Last Weeks Awakening

When we were assigned our sound project my first instinct was Spring Awakening (I know, shock horror right?) as mentioned in my last post Spring Awakening is currently being revived on Broadway with the use of sign language. Now this is the first time in Broadway history that this has happened which is still mind blowing to me. I went to see a modern adaptation of the original play in 2014 and as part of my A Levels I had to know the synopsis and it was as follows 'Anya Reiss' new version examines the exuberance, intensity and confusion of teenager life today. Spring Awakening asks important and pressing questions about how young people are shaped for their future by a generation that doesn't understand them.' it doesn't really touch on miscommunication when that is literally what the play is about, something I didn't know until I read about the ASL version.

Now with that in mind my immediate instinct was to create a version of a important point in the show for people with the opposite problem, people who are visually impaired. SA is very interesting visually for instance the band is onstage and interacts with the actors, something people who are visually impaired miss even with AD you can't explain the entire show to someone without ruining the experience, the shock factor, of a very explicit show. I've been speaking to fans online about which passage they believe would work with this idea and a lot of people mentioned the ending monologue of Moritz, a 15-year-old who gives up on trying to please everyone and commits suicide (a tragedy blamed on his best friend), the monologue is him as a ghost talking to his best friend who has ran away from his problems and is now sat in the graveyard staring at another characters' gravestone.

In the monologue Moritz outright lies to Melchior about being dead, how amazing it is, there are so many rises and falls of emotions that doing the sound project would be very interesting indeed. I even did a bit of research on the character resulting in a little case study so I could get the narrative from a different perspective.

However whilst I was writing what I could do a song came on itunes and everything just made sense? I guess. The song is a stand alone song by musical theatre composers Kerrigan and Lowdermilk called Last Weeks Alcohol, a beautifully written song with poetic like music behind it. Whilst it's 8 minutes in length the actual lyrics are poetic enough you feel carried away with them yet theatre orientated enough they are descriptive of their surroundings.  When I was writing out the section of the song and brainstorming what I could do sound wise it just fit. Now I'm in the predicament of do I go with my initial idea which was really intriguing for me, new ground yet made me really excited. Or do I go with the idea that I love and is equally exciting just not as progressive as I would like.

I'll make my mind up eventually, but if you have time watch these two videos. The first one is Last Weeks Alcohol performed by Andy Mientus a song I've never been able to skip on my itunes (also the orchestrations in this song are just phenomenal), the second one is the official trailer for Deaf Wests Spring Awakening on Broadway every time I watch it, it still simply blows my mind.