the sizable audience that will need to be attracted. “We're closing off the upper level, but that still leaves 500 seats for five performances in a single weekend,” Harris said. “It's certainly our biggest undertaking.”

Harris said musicals “are not my forte,” yet he found Spring Awakening intriguing, “more edgy and adult.” And he said, “As a college theater, we expect college students to be a main part of our audience, [but] I don't know anyone over 25 who actually dislikes the play.”