Past Productions

Spring Awakening

A co-production between Grid Iron & The Traverse Theatre Company

By Frank Wedekind
Adapted by Douglas Maxwell
From a literal translation by Ella Wildridge

Main | Cast & Crew | What the Press Said

What’s the point in books if they don’t tell us the truth?  What’s the point in schools if they don’t teach us what we want to know?  All this education and absolutely no knowledge.

So…please…tell me.

Wendla just wants to feel something.  She wants shorter skirts and frills on her nightgown.  But most of all, Wendla wants to know!  Why won’t anyone tell her?

Melchior knows more than he’s supposed to.  To him, the euphemisms and the hypocrisy are ridiculous and insulting.  But what he’s learned from books doesn’t prepare him for the power of his and Wendla’s freed desires.

Spring Awakening is a major European play.  Since its first performance in Berlin in 1906, it has remained contentious in its portrayal of young people’s sexual relationships.  Douglas Maxwell’s lean and dynamic version sets the play in turn of the century Scotland – a time when Calvinist culture ruled an education system beginning to be influenced by the freer movements of continental Europe.

A giant classroom becomes a metaphor for learning about life and death, channelling the extraordinary force of adolescent sexuality as it roars against the harsh and fearful restrictions imposed by the adult world.

Grid Iron make a fitting return to the conventional stage for this production in The Traverse, the theatre building where they launched the company back in 1996 with their first ever production, Clearance by Anita Sullivan.

AGE RECOMMENDATION  14+

DATES & TIMES:

Friday 29 October – Saturday 13 November (7.30pm)
Wednesday 3 & 10 November (2.30pm)
Sunday 7 November (6pm)