Spring Awakening, Frank Wedekind’s well known play written in 1891, deals with a group of adolescents in conflict with a conservative and moralistic society. Wedekind ‘s text ends with a conversation in a cemetery next to the grave of Wendla Bergmann, a 13 year old girl who died of a miscarriage suggested by her mother. Her lover, Melchior Gabor, receives a visit from his best friend, Moritz Stiefel, who committed suicide and now carries his head under his arm. Moritz killed himself because he failed his year at school and he was not able to reveal it to his parents. He comes to offer his hand to Melchior and invite him to die together. But Melchior accepts the hand of someone else, the “The Masked Man”, a springlike figure who prevents an additional tragic death.
This final scene contains the main issues of Wedekind’s play. The cruelty and love among pairs, the generation conflict, suicide, despair, are some of the main themes chosen by the interpretative tradition of this text.
By invitation of Centro Cultural de Belém, Teatro Praga returns, after some years, to a classic of dramatic literature in order to inscribe, in a text and on the theatrical canon, those who are excluded by a so called representative theatre.
We intend to work the lyrical expressionism of a shapeless adolescence, with its own language that tries to get away from a logic that divides reality in cynical and sincere or poetic and rational. Our approach will try to look beyond dualisms and build a reality that tackles invisibility and puts one in contact with a certain strangeness.
Spring Awakening will be occupied by a puberty that deceits “nature”, that refuses the subjection of one body to another, the construction of identities, and takes hold of an emancipatory rite that tries to defy all traditional standardizations. A place where it is required for several languages to coexist, where references are lost and reconstructed, where despair is life and suicide means victory. It is a performance that follows a demand of a humanity to be invented.
/ CREDITS
A performance by Teatro Praga
Text Frank Wedekind with translation by José Maria Vieira Mendes
With André e. Teodósio, Cláudia Jardim, Diogo Bento, Patrícia da Silva, Pedro Zegre Penim e com Cláudio Fernandes, Gonçal C. Ferreira, João Abreu, Mafalda Banquart, Óscar Silva, Rafaela Jacinto, Sara Leite e Xana Novais
Light Design Daniel Worm D’Assumpção
Set Design Bárbara Falcão Fernandes
Original Score and Sound Design Miguel Lucas Mendes
Costume Design Joana Barrios and Mestre Costureira Rosário Balbi
Production Bruno Reis
Executive Production Bernardo de Lacerda
Coproducion Teatro Praga, Centro Cultural de Belém, Teatro Nacional São João e Teatro Viriato
Artistic Residency and premiere 23 Milhas – Casa Cultura Ílhavo
/ CALENDAR
OPEN REHEARSAL > February 10, 2017 @ 23 Milhas – Casa Cultura Ílhavo, Ilhavo, PT
PREMIERE > February 24 to 27, 2017 @ Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon, PT
May 5, 2017 @ Teatro Viriato, Viseu, PT
June 2, 2017 @ Centro Cultural Vila Flor, Guimarães, PT
July 13, 14, 15,16, 19, 20, 21 , 2017 @ Teatro Nacional São João, Porto, PT
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