A Plea From a Former Prude Teacher - Part 1
“Listen to what’s in the heart of a child
A song so big and one so small
Soon you will hear where beauty lies
You’ll hear and you’ll recall
The sadness the doubt
All the loss, the grief
Will belong to some play from the past
As the child leads the way to a dream
A belief
A time of hope through the land”
When I started teaching, I was still in college and as previously mentioned, such a goodie-two-shoes. During my very early teaching years, it was pretty much common knowledge that I was embarrassed and consistently uncomfortable with romantic/ sexual/ drunken stage moments. If a student was supposed to be ‘drunk’ in a scene, I would say ‘You had too many pixie sticks’. If a student was supposed to kiss another student, I would say ‘...but don’t do it right now’ and have them wait until the last possible minute to rehearse. Then when they finally did it, I would find some lame excuse to leave the room… ‘I have to pee’ ‘Oh no, I have to call the boss’ etc. I’m not sure why I was so cringy about it. I always said it was because I wanted them to stay kids as long as possible. That is definitely true. However, I was also still coming into my own, ya know figuring out the many years of a catholic upbringing mixed with the lack of sex ed in school, but we don’t need to hear about that now do we.
I was the teacher I hated in high school. The teacher that was censoring every curse word, every body roll or sexual innuendo in a show. Or worse, the teacher that wouldn’t explain anything at all and would just say ‘Ask your parents”. Yup, that was me! So uncomfortable around questions of sex and intimacy, drugs, alcohol...you name it.
But kids lean towards the edgy, angsty and ‘deep’ material that speaks to them and when you are working in a tuition based, non-school sanctioned program, you have to give the kids what they want. In 2012, the kids wanted Spring Awakening.
If you don’t know Spring Awakening here is a bullet point version of all you need to know
Based on a play by Frank Wedekind - Set in late 1800’s Germany
It is a cautionary tale of what happens when you DON’T talk to kids about the birds and the bees, relationships, puberty etc
It also deals with issues of sexual abuse, violence and suicide not to mention has a sex scene in which both the male and female lead get partially naked.
Almost all the characters in the show are supposed to be between 13 and 16 years old.
It won the Tony award in 2006 and started a huge wave of teen angst, rock musicals.
TADA!
I was totally against this choice but I needed the job, the kids wanted to do show and I loved the kids, so I took a deep breath and got ready for five hours a week of leaving the room, raising my shoulders and covering my eyes.
Listening to the students say ‘bitch’ and ‘fuck’ eventually became white noise. Saying ‘Fuck this’ through the lens of their character didn’t get them in trouble and they loved it. There was a freedom in relating to their roles and actually getting to say what both the character and they were feeling. Scenes about pornographic sketches started to become comedic, songs that discussed sexual violence became heartwarming, raw and difficult to watch for an entirely different reason. I found myself sitting in the room more often, enamored with the students vulnerability.
As the choreographer, there were two major moments I was dreading working on. The first was a song entitled ‘Touch Me’ and the second was the end of Act 1, a song entitled ‘I Believe’. The end of Act 1 involves the two main characters having sex (but they have NO idea what it is or what it can lead to). It happens on stage. In the original, it involved two characters becoming partially nude. In our version… it did not! I had no idea how I was supposed to stage this with sixteen year olds. We put it off until I could figure out a creative solution/ how to even say the word sex in a room of teenagers without bursting into flames.
‘Touch Me’ is a full ensemble number that in a nutshell, discusses physical touch between two people. Again, these are supposed to be kids so it’s not necessarily dirty, it’s more the idea of discovering touch - what feels good, that sort of thing. It’s tricky and personal and sensual… all the things that 2012 Lexie HATED! I wanted to just copy the original and not explain any of the reason behind the movements, except ‘hey it’s the original choreography. Enjoy’. But after watching them for weeks in rehearsal, I realized how much some of them needed this. They needed their characters to explore in this way, so they could explore in this way. They were itching to learn about themselves. I owed it to them to figure this out and to get the hell out of my own way. It’s not about me.
The day arrived. I had little to no plan. I knew this had to come from them in order to get anything out of it. My 22 year old version of the song is different than their version. I started with a question.
‘If you are really stressed out, anxious, just want to scream, is there something you do to your body to help you calm down?’.
Some people rang their hands or massaged their temples or scratched their arms. I asked them to explore that motion or feeling and why it makes them feel better. They talked. I listened. I didn’t vomit. I took some of those motions/ movements and found a time to incorporate them in to the beginning of the number. Safe start.
Next question:
‘You are sitting in the movies with someone you have a HUGE crush on. That person finally, after minutes of playing fingersie (footsie but with your hands) grabs your hand and you get ‘that feeling’. Where do you feel that?
I was sweating. My eyes were closed and I wanted to run out of the room. If everyone points at their penis or vagina, I may literally break down in tears. So instead, I made all of them close their eyes before pointing, this way if someone did point to their penis I could make a cringy face without anyone seeing it.
But… per usual, these kids amazed me. We are talking about butterflies here, so I assumed most of the answers would be in their stomach (or lower) but no. Some kids said their arms tingle or that they got goosebumps down their back. Others felt it in their throat or their neck. We sat for ten minutes and talked about this, how touch can transport you. How can touch connect you with another person? This also led into a conversation about consent (before consent was really as big of a thing as it is now). If someone grabs your hand and you don’t want them to, what happens to your body? Can you feel the difference? The conversations dove deeper and deeper and you know what, I wasn’t uncomfortable because IT WASN’T ABOUT ME! The kids asked great questions all of which, I was happy to answer. The number turned out to be naive and beautiful and gut wrenching. They were figuring it all out in the costume of someone else.
However, my biggest challenge came only a week later when I had to stage ‘I Believe”. I wasn’t ready and boy did the kids let me know it. Talk about cringe worthy. Stay tuned for next week! Part 2 - Lexie stages her first intimate scene with teenagers.
