Tackling sensitive subjects

Mia Zottolo and Marianna Young, toward the foreground of this ensemble. ARTS BONITA / COURTESY PHOTOS

“Spring Awakening” at the Arts Bonita Actors Theatre poignantly tackles difficult and timeless themes with sensitivity and showcases a masterful collaboration of creative vision, direction and talented local actors.

When a show begins with a warning advising audience members that “this play contains explicit language, moments of violence, sexual assault, simulated sex, suicide, child abuse, bullying, teen pregnancy and death,” you know you’re in for a wild ride.

The performance doesn’t disappoint in the least.

This multiple Grammy award-winning musical was written by indie-rock musician Duncan Sheik and lyricist Steven Sater. It’s based on a play written in 1891 by German playwright Frank Wedekind, which was banned many times in Germany and America due to its heavy subject matter. The theatre offered the performances over a three-day period in late June.

The story plays out like a Greek tragedy, following a group of students who are experiencing varying versions of new sexual longings, erotic and violent fantasies and the many ruthless trials of adolescence. Unfortunately for them, the adults in the story offer little or no guidance, and the consequences are cataclysmic.

Lyndi Floyd-Sweet and Susan Chidester performed “Spring Awakening” at the Arts Bonita Actors Theatre.

The Hinman Theatre at Arts Bonita, a black-box venue, thrives under Artistic Director Joseph Brauer and musical Director Kody C. Jones. Their skillful staging and dynamic use of space, refined over six years at Florida Rep, significantly enhance performances. They create depth and the illusion of a proscenium arch using a wooden barn frame and several bleak, barren trees.

“I think part of that is Kody is really great at making things work and creating within limitations,” Brauer said. “You actually need to tell a story. If the work the actors are doing, the director’s doing and everything else—if that work is there, people will forget that they’re looking at branches and foam insulation around them. And I think people, right now especially, really want to use their imaginations because we have instant gratification now, especially with AI.”

Kyle Socarras and Michael Shelley.

In a preshow featuring a handful of children playing hopscotch and various other childhood games, blue and pink lighting cast shadows reminiscent of a horror movies over the otherwise innocent scene. At one point, I noticed the games the children were playing looped and began again in a creepy, repeating tableau.

As the show begins, older cast members replace the children on the stage, and we discover that the children are younger versions of the characters. The costumes are simple smocked dresses for the girls and school uniforms for the boys. The childishness of the costumes felt like a reminder that this play straddles the past and the future.

The opening song, “Mama Who Bore Me,” introduces us to Wendla, played eloquently by Lyndi Floyd-Sweet, who captures the innocence and pain Wendla experiences as she laments that her mother has given her “no way to handle things.” Those things being her emerging sexuality and the responsibilities and consequences that come along with it.

Kristin Voit

As other girls join her on the stage, they reprise the song together, and choreographer Sarah Drummer has ensemble members jerking and twisting like the backup dancers in a music video, like Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” the result is a spine-tingling, powerful scene that establishes the palpable intensity and angst that permeate this show.

As the story unfolds, we’re introduced to a cast of high-school students as they endure the tyranny of their headmasters, played by Susan Chidester and Kyle Socarras, who also played all the adult roles in the show with very believable condescending glares and harsh punishments. Each of the students is haunted by their own “awakenings” that unfold in the choreography of raucous songs as the ensemble stomps and gyrates as only frustrated, crazed teenagers can.

The adults in their lives punish and diminish them with impunity, and it all goes downhill from there.

Elise Pignotti, Brycton Archer, Lantz Hemmert, Lucas Campero, Michael Shelley and Eric Ortiz. ARTS BONITA / COURTESY PHOTOS

Melchior, played by Lucas Campero, is the charismatic protagonist who is more knowledgeable and rebellious than his peers because of information he has learned from reading books.

Then there’s Moritz, Melchior’s best friend, who is full of anxiety and confusion over his sexual fantasies and worried about his performance in school, skillfully played by Michael Shelley, who practically vibrates with the tension and panic his character experiences.

There’s Isa, a beautiful runaway from an abusive home, portrayed by Sophia Gurule and Hanschen, played by Eric Oritz, who has a wonderful seductive scene with Ernst, played by Matthew Eakins.

The music doesn’t do much to ease anyone into the darker topics, such as abuse, though, that’s for sure. In “The Dark I Know Well,” Martha, played by Marianna Young, sings, “But how will we know what to do if our parents don’t tell us? But I can’t tell about the dark I know well.”

With a cast of 27, it’s impossible to list them all, but each performer was incredible. The combination of tight and cohesive choreography, musical talent (some of the musical harmonies in the songs are extremely difficult, and the cast navigated the complexities beautifully), masterful direction and the investment and commitment of the cast to their characters make this show nothing short of riveting.

It is impossible to sugar-coat the fact that the story arcs in “Spring Awakening” are brutal. Even love is tainted with darkness and danger. It’s hard to miss the point when three scenes include the song, “The Word of Your Body,” with the lyrics: “I’m going to bruise you. You’re going to be my bruise.”

Jones makes an interesting directorial choice to add “shadow dancers” who perform modern dance sequences during many of the intense moments that were more graphically staged in the original script.

Reflecting on the essence of ancient Greek theater, Brauer emphasizes the Greek chorus as a pivotal device. It served as the collective voice of society, offering commentary and bridging the gap between the audience and the unfolding dramas. “So, you have people doing terrible things to their mothers and fathers and whatever, but the chorus is always commenting on it and negotiating between society and what’s happening so the audience isn’t disconnected,” Brauer elaborated.

Believe it or not, there is hope at the end of the show despite the tragedies the characters endure, as the ensemble implores us to believe that lessons learned on our respective journeys and the people we care about never leave our hearts—and that a more compassionate, supportive world can start with us.

Ortiz emphasized the importance of understanding young people, each other, and being empathetic towards others’ needs and situations in order to support their growth.

Intimacy direction

Exploring themes of oppression and miscommunication, innocence lost, betrayal, the legacy of sexual shame, denying young people a voice and withholding knowledge, “Spring Awakening” is just that—a coming of-age story that mercilessly illustrates the tribulations of navigating adolescence without proper guidance and support.

Brauer emphasizes the importance and relevance of performing this show in the playbill for “Spring Awakening.” The playbill addresses the alarming trend of book bans, suggesting that limiting education and information can lead to misinformation and a lack of understanding among young people. It reads, “Without a healthy dialogue surrounding sensitive subjects at home, young people often turn to whatever source of information they feel to be safe.”

To help the cast manage these difficult subjects and emotions through the rehearsal and performance process, Jones and Brauer brought in an intimacy director, Dr. Lusie Cuskey, who specializes in actors’ mental health consulting and intimacy direction.

“She gave a workshop and just went through the physiological processes of stress and the things that actors sometimes struggle with when they connect to a character and can’t disconnect or they go too far in an unhealthy way. It’s about normalizing these things, so people don’t feel alone if they’re having a hard time with something.

“And the other big thing she talked about was that it’s all about consent-based language and a consent-based process. I was very happy to have her come in and go through all those moments and, you know, kind of a safe setting. Kody sold it, so she was really able to work with the director beforehand, go through all the moments, go through the script, say, ‘What is the action here? What are we doing? What message do we want to send? What are we conveying?’ And then, she was able to work with the actors, and the actors were involved in the process. So, it wasn’t just her telling them, ‘OK, I want you to do this’ because it was like, ‘OK, we want this effect here. What are some things we can explore? Where do we feel comfortable touching each other? What’s off limits?’ The actors took a lot of ownership over it and were really involved in the process.”

The cast members found the process of working with an intimacy director helped them organically find authentic characterization.

Floyd-Sweet, who plays Wendla, said, “Having someone come in, especially from New York, and having someone who is really trained in intimacy and knows how to make it not personal, is really important. I mean, one of the first things that she taught us was how to separate character from actor. And I think especially with heavy shows like this, that is so important when you see we’re all, like, bawling onstage, and then we have to go back and pretend like it’s just another day.”

Ortiz, who portrays Hanschen, adds, “It’s very easy to just say, ‘Oh, do this,’ to tell people to do it, but that can cause a lot of tension with actors and make things really uncomfortable on stage sometimes and doesn’t add to the story or the message that you’re trying to give. With my intimacy director, it was more, we worked out exactly what we were doing on stage. It became more of, like, a choreographed routine, and we were able to just connect and worry about character connection and what we were conveying as opposed to ‘Oh, I’m about to kiss this person, right?’ No, I’m madly in love with them. There’s nothing else I can do but kiss them. That was the only motivation.”

The deep impact of this process is evident in the close relationships forged between cast members. During the curtain call, tears were shed onstage as these young actors acknowledged the end of an especially important experience in their lives.

“All I can think about during ‘Purple Summer’ is just how much I love these people,” Floyd-Sweet said. “The realization of this is the last time that I’m going to sing this song with these people on this stage, in this production, with the crowd that we had, you know, it’s something that we can’t put together the exact same way.”

Leveling up

Joseph Brauer started at Arts Bonita in 2021 at the end of the pandemic.

“There was no audience, no budgets, like, almost nothing to work with. No, in tech, like, nothing. The first show I did, which a bunch of these students were actually in, was ‘The Theory of Relativity,’ which is a musical nobody really knows. But we had a live band on stage, and it was just kind of an ambitious project. And then we did the original premiere of ‘The Lightning Thief’ musical—again, like, really, really low budget. So, it’s been a building thing over the last three years for me to increase the resources. At the same time, more and more people get on board, more people volunteer and want to participate. So, then you have a little bit more help with those ideas and fabrication, stuff like that. So, it’s been gradual, but every, you know, every show, we try to really, like, level something up,” Brauer said.

Brauer said, “One thing that we’re really seeing is a lot more students coming through our shows and our program and then going off and seeing a lot of success. I feel that it’s great for the community to get opportunities to perform, especially students that are going off to try to be professional theater artists in New York or London or L.A. or wherever. I think for them, it’s really important to get a full range of experience to have to draw from, because when you’re at an audition, it’s too late to go out and get that experience and bring it in. The cast of ‘Spring Awakening’ represent 14 different universities, which is so cool because you see the training they got here locally. You see training coming in from their universities wherever they are. And then they’re getting more training as they come back into this process.”

“Spring Awakening” is evidence that things definitely keep leveling up at Arts Bonita Actors Theatre. They’ll be producing “Hadestown” in the spring, and Kody C. Jones is adapting the best-selling book, “Boy from Block 66” into a play that premieres in early February. ¦

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