Essential Arts: New, diverse 'Spring Awakening' breaks barriers

By Ashley LeeStaff Writer

Oct. 21, 2023 8 AM PT

This past weekend, I attended the wedding of a wonderful arts journalist who, along with his playwright groom, delivered the most beautifully written vows I’ll probably ever hear. What a reminder that our most meaningful artistic experiences don’t always happen in galleries or on stages. I’m entertainment reporter Ashley Lee, filling in this week for Carolina A. Miranda, available to both ugly cry at all your weddings and bring you the latest essential arts news:

A bold “Awakening”

Growing up, Tamlyn Tomita never got the “sex talk” from a parent. And when she recently asked about the topic, the actor’s 84-year-old mother responded repeatedly: “I cannot talk about it.”

That conversation turned out to be a resource; it took place in front of the cast of East West Players’ new staging of Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater’s sexually charged Broadway phenomenon “Spring Awakening.” Said Tomita of the exchange, “It was a real experiential moment for these kids to see a parent who, to this day, is still living with that shame, that embarrassment, that need to just block it out or sweep it under the rug.”

Based on Frank Wedekind’s oft-banned 1891 drama, the groundbreaking eight-time Tony-winning musical highlights the sexual discoveries that arrive with adolescence. “It’s not so much the flashes of flesh and heavy petting that jolt some audiences,” wrote Times contributor Rob Weinert-Kendt of the musical in 2008. “It’s the pervasive frankness and earnest empathy with which the show treats issues — sexual initiation, same-sex desires, domestic abuse, suicidal frustration — more often addressed titteringly or sheepishly, if at all, by entertainers and educators.”

That the nation’s longest-running Asian American theater is putting on “Spring Awakening” — which begins performances Thursday at Little Tokyo’s David Henry Hwang Theater and runs through Nov. 19 — is an equally bold endeavor; topics like abortion, assault and mental health remain taboo among most Asian communities. As Tomita’s mother had proved, saving face often means staying silent.

As a consequence, director Tim Dang is somewhat nervous about how this production might be received. “Some of the older audience members are going to be very shocked,” he said. “When we put on certain plays [with explicit material] in the past, they said, ‘Why do you have to put it in front of our face? We know it’s happening, but why does this have to be theater?’

“And the answer is, because that’s what theater does,” he continued. “Theater opens up conversations, and we want to be a part of that dialogue, particularly in Asian communities and in communities of color, that are really quiet about some of this subject matter.”

A woman and a man facing each other and smiling

Such conversations begin with the cast, the majority of whom are actors of color playing their roles for specific, subtextual reasons. For example, the highly intelligent Melchior, played here by an actor of Asian descent (Thomas Winter), inherently wrestles with the model-minority myth. And when Marcus Phillips plays the constantly scorned Moritz, the issue of mental health stigma within the Black community is onstage with him.

“None of this is in the script, because it’s still set in 1890s Germany,” said Tomita. “But it’s there for the audience to see these characters played by performers of color, receive it, process it and hopefully talk about it with their families.”

Rehearsals for the production have been notably personal and emotional, featuring intense conversations about religion, sexual education and depression. And though Tomita and her husband, actor Daniel Blinkoff, portray the story’s authoritarian adults, “We are trying to nurture them in whatever way possible while also honoring the boundaries they’re setting in order to tell this story,” she said.

Dang sees “Spring Awakening” as a turning point for the historic theater company, which has yet to name a new artistic director since Snehal Desai was appointed to lead Center Theatre Group earlier this year.

“I feel that East West Players is going in a direction where we are considering all of the various generations in our communities,” he explained. “This musical is for the Gen Z generation, and an opportunity for them to have a voice. It’s like the whole idea of ‘Spring Awakening’ — there’s a group of teenagers who just want to be heard. We are listening.”

On and off the stage

Three teenagers on the set of a play bent forward, holding flashlights.

“Stranger Things” is coming to the stage, via a West End production that functions as a prequel to Netflix’s sci-fi/horror blockbuster series. The Times’ London-based contributor Emily Zemler got a first look at the play, which producers are aiming to bring to Broadway and the rest of the U.S. as soon as possible. And since it was developed while the fourth season of the series was written, the events onstage are designed to help “enrich” its upcoming fifth season.

More immediately, Samuel Baum‘s play “The Engagement Party” is now open at the Geffen Playhouse and running through Nov. 5. It should “prove entertaining to those who like to sit back and enjoy the surface sparkle,” wrote Times theater critic Charles McNulty in a mixed review. “The leads, [Bella] Heathcote and [Jonah] Platt, are especially alluring as the happy couple forced to confront a snake slithering in their white-glove Eden. They can’t atone for the play’s lack of depth, but they bring truthful particularity and a touch of zest.”

For our Orange County readers: Chance Theater’s stellar production of “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” ends its run this weekend, and it’s one of the best things I’ve seen of late. A hit in London and on Broadway, this intimate staging of the mystery is particularly imaginative; it is expertly led by Aaron Lipp, a neurodivergent actor who previously played the same role in a Chapman University production. It’s an inspired professional stage debut.

In and out of the galleries

San Francisco’s de Young Museum has launched its De Young Open, a salon-style juried exhibition of 883 works by artists from nine counties surrounding the Bay Area. Hyperallergic calls the show, which runs through January, “a rare example of a museum stepping aside from the role of cultural gatekeeping and showcasing the artists of its community,” as 98% of the pieces in the show are for sale, with the museum taking no commission. Additionally, the de Young plans to acquire a selection of pieces for its permanent collection.

Essential happenings

As always, Steven Vargas has THE to-do list of happenings all over L.A., including a unique dance exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra’s presentation of “Dimensions,” featuring a West Coast premiere.

And Kamren Curiel put together a De Los-specific roundup of weekend events, such as a panel on L.A. DJ Culture and a procession led by our city’s Indigenous culture bearers.

Moves

A woman in a white jacket leans against a hot pink wall, a bright orange wall behind her

The big art news of the week is the announcement that Ann Philbin, director of the UCLA Hammer Museum since 1999, will step down from the post in fall 2024, “wrapping up a quarter-century at the helm of an institution that she led from local embarrassment to national prominence,” wrote my colleague Christopher Knight.

“Soon, the museum’s profile will look very different,” he continued in a thorough piece outlining her tenure. “Change can be resisted, but managing it with skill and optimism is usually a better bet. Philbin is proof. A new director will find challenges, but with much on which to build. Her successor will have an enviable model for how to navigate the next phase.” Knight also listed 10 of the best Hammer exhibitions during Philbin’s directorship.

Santa Barbara’s Ensemble Theatre Company has announced that Scott DeVine will remain in the role of executive director as the theater company changes its operating structure. Ensemble will merge the artistic and administrative functions under the purview of a single executive director.

Passages

Shirley Jo Finney, a celebrated theater director and actress best known for her decades-long association with the Fountain Theatre in Los Angeles, died at 74 after an eight-month battle with cancer. Finney considered herself an actor’s director, viewed art as activism and was frequently drawn to projects that explored themes of race and society.

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Burt Young, a Hollywood tough guy whose prolific career included “Chinatown” and an Oscar-nominated turn in “Rocky,” died at 83 in Los Angeles. Onstage, he performed alongside Robert De Niro and Ralph Macchio in “Cuba and His Teddy Bear,” which first opened in 1986 at the Public Theater before moving to Broadway.

In the news

— Following the San Francisco Chronicle’s column on anti-Black writings of Yayoi Kusama — who is the subject of a major SFMOMA exhibition — the artist told the paper that she deeply regrets her past language: “My message has always been one of love, hope, compassion, and respect for all people. My lifelong intention has been to lift up humanity through my art. I apologize for the pain I have caused.”

— The Cleveland Museum of Art filed a lawsuit against the Manhattan District Attorney‘s office over the seizure of “Draped Male Figure,” a headless bronze statue estimated to be worth $20 million.

— London’s British Museum is digitizing its collection of more than 8 million objects in order to document its holdings internally and externally. The initiative follows a string of thefts by a staff member.

— According to American Theatre, the most produced plays of the season are Heidi Schreck’s “What the Constitution Means to Me” (16 productions) and Lynn Nottage’s “Clyde’s” (14 productions).

— Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum is no longer distributing a limited-edition Pokémon trading card, as the promotion has spurred an “undesirable situation” of swarmed gift shops and inflated resales. The card initially was offered as part of an exhibition about Vincent Van Gogh’s links to Japanese art and culture.

— Massachusetts’ New Repertory Theatre is shuttering, after “fundraising with major donors has fallen short of the theater’s goals for a sustainable path.” The rep was founded in 1984.

— The American Museum of Natural History is addressing its collection of some 12,000 human remains. Over the years, it has acquired the skeletons of Indigenous and enslaved people taken from their graves and the bodies of New Yorkers who died as recently as the 1940s.

And last but not least ...

Three words: sugar, butter, flour. My excitement cannot be overstated.

A new ‘Spring Awakening’ has a diverse cast. It’s more transgressive than ever