New Broadway Raves for Spring Awakening's Choreographer

Spring Awakening's Tony winning choregrapher Bill T. Jones has a new Broadway triumph with Fela! which he directed, choreographed, co-wrote and helped conceive.  You can read a selection of reviews here:  The New York Times, New York Post, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter.  Jones' Tony for  Spring Awakening's choreography was one of eight that the musical won in 2007.  Spring Awakening plays at the Center through Nov. 29.

A Glee-ful Spring Awakening Cast Party

After Thursday's performance of Spring Awakening, cast members and lucky guests partied at the Sports Club/LA in Irvine to celebrate the show's Orange County engagement. There was even more to celebrate when two former Spring Awakening alums, Jenna Ushkowitz who currently stars in the hit television show Glee and Skylar Astin who played Georg in the musical, stopped by to hang with their stage friends (both are pictured above with Lucas Wells). A big thanks to everyone at the Sports Club/LA in Irvine for hosting a rockin' evening.

Pictured above: Krystina Alabado, Krista Pioppi, Christy Altomare

Pictured above: Freddy Hall, Alon Bisk, Marques Walls, Ben Fankhausen
Pictured above: Kristen Lee Rosenfeld, Steffi D
All photos by Joesan Diche.

Spring Awakening Takes on Bloomingdale's South Coast Plaza

Yesterday, lucky shoppers at Bloomingdale’s South Coast Plaza were treated to a free performance by Spring Awakening cast members Steffi D and Taylor Trensch. Afterwards, Steffi and Taylor stuck around to greet fans and sign posters. Click the video above to watch Steffi and Taylor sing “Don’t Do Sadness” and “Blue Wind.” A big thanks to Bloomingdale’s South Coast Plaza for hosting the performance. There’s still time to catch Steffi and Taylor in Spring Awakening – the show runs through the 29th.

Fans Meet Stars of Spring Awakening

Nearly 200 audience members stayed for a special post-performance Talkback with members of the cast of Spring Awakening on Wednesday, November 18. Almost a third of the fans were members of the Center’s Guilty Ones, a street team who helped us to share their passion and excitement about Spring Awakening with the community. The cast answered questions about their theater training, the audition process with the producers and composer, rehearsing for the tour and future dreams. Talkbacks are a great behind-the-scenes experience, and the Center looks forward to doing more with other shows and artists. A second Spring Awakening Talkback is scheduled for the Tuesday, November 24th performance.

Photos by Joesan Diche. Cast photo ids from l to r: Steffi D, Taylor Trensch, Andy Mientus, Krista Pioppi, Christy Altomare.

Spring Awakening Lights it Up

Jacob Matsumiya, Center Scene's guest blogger, is back with his review of Spring Awakening. Glee fans may be able to figure out Jacob's inspiration for his review. Spring Awakening continues through Sunday, November 29.

Jacob writes:

“We light a candle and hope that it glows…”

Emanating from the stage last night was a mixture of exuberant joy, an illuminating spectrum of bright lights, and pangs of pure sadness. Yup. Spring Awakening has finally arrived.

Based on Frank Wedekind’s 1891 play, Spring Awakening is a musical that combines the universal and timeless emotions of youth with modern musical sensibility. The result is nothing short of pure genius.

Had the creative team updated Wedekind’s play to modern times, though the themes might have resonated, the plot would have seemed out-of-place. Had they styled the music to be of the 1890’s time period it would have felt distant. But in fusing together the groundbreaking play (which has lost none of its relevance nearly 100 years later) with music that speaks to today’s youth they have crafted Spring Awakening to truly convey and express the dreadful desires and frustrations of youth. All of us have experienced the intense emotions associated with first loves, self-discovery, repression, denial, abuse, or rejection. The score of Spring Awakening so wonderfully and poignantly captures these emotions through the magic of musical theater.

In musical theater, when a character has no other way of expressing their emotion they begin to sing. Songs have the ability to say things we can’t, shouldn’t, or don’t know how to say. It fulfills that burning need in all of us to express something so powerful that it gnaws at the very fiber of our being. The characters in Spring Awakening do so with such brilliant accuracy that one can’t help but be moved. For me Spring Awakening is pure joy and pure sadness. The exuberance of youth personified mixed with the utter sadness that can haunt us all. It is the very essence of classic musical theater storytelling. Like the characters that inhabit it, Spring Awakening is dying to share with you its wisdom, if you only open yourself up to hear it. It dares to shed light on the darkness of emotions repressed. And I applaud them for their sheer tenacity and brilliance.

Bravo to the cast, crew, and creators of Spring Awakening. Your candle is still very much burning brightly some 3,000 miles from Broadway.

(Photo: Christy Altomare and Jake Epstein by Joan Marcus )

"Spring" Time at Bloomingdale's

Save the date! Cast members from the Tony®-winning Broadway musical Spring Awakening will give a free in-store performance at Bloomingdale’s South Coast Plaza on Thursday, November 19 at 3 p.m. The performance will take place at the cosmetics entrance on the second level of the store. Cast members will sing "Don’t Do Sadness” and “Blue Wind.” The original cast recording of Spring Awakening won the 2008 Grammy® Award for Best Musical Show Album.

Additionally, anyone who spend $200 in the store's Y.E.S. Contemporary Sportswear Department between Saturday, November 14 and Thursday, November 19 will receive a 50 percent discount coupon for selected performances of Spring Awakening. The musical makes its Orange County debut November 17-29. (Photo credit: Paul Kolnik.)

Stars of Broadway's Spring Awakening reunite on Glee

EW.com reports that Tony nominee Jonathan Groff will again join forces with his Spring Awakening co-star Lea Michele on upcoming episodes of the hit Fox musical series Glee.  The national tour of Spring Awakening plays the Center November 17 - 29.

See Who’s Guilty

More than 1,300 local fans of the musical Spring Awakening have signed up for the Guilty Ones – that’s more Guilty Ones than any other city in the country! Part fan club, part street team, Guilty Ones have been busy sharing their love of the show by blogging, recruiting friends, creating online videos and many other creative ways to generate buzz about Spring Awakening’s debut in Orange County November 17 - 29. For all their hard work, Guilty Ones will have the chance to win free tickets to the show, autographed swag and a meet and greet with cast members. If you’d like to join, click here.

The Guilty Ones had a rockin’ kick off party earlier this month. Click for photos of everyone in their free Spring Awakening t-shirts. Also below are some links to fun videos and photos.

Click to see a video of "Mama Who Bore Me"
Click to see a video of "My Junk"
Click to see photos of Guilty Ones out and about

Can’t wait for more! Thank you Guilty Ones!

Banned...and in good company

In recognition of Banned Books Week (BBW) - September 26−October 3, 2009 - and our upcoming presentation of the critically acclaimed musical Spring Awakening, we offer the following quiz:

Which of the following works of theater have been banned?

Oedipus Rex by Sophocles
Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
Tartuffe by Molière
Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Marriage of Figaro by Pierre Augustin Caron De Beaumarchais
A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen
The Importance Of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
The Mikado by Gilbert and Sullivan
The Three-Penny Opera by Bertolt Brecht
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Kismet by Edward Knoblock
Long Day’s Journey Into Night by Eugene O’Neill
A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
West Side Story by Arthur Laurents, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim
A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry
Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf by Edward Albee
Jesus Christ Superstar by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber
Hair by Gerome Ragni, James Rado, and Galt McDermott
Angels in America: Millennium Approaches by Tony Kushner
Fences by August Wilson
Master Harold and the Boys by Athol Fugard
Brighton Beach Memoirs by Neil Simon
Miss Saigon by Alain Boubil, Claude-Michel Schonberg, Richard Maltby, Jr.

If you said ALL of these plays have been banned…you are correct!

Spring Awakening, the winner of eight 2007 Tony Awards including best musical, is based on Frank Wedekind’s controversial 1891 drama, a work so daring in its depiction of teenage
self-discovery it was banned from the stage and not performed in its complete form in English for nearly 100 years. The musical plays Segerstrom Hall November 17 - 29, 2009.

BBW, an annual event held during the last week of September, celebrates the freedom to read and the power of literature.