Spring Awakening

"It's the bitch of living, and sensing God is dead!"

"You watch me, Just watch me,

I'm calling. I'm calling, and one day all will know."

—Melchior. "All That's Known," "The Bitch of Living," "Those You've Known"

Spring Awakening was originally a play written by Frank Wedekind in 1891, and the Broadway musical based on said play was written in the 21st century. The musical features music by Duncan Sheik and lyrics and book by Steven Sater. The original play was very controversial to audiences of that time period due to explicit sexual content, and didn't have its first production until 1906 in Germany. It wasn't introduced to the United States until 1917, when it premiered in New York City. It was nearly shut down due to it being a "pornographic work." The musical version premiered in New York off-Broadway in May of 2006. It then moved to Broadway in December 2006, and became a sensation much as Rent did in The Nineties. However, its closing date was January 19, 2009, after 888 shows.

The show revolves around a group of teenagers, fourteen in the play, of unspecified age in the musical. Melchior is a rebellious bad boy and proud atheist who hates the authority figures in his life. Moritz is Melchior's nervous wreck of a friend, anxious about his school work and ashamed of his sexual feelings. Wendla is a naive but curious girl who develops feelings for Melchior.

Melchior and Wendla have a sexual encounter (the consent of which is ambiguous), and Wendla becomes pregnant. Whoops. Moritz is disgusted with his sexual feelings, which distract him from his schoolwork, causing him to fail school and disappoint his parents who he can't turn to. He ends up committing suicide. Wendla's mother takes her to have an abortion, which Wendla does not survive. Two characters, Hanschen and Ernst, discover their homosexuality with one another. And, to top it off, two female characters, Martha and Ilse, are sexually and physically abused by their fathers.

In other words, Hilarity Ensues, although Your Mileage May Vary. Many fans will admit the music is better than the story, as the exploration of teenage sexuality and uncertainty might seem like old hat today (keep in mind, though, that the play was a groundbreaking example of modern drama and one of the first to address such issues).

Not to be confused with Catapult Nightmare.

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Tropes used in Spring Awakening include:

• Abusive Parents: Martha's and Ilse's. The song "The Dark I Know Well" is all about sexual abuse.
• Adults Are Useless: Almost everything any adult does is to the detriment of one of the teenagers. The only ones who may not qualify are the piano teacher and Hanschen's father.
• Age-Appropriate Angst
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: Melchior's a good example to the girls.
  • "Do you know what the whisper is? He doesn't believe in anything! Not in God. Not in Heaven. Not in a single thing in this world!" *All swoon*
• All Men Are Perverts: Or maybe it's just the age of the male characters.
• Anachronism Stew: Though still set in 19th century Germany, the lyrics to the musical are in a very modern idiom.
  • When a character takes out their microphone and sings, they are said to be in their own "Song World", not in 19th century Germany anymore but moreso in a modern world. Steven Sater uses this to explain the many topics in the show are still very much relevant to the youth of today: death, rape, sexuality, adolescent love, authority and places in society, hence why Hanschen references turning his stereo on in "My Junk", and the Workshop's version of "The Bitch of Living" mentioned wearing jeans, although the characters singing it where smartly buttoned into their stiff school uniforms.
• Anime Hair: Moritz.
• Anti-Hero: Melchior.
• Babies Make Everything Better: Wendla believes this. Seems Melchior did too.
• Big No: Melchior often does this (depending on who is playing him) when he discovers Wendla's grave.
  • Big Yes: Following "Totally Fucked", when Melchior is asked if he wrote the essay believed to have pushed Moritz over the edge.
• Bilingual Bonus: Georg's busty piano teacher, Fraulein Grossebustenhalter, translates as Miss Over-the-Shoulder-boulder-holder.
• Bi the Way: Hanschen.
• Blah Blah Blah: A lengthy section of "Totally Fucked".
• Break the Cutie: Everyone, but especially Wendla and Moritz.
• Counterpoint Duet: Moritz and Ilse's "Don't Do Sadness/Blue Wind".
• Dark Reprise: The penultimate song in the musical, "Those You've Known", which is a direct nod to Melchior's first song "All That's Known" at the very start of the musical. "Those You've Known" features reprises from "All That's Known" and "I Believe".
• A Date with Rosie Palms: Hanschen, accompanying the idea of murdering a girl, along with raping her. Yikes.
  • The murder is kind of compulsory, though, given he's masturbating to a depiction of Desdemona.
• Death by Newbery Medal: Or, in this case, by Tony Award.
• Death by Sex
• Double Entendre: The song My Junk sounds like a rather sweet innocent bouncy song about two teenagers falling in love, even though others don't think they're cool... that is until you find out that the song is actually just about the joys of masturbation.
• Driven to Suicide: Moritz.
• Dr. Feelgood: In the original play, this leads to Wendla's death by abortion pills.
  • In the musical, it's an illegal abortion by a Back-Alley Doctor.
• Dysfunction Junction: Big time.
• The Four Loves: Martha, perhaps? She is shown to have a crush on Moritz, as mentioned during the start of the musical (as well in the original play), despite the rest of her friends going completely goo-goo over the radical that is Melchior Gabor.
• Ghost Song: "Those You've Known", in which Wendla and Moritz appear to Melchior as spirits, to reassure him.
  • In the stage play (and heard from the musical's Original Workshop recordings), it's just Moritz, and the scene is decidedly far creepier as he actually tries to beckon to Melchior to join him in the afterlife... then the Masked Stranger appears...
    • Sater and Sheik composed two songs for the graveyard scenes before "Those You've Known". Their titles were "Clouds Will Drift Away" and "The Mirror-Blue Night (Reprise)".
• Grief Song: "Left Behind".
• "I Am" Song: "All That's Known".
• Innocence Lost: Martha.
• Intercourse with You: "Touch Me".
• Irrelevant Act Opener: The cut song "There Once Was a Pirate" was only seen performed in the Off-Broadway run.
• "It's Not Rape If You Enjoyed It": Wendla, although Your Mileage May Vary on whether it was actually rape.
  • It depends on which version you're looking at. The original play makes it fairly obvious that it's rape, while the musical makes it more ambiguous. See Anti-Hero above.
• "I Want" Song: "Mama Who Bore Me" and "Mama Who Bore Me (Reprise)".
  • "All That's Known", again. And "Touch Me" is most definitely about wanting sex.
• Love Hurts
• Lyrical Dissonance: At least half of the musical, including "The Bitch of Living" and "Totally Fucked".
  • "The Dark I Know Well" is an example of literal dissonance--the chorus is similar to many love songs, but it's sung very angrily and the main guitar riff is the prime example of a Scare Chord. ...Because it's about Parental Incest.
• Manic Pixie Dream Girl: It looks like Ilse is going to play this role to Moritz -- a free-spirited runaway and artist's model who doesn't let life get her down -- but it doesn't exactly work out. Her part in "The Dark I Know Well", and the nonchalance with which she accounts being threatened and harassed by her lovers in some versions, suggest she's a bit of a Broken Bird as well.
• Mind Screw: Budapest's version of said musical garnered a collective "what the fuck?!" from fans with their extreme and rather unnecessary alteration to the blocking/choreography/stage design that already existed. One rather creepy example is the new design of "The Dark I Know Well", leading to a very disturbing scene that is usually left to the audience's imagination.
  • Also, Ilse is seen carrying a plastic baby with her, Moritz and Ilse appear to have sex, "The Song of Purple Summer" is sung by the ensemble whilst wearing sauna-like towels, "The Bitch of Living"'s Latin class' wooden chairs are instead neon-coloured cubes (of course) and Georg actually gets up close and personal with his piano teacher who, in this version, is portrayed by an elderly woman.
  • And their microphones are taped to their foreheads.
  • They later totally reconfigured the production into appearing to be a free-form class exercise by a modern-day drama class, with the adults played by teens as well.
  • "The Mirror-Blue Night" pretty much evokes a Mind Screw reaction the first time you see it. The whole musical is not at all literal, and kinda makes you think on its themes.
• Miss Conception
• Mr. Fanservice: Well, since this is an angsty rock musical marketed to teens, and the majority of the cast was under twenty-five (not including the Adult Man and Woman) the males are particularly popular amongst the female fans, although Moritz and Melchior divided most of the fandom into two separate camps.
  • The original Hungarian production had Szilveszter Szabo as the Adult Man. Yes, they made him look apparently as creepy as they possibly could, but he's Mr. Fanservice enough outside of this show that there were fangirls there just for him, too.
• Ominous Latin Chanting: At the beginning, background and end of "All That's Known".
  • This is a neat variation on the usual Ominous Latin Chanting: they're chanting a passage from The Aeneid as part of a Latin class.
• Rape and Revenge: Suggested as Martha's desire in one of the Vienna productions. During "The Dark I Know Well", Martha is shown literally overshadowed by the sinister silhouette of her father, finally seizing a pillow and stabbing it with a knife as Ilse helps her. The pillow begins to bleed. It's popular fanon that Martha actually manages this outside of the time frame of the play, mostly because she's left such a woobie.
• Sanity Slippage Song: "Don't Do Sadness".
• Say My Name: When Wendla's mother drags her off to get a back-alley abortion, Wendla is confused and terrified, screaming "MAAMMAAAAAAAAAAA!" as she is dragged off.
• Sexy Shirt Switch: Ilse. In her last scene with Moritz, she wears nothing but a white shirt.
• "Somewhere" Song: "My Junk".
• The Talk: "In order for a woman to conceive a child... she must... love her husband, love him... as she can love only him! With her whole... heart! There, now you know everything."
  • Which leads to the heartbreaking scene where Wendla and her mother learn Wendla is pregnant, and Wendla doesn't understand how it could have happened as she isn't married. The worst thing is that this and only this seems to cause her mother distress even as she shrugs off all the blame.
• Teen Pregnancy: Wendla.
• Teens Are Monsters: Or, alternately, "Adults Suck and Then You Are One". The second Hungarian production played with this idea by putting the whole show in the Framing Device of being an improvised dramatic exercise done by a modern high school drama class. The two adults are also played by teenagers, and within the dramatic frame they quickly begin to go out of their way to hurt, confuse, impede and generally screw with the characters who are actually supposed to be teens, just because they can, and the other actors have to play along because these two are playing grown-ups and have to be listened to in-story no matter how malicious they get.
• Unwanted Harem: Melchior, of course.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: The gay couple Hanschen and Ernst. Most fans agree it's for the best, given how the rest of the core cast ends up.
• Wise Beyond Their Years: Melchior. He got it out of books, but he must warn you: it made an atheist out of him.
• Zettai Ryouiki: Wendla wears these in some productions, and they're very prominently displayed on the musical's poster.