SPRING AWAKENING

by FRANK WEDEKIND in a new adaptation by Anya Reiss

April 16 – May 2, 2027

Budding consciousness, innocence, inexperience and rebellion ignite in this darkly electrifying adaptation of Spring Awakening. When no one speaks, youth pay the price.

Searching for light, but kept in the dark. 

Unnerving, entertaining, funny and dark, Wedekind’s definitive play about youth caused riots when it exploded onto the stage in 1906 and has lost none of its provocative power. Powerfully updated by award-winning playwright Anya Reiss, this new version examines the exuberance, intensity and confusion of teenage life today. Spring Awakening shatters the silence about how young people are shaped for their future by a generation that doesn’t understand them.

Additional Programming:

Open Rehearsal (for Subscribers Only): Wednesday, April 7, 2027 at 6:30 PM

Community Matinee Preview ($12/Ticket): Thursday, April 15, 2027 at 10:00 AM

Opening Night Reception: Friday, April 16, 2027 at 7:30 PM

Pay-What-You-Will Performances*: 
Saturday, April 17, 2027 at 2:00 PM
Saturday, April 17, 2027 at 7:30 PM
Saturday, April 24, 2027 at 7:30 PM
Saturday, May 1, 2027 at 7:30 PM
*Purchase in-person at the Box Office on the day of the performance. Seating subject to availability.

Speaker Series: Sunday, April 18, 2027 at 1:30 PM

Talk Back Thursdays: Engage with the Creators! After every Thursday performance, stay for a free Talk Back where members of the creative team discuss their roles and answer your questions about their creative journey.

Thursday, April 22, 2027 at 7:30 PM
Thursday, April 29, 2027 at 7:30 PM

About the Playwright:

Anya Reiss began her writing career in theatre with her debut play Spur of the Moment at the Royal Court Theatre in 2010. She won the Most Promising Playwright Award at both the Critics Circle and Evening Standard awards that year, along with Best New Play at the TMAs.

Her follow-up play The Acid Test was staged at the same venue the next year, with her National Theatre Connections play Forty-Five Minutes following in 2013. Her original version of The Seagull, directed by Russell Bolam, was staged in 2012 at the Southwark Playhouse, and they worked on two further modern-day Chekhovs together – first at the same venue, then at the St James Theatre. Since then, Anya’s version of Spring Awakening has toured with Headlong, and her adaptation of Oliver Twist was at the Regents’ Park Theatre in 2017.

Anya’s new version of The Seagull – directed by Jamie Lloyd, and starring Emilia Clarke – opened at the Harold Pinter Theatre in the summer of 2022.

In television, Anya was the creator, executive producer, and writer of the Starz series Becoming Elizabeth. Previously she was a lead writer on Channel 4’s Ackley Bridge and a core writer on EastEnders.

Frank Wedekind (born July 24, 1864, Hanover [Germany]—died March 9, 1918, Munich) was a German actor and dramatist who became an intense personal force in the German artistic world on the eve of World War I. A direct forebear of the modern Theatre of the Absurd, Wedekind employed episodic scenes, fragmented dialogue, distortion, and caricature in his dramas, which formed the transition from the realism of his age to the Expressionism of the following generation.

Wedekind’s characteristic theme in his dramas was the antagonism of the elemental force of sex to the philistinism of society. In 1891 the publication of his tragedy Frühlings Erwachen (The Awakening of Spring, also published as Spring Awakening) created a scandal. Successfully produced by Max Reinhardt in 1905, the play is a series of brief scenes, some poetic and tender, others harsh and frank, dealing with the awakening of sexuality in three adolescents. In the Lulu plays, Erdgeist (1895; Earth Spirit) and Die Büchse der Pandora (1904; Pandora’s Box), he extended the theme of sex to the underworld of society and introduced the eternal, amoral femme fatale Lulu, who is destroyed in the tragic conflict of sexual freedom with hypocritical bourgeois morality. These two tragedies inspired Alban Berg’s opera Lulu. The character of Lulu is most identified with actress Louise Brooks, who portrayed her in G.W. Pabst’s masterful silent film version of Die Büchse der Pandora (1929).

Wedekind’s other plays include Der Kammersänger (1899; The Court Singer, also translated as The Tenor and The Singer), Der Marquis von Keith (1900; The Marquis of Keith), König Nicolo oder So ist das Leben (1901; Such Is Life), Hidalla (1904), and Franziska (1912; Eng. trans. Franziska). He also wrote poetry, novels, songs, and essays. His diary was posthumously published as Die Tagebücher: ein erotisches Leben (1986; Diary of an Erotic Life).

About the Director / MD / Choreo / Cast: