So I watched Spring Awakening last Sunday. And it was great.
Like, really great. Iāve only ever cried during a play maybe twice (not counting crying because I was the actor and I cried - which also only happened maybe twice) - once during a performance of Si Maria Isabella at ang Guryon ng Mga Tala and again during a performance of Mula sa KulimlimanĀ (but those tears were out of laughing too much). Ateneo Blue Repertoryās Spring Awakening (directed by the young [would you believe me if I told you sheās 28?], beautiful, talented, most perfect person to have ever been created by God Missy Maramara)Ā is my third.
But Iām not writing to talk about the staging of Spring Awakening. The staging was perfect in every way and I will say nothing bad about it ever. But as I was watching it I kept thinking about the text itself, and how it reminded me a lot of Lindsay Ellisā video essay on YouTube.Ā
If youāre not aware of how Spring Awakening ends, then spoilers hereon out.
At the very last musical performance the whole cast of Spring Awakening gets together to sing a sad song about their departed friends, their ultraconservative society, and how they pinky promise each other to not be like their predecessors. Which is great - no, really. It really was great.
But, see, therein lies one of my main concerns with Spring Awakening and with pretty much any piece of Broadway. The problems presented are institutional. The solutions? Itās not to reform the institution or to destroy it or to agitate for a better one (in this case, better educational institutions). No, itās to pinky promise that we as individuals will find individual solutions and not make too big of a ruckus when we do it.
I kept going back to Lindsay Ellisā video essay and how, in her own words, Rent - another Broadway musical - was aboutĀ ālooking pretty and doing as little as possible.ā Itās been a while since Iāve seen the video - or the musical, for that matter - so I do apologize if Iām misremembering things, but how does Rent end?
Mimiās about to die but then she doesnāt. Everybody sings and cries and holds on to each other tighter because thereāsĀ āno day but today.ā Thatās great. So... what about that AIDS crisis, huh? What about that homelessness and squatting situation youāve got going for yourselves? No? None of that? Alright.
This isnāt to say that Rent is a bad musical. Itās really great. But again - institutional problems, individual solutions. And the solution presented is to... what, exactly? Just live for the moment! Weāre all gonna die anyway because AIDS sucks!
Again, I may be misremembering that, so I do apologize if that isnāt the actual take of the whole thing.
And then I thought about some of the other famous musicals that Iām aware of and are very popular - Les Miserables and H/amilton (yeaaah I am NOT going to go down the rabbit hole of angering the whole H/amilton crowd by typing that thing in).
How does Les Mis end? Death all around. Lots of it. Lots and lots and lots of it. But the French Monarchyās still standing, Marius and Cosette are married - itās even implied (if my memory serves me correctly) that theyāre very much nobility or upper class now. So, great. The revolutionās just a distant memory by this time, and France seems to have moved on as though nothing happened.
Even H/amilton, with all its talk of revolution and actually following through on that revolution, seems to be very very supportive of the American system and has a lot of good things to say about America. Which is fine, of course, since it was written as a sort of fanfiction for non-white Americans written from the lenses of an immigrant. But then again it does have little to nothing to say about how only landed white males could vote and participate in politics, about how African-Americans are still slaves, about how the Native Americans are practically nonexistent in the whole story of the American experiment. The main sticking point A. H/am has with Jefferson and Madison isnāt that theyāre slavers (although it has been pointed out), itās that their politically opposed to him. Barely any mention of slavery save for a few passing glances. Not even a mention of how W/ashington was a big old slaver as well.
While Iām not saying that either plays are bad - theyāre not. Theyāre excellent, theyāve won lots of awards and theyāve sold thousands upon thousands of tickets. I am saying however that due to the need to be able to sell these musicals to producers and to be able to continue selling tickets to middle to upper class New Yorkers, the idea of a musical play outright calling for revolution and institutional change might be frowned upon - especially if that institutional change includes things such as higher taxes for the wealthy (which producers definitely are) and more regulations and smaller profits for multimillion dollar businesses (which Broadway is).
For all their talk of revolution and being that one play that gets the younger generation into talking about being anti-establishment, all of them very much advocate for the establishment and for not disrupting the status quo too much. For not beingĀ ātoo politicalā (yes I am well aware that all art is political).
But maybe I am just reading too much into this. But again, how does Spring Awakening end? Two dead friends, a failed miscarriage, and a pinky promise to do and be better than their parents. Schoolās still shit, societyās still shit. Ernst and Hanschen wonāt even be allowed to legally fuck until 1968 (or 1969, depending where in Germany they live - if they get to live that long) and, considering that the setting if late 19th century Germany, thereās a pretty good chance some of these kids are going to be dying in a trench in Northern France - but thatās not really the scope of the play, so. Again: Look pretty, and do as little as possible.