Book & Lyrics by Steven Sater
Music by Duncan Sheik
Based on the play by Frank Wedekind

They were told not to ask.
They were told not to feel.
They were told not to know.
And then they discovered themselves.

Winner of 8 Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Spring Awakening is the groundbreaking rock musical that changed Broadway—an electrifying, deeply human story about young people struggling to understand themselves in a world determined to keep them in the dark.

Germany. 1891.
A generation of young people stands on the edge of adulthood—curious, passionate, frightened, and desperate for answers.

But the adults in their lives refuse to give them any.

Wendla wants to understand the world beyond the sheltered existence her mother has created for her. Melchior is intelligent, rebellious, and increasingly unwilling to accept the rules and hypocrisy of the society around him. His best friend, Moritz, is buckling beneath the crushing pressure of school, family, and expectations he fears he can never meet.

Around them, their classmates are experiencing their own awakenings—first love, desire, identity, fear, abuse, friendship, and the exhilarating possibility that life might be bigger than everything they have been taught.
Their world is rigid and restrained.
Their music is anything but.

When words fail them, the quiet world of 19th-century Germany explodes into a contemporary rock concert as these young people give voice to everything they have been forbidden to say.
But when adults replace honesty with silence, shame, and punishment, innocence carries a devastating price.

THE MUSICAL THAT GAVE A GENERATION A VOICE
With a soaring alternative-rock score by Duncan Sheik and an acclaimed book and lyrics by Steven Sater, Spring Awakening creates an extraordinary collision between past and present.

On the surface, these characters inhabit the buttoned-up world of 1891. Inside, their thoughts erupt through a fiercely contemporary score filled with anger, longing, confusion, sexuality, rebellion, and hope.
Featuring songs including “Mama Who Bore Me,” “The Bitch of Living,” “My Junk,” “Touch Me,” “The Dark I Know Well,” “Totally F*ed,”** and “The Song of Purple Summer,” the score transforms feelings these young people cannot express publicly into an explosive musical language all their own.

The original Broadway production became a cultural phenomenon, earning 11 Tony Award nominations and winning eight, including Best Musical, Best Book, Best Original Score, and Best Direction of a Musical.

AUDIENCE ADVISORY
Spring Awakening contains mature subject matter and is intended for mature audiences.
The production includes strong language, sexual content and situations, discussions and depictions of sexual abuse, physical abuse, suicide, death, abortion, mental health struggles, and other potentially distressing material.
Lee Street Theatre believes audiences should have the information necessary to make informed decisions about attending.