The Writers
Steven Sater
Book & Lyrics
Steven Sater is a playwright, lyricist, television writer, and poet whose work consistently interrogates repression, taboo, and the damage caused by silence. Born in Evansville, Indiana, Sater is a summa cum laude graduate of Washington University in St. Louis. While in college, Sater was forced to jump from his balcony to escape a fire in his apartment. He suffered serious burns, broke multiple vertebrae, and suffered other injuries.
The months spent recovering inspired Sater to teach himself Ancient Greek and pursue the arts, so he continued his studies and received a master’s degree in English Lit. from Princeton University. Sater then took a job with an NYC literary agent but continued writing plays on the side. It was during this time that he joined the Soka Gakkai International, a Nichiren Buddhist organization, which brought him together with both his future spouse and Duncan Sheik.
Soon after meeting Sheik, they began collaborating on his play Umbrage, with Sheik providing the music for Sater’s lyrics. They continued collaborating on projects such as Phantom Moon and Nero, and then in 1999 Sater first conceived the idea for a musical adaptation of Wedekind’s play. Immediately, Sater brought the idea to Sheik, and in 2006, Spring Awakening premiered.
Duncan Sheik
Music
Duncan Sheik is an American singer-songwriter, composer, and actor. Born and raised in Montclair, New Jersey, he spent time between his father’s house and his mother's in South Carolina following their divorce. His grandmother, who had trained at Juilliard, introduced him to the piano, and he later took up the electric guitar. By the age of 12, he was playing guitar with some high school students in a cover band.
Sheik went on to study semiotics at Brown University and played guitar in a band with his fellow student Lisa Loeb. Following graduation from Brown in 1992, he moved to Los Angeles. Sheik was first well known for his debut single “Barely Breathing” (1996), which earned him a Grammy Award nomination for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance. In 1998, Sheik recorded "Embraceable You" for Red Hot + Rhapsody, a tribute to George Gershwin to increase AIDS awareness, and also "Songbird" for Legacy: A Tribute to Fleetwood Mac's Rumours.
He’s composed music for motion pictures and musicals, winning the 2007 Tony Award for Best Original Score and Best Orchestrations for his work on Spring Awakening. In 2009, Sheik released Whisper House, an album offering his version of highlights from Spring Awakening.
Photo Source: Wikipedia
Photo Source: Myrna Suarez
Frank Wedekind
The Original Play
Benjamin Franklin Wedekind (July 24, 1864 – March 9, 1918) was a German playwright, actor, and singer. He was born on July 24, 1864, in Hanover, German Confederation, Große Aegidienstraße 13 (today: Friedrichswall 10). Until WWI, when he was forced to obtain a German passport, he was an American citizen and traveled throughout Europe. Living most of his adult life in Munich, he had a brief period working in advertising in Switzerland in 1886. His work, which often criticizes bourgeois attitudes (particularly towards sex), is considered to anticipate expressionism and was influential in the development of epic theatre. A lifelong critic of German moral hypocrisy, he experienced rigid schooling firsthand and viewed education as a mechanism of discipline over care. Much of his work interrogates sexual repression, authority, and the social punishment of deviation.
Frühlings Erwachen (Spring Awakening) was written sometime between autumn 1890 and spring 1891, but did not receive its first performance until 20 November 1906, when it premiered at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin under the direction of Max Reinhardt. It carries the subtitle “A Children's Tragedy”. The play criticises perceived problems in the sexually oppressive culture of nineteenth-century (Fin de siècle) Germany and offers a vivid dramatisation of the erotic fantasies that can breed in such an environment. Due to its controversial subject matter, the play has often been banned or censored.
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In the English-speaking world, before 2006, Wedekind was best known for the "Lulu" cycle, a two-play series - Erdgeist (Earth Spirit, 1895) and Die Büchse der Pandora (Pandora's Box, 1904) - centered on a young dancer/adventuress of mysterious origin. In 2006, Frühlings Erwachen (Spring Awakening, 1891) became well known due to the musical.
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Wedekind became an important influence on the tradition of German satirical writing for the theatre, paving the way for the cabaret-song satirists Kurt Tucholsky, Walter Mehring, Joachim Ringelnatz and Erich Kästner among others, who after Wedekind's death would invigorate the culture of the Weimar Republic; "all bitter social critics who used direct, stinging satire as the best means of attack and wrote a large part of their always intelligible light verse to be declaimed or sung". At the age of 34, after serving a nine-month prison sentence (Festungshaft) for lèse-majesté (thanks to the publication in Simplicissimus of some of his satirical poems), Wedekind became a dramaturg (a play-reader and adapter) at the Munich Schauspielhaus.
He was known for having a promiscuous life until his marriage to Tilly Newes in 1906, when he became monogamous, but their marriage was still fraught with challenges including two attempts of suicide by Tilly. Close to the end of his life, Wedekind had an appendectomy, before immediately returning to acting. This led to a hernia, and Wedekind insisted that his doctor operated immediately. Complications from this surgery eventually led to his death on March 9th, 1918
Photo Source: Wikipedia