‘To really trust [...] we had to be open with ourselves and each other’: Community building through Spring Awakening | Intellect Skip to content
1981
Volume 14, Issue 1
  • ISSN: 1750-3159
  • E-ISSN: 1750-3167

Abstract

The purpose of this ethnographic study was to better understand how participation in St. Lawrence University’s (New York, the United States) production of served as a means of intimate and broader community building. This narrative ethnography investigated the director and a focus group of actors involved in the production of . Analyses of the data revealed four themes: content, interconnectedness, emotion and vulnerability and magic. St. Lawrence University students welcomed and embraced the language, the music and the subject matter presented to them in the content of . The willingness with which the students opened up to conversation and community continued to resonate with them in an interconnectedness that seemingly had more depth and more meaning than other productions they have worked on, including other musical theatre productions.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1386/smt_00021_1
2020-04-01
2024-04-28
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Cole, T., and Chinoy, H. K.. ( 1963), Directors on Directing: A Sourcebook of the Modern Theater, Needham Heights, MA:: Macmillan Publishing Co;.
    [Google Scholar]
  2. Creswell, J. W.. ( 2007), Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design: Choosing among Five Approaches, Thousand Oaks, CA:: Sage Publications, Inc;.
    [Google Scholar]
  3. Fishman, S.. ( 1970;), ‘ Suicide, sex, and the discovery of the German adolescent. ’, History of Education Quarterly, 10:2, pp. 17088.
    [Google Scholar]
  4. Freire, P.. ( 1993), Pedagogy of the Oppressed, New York:: Continuum Publishing;.
    [Google Scholar]
  5. Hoskins, V. L.. ( 2013;), ‘ Marketing musicals: Commercializing the avant-garde in Spring Awakening. ’, Studies in Musical Theatre, 7:3, pp. 35968.
    [Google Scholar]
  6. Jones, J. B.. ( 2004), Our Musicals, Ourselves: A Social History of the American Musical Theatre, Hanover:: Brandeis University Press;.
    [Google Scholar]
  7. Lampe, E.. ( 1992;), ‘ From the battle to the gift: The directing of Anne Bogart. ’, TDR, 36:1, pp. 1447.
    [Google Scholar]
  8. Lodge, M. J.. ( 2014;), ‘ Dance breaks and dream ballets: Transitional moments in musical theater. ’, in D. Symonds, and M. Taylor. (eds), Gestures of Music Theater: The Performativity of Song and Dance, Oxford:: Oxford University Press;, pp. 7590.
    [Google Scholar]
  9. McMillin, S.. ( 2006), The Musical as Drama, Princeton, NJ:: Princeton University Press;.
    [Google Scholar]
  10. Sater, S., and Sheik, D.. ( 2007), Spring Awakening, New York:: Theatre Communications Group;.
    [Google Scholar]
  11. Spring Awakening cast ( 2019a), focus group, Canton, NY:: St. Lawrence University;, 13 March.
    [Google Scholar]
  12. Spring Awakening cast ( 2019b), unpublished google doc , Canton, NY:: St. Lawrence University;, 23 February8 March.
  13. Stempel, L.. ( 2010), Showtime: A History of the Broadway Musical Theater, New York:: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc;.
    [Google Scholar]
  14. St. Lawrence University ( 2017;), ‘ Public health gets boost from Mellon Foundation. ’, St. Lawrence University news website, 19 October, https://www.stlawu.edu/news/public-health-gets-boost-mellon-foundation. Accessed 14 April 2019.
    [Google Scholar]
  15. Thomas, J.. ( 2018), Director’s Note, Spring Awakening, Canton, NY:: St. Lawrence University;.
    [Google Scholar]
  16. Thomas, J.. ( 2019), in person interview with the author , Canton, NY:: St. Lawrence University;, 15 March.
  17. Vandevender, B.. ( 2009;), ‘ A substitute for love: The performance of sex in Spring Awakening. ’, Studies in Musical Theatre, 3:3, pp. 293302.
    [Google Scholar]
  18. Wedekind, F.. ( 2007), Spring Awakening: A Children’s Tragedy (trans. J. Franzen) , New York:: Faber & Faber;.
    [Google Scholar]
  19. Wolcott, H. F.. ( 1994), Transforming Qualitative Data: Description, Analysis, and Interpretation, Thousand Oaks, CA:: Sage;.
    [Google Scholar]
  20. Hagen, Julie K., and Thomas, Jennifer. ( 2020;), ‘ “To really trust [...] we had to be open with ourselves and each other”: Community building through Spring Awakening. ’, Studies in Musical Theatre, 14:1, pp. 95111, doi: https://doi.org/10.1386/smt_00021_1
    [Google Scholar]
http://instance.metastore.ingenta.com/content/journals/10.1386/smt_00021_1
Loading
/content/journals/10.1386/smt_00021_1
Loading

Data & Media loading...

This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a success
Invalid data
An error occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error