Carnival of Soul

Adapted from an 1890s play in the early 2000s by Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater, the musical follows a group of small town teenagers as they grapple with hormonal urges in a repressive society. The plot explores topics of adolescence, puberty, sex, consent, academic pressures, depression and suicide to the backdrop of a contemporary rock score.

The production runs March 4-8 and 11-15 at UM’s Masquer Theatre (see box for details).

The original play was famously provocative when it was first performed in the late 1800s, and some of the content is still viewed as controversial today.

“It’s one of the shows that’s been requested by our students for years and years and years,” said John Kenneth DeBoer, interim dean of the College of the Arts and Media and director for the show. “The major thesis of the original play was that education, parenting and religion all failed young people when it came to dealing with the realities of growing from a child into an adult, particularly when it comes to emotions, sexuality and just a simple understanding of the way the world works.”

The main character, Wendla, is a young girl in her early teen years, played by UM sophomore Elle Fisher, who is noticing her mind and body changing and is anxious to find out what is happening.

“I think she’s curious about a lot of things … she can tell she’s starting to look like a woman and she knows from there that she then needs to know what it is to be a woman. She does a lot of asking of her mom to inform her about sex and inform her about these kind of things,” Fisher said.

One of the points Fisher wants to come across with her portrayal of Wendla is that she’s at the age where her curiosity about these questions is warranted, so she doesn’t want her to seem naive or whiny.

“I didn’t want her to be too precocious. I wanted her to just be an honest form that she genuinely just would really like to know this information because it’s something that’s been on her mind and it’s something that she feels like is important for her to know.”

The teens all experience a lack of education and parenting around sex and intimacy, which leads to consequences that unfold throughout the musical as they navigate the world between childhood and adulthood. Fisher said one of the main themes in the musical is the idea of consent and the teens’ confusion around it.

“A really big strong point of this is being consensual and I think that really shows through this scene with Melchior and Wendla when they end up having sex, and that is because he wasn’t very consensual about it,” Fisher said, adding Wendla says, “No, wait, stop, I can’t,” throughout the scene.

In the original 1890s play, Melchior, who is a relatively more experienced teen boy, rapes Wendla. However, interpretations have since varied, with Wendla sometimes giving explicit consent, but also where consent is more ambiguous.

“I don’t think that Wendla knew at all what she was getting herself into, and if she had known, I don’t think she would have done it,” Fisher said. “And so I think that it’s so big to know that when people watch this show, that that was not consent and that’s not OK.”

DeBoer said the cast and crew have had ongoing conversations about the sensitive nature of the topics covered and even worked with an “intimacy coach” throughout the rehearsal process.

The intimacy coach took the students through exercises during rehearsals to demonstrate consent and make sure all the actors were comfortable and on the same page, Fisher said. In one exercise, the coach had the students place their own hands on different parts of their own bodies to express where they were OK with being touched that day. Some of these exercises were incorporated into the choreography throughout the show, DeBoer said.

“(The musical) addresses issues of gender equity. It also addresses abortion and domestic violence, childhood abuse, sexual assault,” he said. “Those topics are difficult for audiences, but they’re also challenges for actors who have to compartmentalize themselves and find ways of being true and honest to what the characters are experiencing while also keeping themselves safe and coming out the other end of the production in a good place.”

DeBoer said students and staff have been working on “Spring Awakening” since the fall and have put their own twist on the acting to show how the themes of the musical are still relevant today. He encouraged the students to bring some of themselves to their roles, giving the production a personal, modern touch.

Fisher said DeBoer wanted to have these 1890s characters jump into the present day anytime there’s a musical number.

“What John’s big idea was with these roles was that he wanted every single time that we do a musical number for it to be us bringing ourselves into the musical number and kind of letting loose and taking ourselves out of this 1890s world and these 1890s bodies and thoughts” she said. “In this show I get to be Wendla, but I also get to be myself as Wendla when I get to the songs.”

The setting is very much in the world of the characters as written in the original play, DeBoer said, adding the costumes and set all reflect that time period.

“And then when the character’s inner life starts to externalize itself, the character jumps out of that time period in terms of the movement and the dance and the music and lives a more contemporary life on stage,” he said. “That’s a way of pointing to, this is what the character was going through in 1891 and this is what’s still relevant today in terms of these experiences and what we can learn from them.”

Fisher said one of her favorite numbers from the show is the song “Totally F——,” because the actors get to form a mosh pit and dance around the stage.

“It’s a pretty depressing show and so throughout, you kind of get very engrossed into what is going on and it can be a little hard to take, but you go into ‘Totally F—–‘ and you can kind of just let loose and it’s super fun,” she said.

Her biggest role yet, Fisher said she’s honored to play Wendla, but added the sensitive nature of the content has been a difficult thing for her to explain to family and friends.

“I get this overall sense of judgment from other people for my choice in playing a role like this, which is something that’s been really definitely pretty rough for me because I want people to be excited about the opportunity that I’ve been given,” she said. “I just feel like when you explain to someone that you’re doing a show where there is a simulated sex scene … there is just that sense of judgment that seems to come with that right away.”

DeBoer said Fisher was chosen for the role of Wendla not only because she has a beautiful singing voice, but because of her curious approach to exploring scenes.

“Wendla is a character that has a lot of questions about life and is looking for answers and she is failed largely by the people around her. I wanted somebody who could bring that sort of burgeoning maturity and curiosity to the role,” he said.

“Spring Awakening” is geared towards anyone interested in contemporary musical theater, DeBoer said, adding they also want to make clear it’s not a family show and he’s aware there may be people who might be upset by the content.

“I look forward to hearing from them if they are,” he said. “Sometimes it takes small actions to crack people’s shield. Even if one little lesson slips through or one brief moment of enlightenment jumps into them … then we’ve done our job.”