Interview with Spring Awakening Director, Bill Cunningham
April 14, 2015 By: Jonathan Mihaich
Bill Cunningham has been a member of the Salem State Theater and Speech Department for 28 years, serving as chairperson for eight of them. His previous productions have include Man and Superman and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. He is also the Theater and Speech Department’s resident playwright. He is the director of this season’s musical Spring Awakening, which opens April 16th.
Jonathan: Why did you choose Spring Awakening to be this season’s musical? Bill: Spring Awakening, one of the things I like about it is that it’s a youth based show. Finding musicals, especially contemporary ones, often times its hard because we have a lot of actors we want to accommodate and a lot of contemporary musicals have one role that dominates the show. This one doesn’t have just one role that dominates it has a variety of important roles. I also like that it’s a show that most people know because it’s controversial because it talks about things that youth experience that people don’t want to talk about. It talks about things that have been going on forever and that everyone goes through. This is what youth is like and it’s nice to have a show that really speaks to them. I like that a lot.
Jonathan: So you feel like it’s the type of show that students, parents, and faculty can go to and find something to relate to? Bill: Everyone approaches the show differently but if you’re younger the show should speak directly to you and if you’re older than it should be a memory of what it was like to be that age because sometimes we become, as we get older, the source of trouble for youths without realizing it.
Jonathan: So what were some of the difficulties trying to stage such a large musical production in a black box theater?Bill: Usually our musicals are on The Main Stage, so this is the first musical I can remember the department doing in the black box for almost 30 years. The real challenge is the audience because the size prevents more people from seeing it. But I’m actually loving staging it in there because I think the more intimate it is the more troublesome the show becomes for people, because they can’t distance themselves. It’s like being at a rock concert, you can see it at a stadium but wouldn’t it be better to see one of those great rock artists at a smaller venue? That’s where I’d rather see it. So I think the show is going to work great in there. You’ll really be able to feel this show because you’re so close to it. In the arts we always call that aesthetic distance, what’s the distance between the event and the audience. Because it’s a black box you’ve got intimacy and when you have issues that are about the intimacy of youth it should make us all a little bit uncomfortable. I think it will be a better show because of it.
Jonathan: But do you think it would have been an easier to do it in The Main Stage or does the stage size not really make a difference? Bill: No it doesn’t matter to me. It’s just a different venue that’s all but staging is staging. You just have to do it in a slightly different way.
Jonathan: What about aspects like cast size and choreography? Bill: Umm…No. It doesn’t have traditional dance numbers anyway. There isn’t traditional choreography; no jazz hands in this show it’s not that kind of show. The idea of the show is that it takes place in Germany in 1891 but the music is all current day. The idea is that the spirit of rock and roll music is universal; it’s always the feeling of youth. And it almost feels like it shouldn’t work but it does. It’s very funny when it happens. It makes you think “Oh so this is what they feel and think” and so the way they move in the show, and Kate Amory is the person doing the movement with them and she is really good at getting people to open up and not be afraid, they become unrestricted in the way they move. One of the first things we looked at were the great rock performers, someone like Mick Jagger, and if you look at the way Mick Jagger moves when he sings it’s really outrageous but it works to the music. You wouldn’t say it’s choreographed but he moves in particular way, he’s got the freedom that comes with the sound of the music. That’s not easy to do, that’s challenging.
Jonathan: Just getting them to feel the music rather than expect to be told what to do? Bill: Yeah to be able to express it. So a lot of it is them finding they’re own way to express it.
Jonathan: On a somewhat related note I was told that the last two shows you directed were both in The Main Stage, Man and Superman and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. I’m curious if this directorial experience differs from directing in The Main Stage Bill: Well I’ve worked in the Callan before so no there isn’t any difference. You just adapt immediately to your environment that you’re directing in. The nice thing about the Callan, as I said, is the immediacy of the event. People can distance themselves enough in The Main Stage. Those shows work better when you can think those through sometimes, and those two shows that you just mentioned had a lot of emotional quality but they also had a lot of thought quality to them so you could, as an audience, be engaged with the ideas of the show. In the Callan it really works better that it’s almost visceral because you’re so close. I like that about a small space. You can watch a movie and because of the distance of the movie almost anything could happen, we see people murdered in movies, and you don’t miss a beat eating your popcorn. But that’s impossible in a live event like a theater. Someone gets a stage slap and the whole audience will stop on it like it’s a horrible thing. And they should.
Jonathan: I have noticed that when you watch a show at a large theater it can be like watching a movie because of how removed you are being so much further back Bill: That’s right.
Jonathan: So what’s something special about this show that makes it different from other shows that Salem has put on. What’s something special that people can look forward to seeing? Bill: Well the nice thing about Spring Awakening is that it isn’t a conservative musical in the sense of a Bye Bye Birdie or the old Chestnuts. With a happy little story and happy characters that sing. What I like about this show is that the songs are indeed the way people feel. So it’s as if we are looking into the inner workings of these character’s minds. And I really like that. And it’s very contemporary. I know it takes place in Germany in 1891 but it’s a very contemporary show. So it speaks directly to the lives that people are living right now. This is a musical for people who really don’t like musicals. I think they’d like this one because I don’t know if they’ve seen one like this. Personally one of the things I don’t like about musicals is that I can predict them. This one is a little unpredictable; you never know what they are going to sing about or how it’s going to express itself. You just don’t know what’s going to happen next. There are a few songs in here that you would be surprised that’s the title of the song but it makes perfect sense at that moment in the show. But it also deals with a lot of issues that people will be able to identify with. It deals with sexuality in a very overt way and there just aren’t a lot of musicals that deal with sex. That’s why the show has survived so long. It’s funny this musical is based on a play that was written over 100 years ago called Spring Awakening and that play was very controversial at the time it came out because it talked about sexuality for young people and the life of adolescence. And so we skip 100 years to now, where we think we can do anything and say anything, and somehow the musical is still controversial. We haven’t figured out that you hit a certain age and suddenly people are starting to think about sex and the idea of sex and actually engaging in some discovery of sex, when did that start into the human condition? It’s been around forever why are people so worried about it? And even in our enlightened time we still have trouble talking about and dealing with the things that people have always been uncomfortable with because nobody knows how to talk about it. And this musical makes that more obvious.
Jonathan: So do you think these issues are going to get more people to come to the show? Is that the effect you’re going for? Bill: I’m not comfortable selling the show that way. That sensationalizes it and I don’t believe in that as an artist. I don’t believe that things should be sensationalized. A conflict is a conflict. And so it’s one thing to sell the show as saying “Act one ends with sex on stage so come see the show” but if that’s the case what I hope that happens is that everyone gets a bit uncomfortable. What we should really be thinking about is what are we uncomfortable with. Why are we uncomfortable? At some point we become uncomfortable because we wonder at what point should people be trying to experiment with this stuff without the right information. But who is giving them the information when everyone is too scared to talk about it? That’s what the play is about. We feel ashamed, as one character in the play says, we are supposed to feel shame about our feelings and who we are and what we are going through, and that shaming still seems to exits in our world. And by saying that it’s controversial keeps putting shame on it so that’s why I don’t want to sell it that way. Because I don’t believe in that. But I am concerned because the characters in the play do seem to young to be engaging in sex, they aren’t prepared for it. But that doesn’t stop us as a society from selling sex to people. I’ve got a real problem with that because that seems irresponsible. That’s why we should be uncomfortable and I think that’s why people will feel uncomfortable. Because it shows them the error of their own ways.
Spring Awakening opens on Thursday April 16th and has showings on the 17th, 18th, 19th, and the following week on the 23rd, 24th, 25th, and 26th. Tickets cost $15 general/$10 Non-Salem State students and seniors. SSU students get in free with ID.
Contributor's Note: This interview is Jonathan Mihaich's first piece for Red Skies.