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Facebook met Broadway in ‘Spring Awakening’ Part 3
For more Facebook met Broadway in ‘Spring Awakening,’ scroll to posts below, or link here for Part 1 and Part 2.
“Today, with the Internet and TV saturated with sex, there’s a steady stream of basic information,” cast member Andy Mientus says. “In terms of the logistics of sexuality, it’s all completely available. But not the complicated issues like the psychology of sex. Parents must still be responsible for helping with that. I grew up in an open and honest household. No topic was too tender. We had open dialogue. I feel lucky that way.”
Mientus is proud that “Spring Awakening” is attracting traditional theatergoers as well as young people usually considered marginal fans of Broadway shows.
“It’s a serious, artful piece,” he says. “Look at it: Not linear or straightforward, although there’s a narrative one can grab onto, and there’s the nontraditional staging. But it’s also about young people and rock music. So it can appeal to a theater audience and a teenage audience.”
It helps that the latent love of Broadway musicals never really went away, as evidenced by the vast pop followings for “High School Musical” and “Glee.”
“For a long time, during its Golden Age, music on Broadway and music on the radio were the same,” Mientus says. “Pop music moved on. And show tunes became a ‘genre.’ They could have been lost to popular culture altogether, like vaudeville. Now they are getting back together again.”
Thinking back just three years, Mientus recalls his first ecstatic experience with “Spring Awakening,” sitting on the first row, buzzed by the music and the timely material.
“It was the show I had been waiting a long time to see,” he says. “It’s authentic. It’s my story.”
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