On Saturday I attended the play “Spring Awakening” at the
Fearless Theater. This theater held about 50 people and the seats were
basically on the stage, so it was an intimate and intense experience. The play
was confusing at parts, yet perfectly vivid at others. There were monologues by
both female and male characters, there were relationships between a young boy
and girl as well as a relationship between two young men. Focusing on the women
(hence the focus of this group), there were several different female
characters. The two that stick out in my mind were very opposite from each
other. One of the girls was outgoing and lively. She said something along the
lines of, “just because I look like a flower, doesn’t mean I am gentle.” This
quote resonated with me because I think a lot of times in our world women are
seen as fragile or weak because of the way we look or because women are
“supposed’ to be physically smaller and less aggressive than men—what’s on the
outside is not always what is on the inside. This same character was supposedly
in love with a boy. Essentially, she asked the boy to hit her because she had
never been hit before. She literally said, “hit me,” and the boy initially refused, but finally
complied. This scene also stuck out to me because she felt that she had had her
life too good and had never been abused or hit like other girls she knew. This
was a controversial scene/notion for me because physical abuse on women is such
a problem, and here, ironically, the girl was ASKNING for it. Was it because
she knows that so many girls get beat, and she felt that she should too? Was it
because society’s pressures made her feel like she didn’t deserve the good life
she was living? Anyways, another female character not similar to the one I just
described was extremely quiet and soft-spoken. Other teenagers in the play made
outward comments to her about how she never speaks. I felt that I could relate
to this character because people have often told me that I am quiet, introverted,
and don’t chatter as much as a lot of other people, so I could sympathize with
this girl. Then toward the middle of the play, this seemingly quiet character
broke out into a beautiful song and she had an incredible stunning, memorable
voice. This shows that just because a girl (or boy) is quieter, they might just
be still finding themselves and there’s always something good inside of
everyone, just waiting to come out. I really enjoyed this play because the
issues are prevalent to the stage in my life right now (adolescence, partying,
relationships, maintaining school work, being a strong woman, etc) and it was
very necessarily to this feminism strand, seeing that the women in the play
went through a lot (beatings by their fathers, pressure from boys to drink,
even rape).
