Daniel Lammin - Awakening

WRITER & DIRECTOR

2016 Season presented by Monash Uni Student Theatre

Trades Hall, September 2016

2017 Season presented by Monash Uni Student Theatre and fortyfivedownstairs

fortyfivedownstairs, May 2017

Melchior, Moritz and Wendla are on the cusp of adulthood, pulled between innocence and responsibility. Physically blossoming and emotionally vulnerable, they have to find their own way when the adult world around them seems incapable of guiding them.

Returning to MUST after the sell-out 2013 production Columbine, Green Room nominee Daniel Lammin and a team of talented young theatre makers both honour the legacy of Wedekind’s controversial play and question current Australian attitudes towards the transition into adulthood. In the midst of our national crisis over teenage mental health and sexuality and debate fuelled by ignorance and bigotry, Awakening brings this timeless classic crashing into the twenty-first century.

Featuring

Nicola Dupree, Samantha Hafey-Bagg, Eamonn Johnson,

James Malcher, Sam Porter & Imogen Walsh

2016 Season

Stage Manager & Production Manager: Kate Brennan

Assistant Stage Managers: Doug Rintoul and Alanah Allen

Dramaturge: Liam Fergeus

Production Design: Jules Kaddatz

Costume Design: Charmian Sim

Lighting Design: Shaun Haney

Composition: Sam Porter

AV Design: Justin Gardam

Choreography: Kate Brennan

Lighting Assistant: Caitlin Irwin

Assistant Production Manager: Valerie Tan

PR & Marketing Manager: Sian Halloran

Marketing Assistant Grant Napitupulu

Publicity Photography: Jules Kaddatz

Publicity Design: Daniel Lammin

Front-of-House Managers: Em Mirmoayedi and Erica Royle

Front-of-House Support: Nivedita Venkatasubramanian

Directing Assistants: Krystal Gayton and Stephen Amos

2017 Season

Stage Manager: Douglas Rintoul

Assistant Director & Assistant Stage Manager: Alanah Allen

Production Manager Kathryn Yates

Assistant Production Manager: Emily Vitiello

Executive Producers: Cameron Lukey and Yvonne Virsik

Dramaturge: Liam Fergeus

Production Design: Julia Kaddatz

Costume Design: Charmian Sim

Lighting Design: Shaun Haney

Sound Design & Composition: Sam Porter

AV Design & Audio Engineer: Justin Gardam

Choreography: Kate Brennan

Lighting Assistant: Brayden Haney

Publicity Photography: Sarah Walker

Publicity Design: Daniel Lammin

★★★★

"A radical and devastatingly effective adaptation."

Cameron Woodhead, The Age

★★★★

"Magnificent... At once true to the spirit of Spring Awakening and yet a meta-textual updating that illuminates across the ages."

Stephen A Russell, The Lowdown Under

"It gave me a fist-size ball of pain under my heart but ultimately left me so happy that young theatre makers are confronting the bullshit that surrounds them..."

Anne-Marie Peard, Sometimes Melbourne

"Awakening is superb... one of the most affecting and compelling pieces of theatre l've seen all year."

Richard Watts, 3RRR/ArtsHub

"Powerful, important and necessary... Some of the finest theatre happening at the moment."

Myron My, My About Town

Photography: Theresa Harrison (2017 Season) and Nura Sheidaee (2016 Season)

2016 Production (Nura Sheidaee)

2017 Production (Theresa Harrison)

Directors Notes

from the 2017 production

I've dreamed of Spring Awakening since I became a theatre maker. It haunts me and confuses me and takes my breath away, a work of unbridled ferocity and enormous humanity. I’ve always believed that we, as a country, comfortably ignore or disregard the needs of young people, turning a blind eye while they spiral into self hatred and explode in acts of violence towards themselves and one another. It makes me so incredibly angry and in every word of Frank Wedekind’s masterpiece is that same anger. I’ve never found another play that possesses such anger for the disregard and mistreatment of youth.

I wasn’t interested in what I had to say about this play though - I wanted to hear what those closer to those experiences had to say. Awakening is an adaptation, a variation on a theme. The DNA of the original play is all there, the same characters and ideas, but through the lens and voices of every name you see attached to it. This is our response to Spring Awakening, its enormous legacy and what it can say to us now in this country. Children are being mistreated in institutions meant to protect and educate them, taking their lives at ages where death should not even be a comprehendible concept for them and being used as pawns in a war waged by bigots over what being a ‘safe school’ means. We have a responsibility to them, and we are letting them down.

The response to the original season of Awakening took us all by surprise, and the fact we have been given the opportunity to revisit it in a theatre as important as fortyfivedownstairs is very humbling. They have shown great faith in us and the entire community at Monash Uni Student Theatre, demonstrating that they believe as I do that the work of student theatre makers is not only important to the Melbourne theatre ecology, but vital. I cannot thank them enough for this.

Awakening is an exorcism of demons. It resurrects that song we all forget eventually but one that sounds so hauntingly familiar. It is a love letter to a masterpiece, a roar of anger and a plea for understanding when it seems like no-one is listening. If it makes one ounce of change in the world, then we’ll have done what we set out to do.

2016 Production

Poster Image by Jules Kaddatz

Poster Design by Daniel Lammin

2017 Production

Poster Image by Sarah Walker

Poster Design by Daniel Lammin