SPRING AWAKENING

About the show

Born in 1987, director and playwright Bonn Park often engages with canonical themes in his writing, searching their echo chambers for lost or future feelings about life; the interplay of musical genres is a central stylistic element of his work. In Düsseldorf, he cast retirees in the roles of the teenagers in "Spring Awakening." Regarding his interpretation of the play, he writes: "Spring Awakening" is about German teenagers at the end of the 19th century and the adults around them who dictate right and wrong. Industrialization is in full swing. While progress overtakes everyone, people are both fascinated and fearful. The future is coming very, very fast, and nothing is certain anymore, and nothing will ever be the way it used to be (*wink wink*). This play takes place precisely in this era. A few teenagers know absolutely nothing, not even where babies come from. And the adults around them know everything: what life is and how to behave. Perhaps I haven't been on this earth long enough, but at least in my lifetime, I'm experiencing for the first time a time when the rules of conduct don't come from the elderly, but from the youngest. All knowledge also comes from the youngest; it's there, in the technology they can operate. The elderly no longer have knowledge to pass on, only stories about feelings and how beautiful life could be. The monopoly on knowledge, on right and wrong, now lies with the young, who pay dearly for it with paralysis and fear of everything. That's why I'd like to stage "Spring Awakening" with retirees in the roles of teenagers and young actors in the roles of adults. Old, wrinkled teenagers, full of feelings and a thirst for risk and the pulse of the heart, tempered and captured by the dermatologically glossy skin of young people, full of fear and regulation.