By Cris Franco

Founded in 1965, East West Players (EWP) is Los Angeles’ longest running theater company dedicated to raising the visibility of the Asian-American experience by presenting inventive world-class productions and developing artists of color.  For decades, their groundbreaking productions such as Pippin (infused with a hip-hop, anime aesthetic) and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (set in the ancient Pacific Islands) have ignited L.A.’s theatrical landscape with daring interpretations and non-traditional casting. EWP continues that tradition with their upcoming take on Spring Awakening (October 26-November 19, 2023)  featuring a POC (people of color) cast including Latinx actors. 

Director Tim Dang said that it is with intention that many of the cast are of mixed heritage, mixed-race, bi-racial, hapa, or bi-cultural. Noting that these young performers represent today’s primarily POC generation, Dang continued that the balance of power shifting to this burgeoning majority makes this new EWP production of the 2007 Tony Award-winning musical Spring Awakening significantly different than prior productions.  Dang has assembled a distinguished multicultural cast, including Spanish-speaking actors Mia Sempertegui and Eric Renna.

Dang added that his casting is more intentional than colorblind. The mission of East West Players is to portray the contemporary Asian-American experience as it truly exists — not in a vacuum, or a silo, or a monolithic community. This production emphasizes the intersectionality of today’s youth and that his casting is “race conscious and race specific.”

Boasting a Tony Award-winning score by rock composer Duncan Sheik, Spring Awakening took Broadway by storm in 2006.  Originally set in 1891 Germany, repressed, adolescent students stumble into adulthood as clumsily as they do into each other’s arms. With parents fearful of instructing their children in life’s sexual realities, two desirous teens, Melchior and Wendla, surrender to their mutual attraction. Nature takes its course and so does their unforgiving society. This generation-defining musical is a rock anthem to all the “guilty ones,” poignantly exploring the dark, passionate, and twisting journey from adolescence to adulthood.

Spring Awakening girl characters (Photo Credit: EWP)

EWP has historically presented their casts with opportunities to tackle roles that they might have otherwise been passed-over by most theatres.  The cast of Spring Awakening is led by Mia Sempertegui (Sister Act, Beehive: The 60’s Musical) as Wendla Bergman, Thomas K. Winter (The Secret Garden, The Last Five Years) as Melchior Gabor, Marcus Phillips (The Prom Nat’l Tour, La Mirada Theatre’s Joseph…Technicolor Dreamcoat) as Moritz Stiefel, Madison Grepo (Evita, Anything Goes) as Ilse Neumann, Tamlyn Tomita as the Adult Women, and Daniel Blinkoff as the Adult Men. 

As a longtime supporter of EWP, I’m thrilled that this sterling arts organization is welcoming a wider spectrum of acting POC into their creative process.  This artistic approach mirrors Los Angeles’ powerful diversity and, as Dang inferred, is an acknowledgment of the culturally rich and challenging times our youngest generation now navigate.   

Spring Awakening is widely recognized as possessing one of Broadway’s best pop/rock scores; the driven melodies are tuneful while the lyrics are deep, articulate and au courant. Schoolboys sing of their unfulfilled sexual desires as “The Bitch of Living”. And when Melchior admits to his headmasters that it is he who authored an erotic letter, the cast sings that he is “Totally Fuc&ed”.  But what is perhaps most prescient about this musical is how it addresses our current battles over sex-ed. For in their Old World efforts to “protect” their children, the adults of Spring Awakening resort to keeping their youth ignorant of the vital information they need to avert the high price of sexual ignorance.  This message is of particular significance to our Latinx communities. 

According to Pew Research, American Latinos are 70% Christian/Catholic.  Religion can play a huge role in the parents’ attitudes towards sex and sexual health, which gives this topic a negative stigma. So, hispano parents often avoid discussing healthy sex practices with their children as the adults consider the subject taboo. Parents hope that not discussing sex will discourage their children from engaging in intimate encounters. However statistics show this lack of sex-ed as having the opposite effect. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2017 the birth rates for hispano teens were more than two times higher than the rate for non-Hispanic white teens – not to mention increased rates of sexually transmitted diseases and abusive relationships.

This Latinx cultural dilemma is at the heart of Spring Awakening which asks: What happens when normal sexual curiosity is infused with shame, guilt and ignorance?  Spring Awakening brilliantly explores this pertinent question.    

Though almost completely sung-through, the show does not adhere to the conventions of the traditional musical. Here the songs do not necessarily move the plot forward, rather they explore the characters’ psycho-emotional state and thus moves the story’s emotional arch forward. It’s the perfect approach to this tale which dares to delve into the treacherous world of those private moments when we “awaken” to our bodies’ desires.   

For all show info: www.eastwestplayers.org

Photo credit: TJ Ramirez/Teolindo.Art