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From left: Wendla (Tich Wilson), Moritz (Chris Cook), Melkior (Alexander Keurvorst). Photo by Brendan Albano.

When choosing costumes for Spring Awakening, I thought back to the clothes my mother chose for me when I was a child – durable, washable, comfortable and sweet. The fabrics used in Spring Awakening definitely hearken back to the days of ‘play clothes’ – light cottons and linens suitable for climbing trees and running through fields. The color palate is all in soft earth tones and light pastels.  This is a very physical play for the actors to perform, and as such it’s quite apropos that the costumes would be suitable for young people to play in!

The fanciful aspect comes in in the ‘dress-up’ time in the story.  Laura and I have chosen to have the adult characters played by young actors in the style of children mimicking or mocking their parents and teachers.  The cast thought back to the markers of adulthood as seen through the eyes of a child – a pair of clicking high heels for Melchior’s Mom, a respectable tie for Melchior’s Dad, and a cruelly brandished cane for Headmaster Hart-Payne.  With each actor sporting a play outfit plus up to 5 extra items of clothing for their additional characters, this production will feature over 75 different costume pieces!

Right to left: Wendla (Tich Wilson), Ilsa (Odessa Cadieux-Rey). Photo by Brendan Albano.

I’m perched on a plastic chair positioned behind a folding table covered with pieces of paper, pens, pencils, empty coffee cups, bottles of water, notebooks full of illegible handwriting, and numerous copies of the same script. This can only mean on thing: it’s rehearsal time. Today we run all of act II for the first time and in the end it proves to be a very interesting evening. Suddenly the emotional journey the audience will be taken on during the second half of this play becomes clear and I find myself marveling at how well crafted this play really is. Scene four has to be hilarious and comical, because scene five is going to break peoples hearts, and scene six needs to be as sweet as it is, so that scene seven can go to a much darker place. And next rehearsal we tackle our first run of the whole show…

Laura McLean – Director

Pop a balloon, remove an article of clothing.

The night started off on a good note before it was even night at all when one of the neighbors came over to thank us for distributing notes notifying the neighborhood about the party. She then proceeded to tell me how much she loved the arts and donated $30! I ran into her the following day and she complimented me on how quiet the party was. (The previous tenants were all DJs and sound engineers and threw multi-day ecstasy-fueled raves, so by comparison we are angels).

DJ, kissing booth, balloon room, three kegs—over a hundred people came through our doors. Damage was fairly minimal.

And we raised enough money to cover set, props, costumes, front of house, and publicity!

The pictures really speak for themselves.  Check them out on Flickr.

Hurricane I.P.A.
Highland Scottish Ale
Precipitation Pilsner
Detailed descriptions

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SPRING AWAKENING
by Franz Wedekind
translation by Jonathan Franzen

JULY 21st to AUGUST 1st
The Havana Theatre

First performed under heavy censorship in Germany in 1906, Frank Wedekind’s play closed after one night in New York in 1917 amid public outrage and charges of obscenity. The play’s content was radical indeed: teenage sex, suicide, abortion, masturbation, sadomasochism. But even more radical was the unsentimental and brutally authentic comedy with which Wedekind treated it. The story traces the dawning sexual awareness of four teenagers, Melchior, Moritz, Wendla, and Hansy, who, in their painfully funny contradictions—they are at once too innocent and not remotely innocent at all—remain fresh and unsettling even in our own sex-saturated culture.

Directed by Laura McLean and Christine Quintana.

starring: Eric Biskupski, Odessa Cadieux-Rey,Veronica Campbell, Chris Cook, David Kaye, Alexander Keurvorst, Pippa Mackie, Matt Reznek, Tessa Skara, Naomi Vogt, Anna Wallace-Deering, Tich Wilson

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