The second production of the University Theatre Mainstage 2012-13 season, Spring Awakening, A Rock Musical, will open at 8 p.m., Friday, Nov. 9, in E.C. Mabie Theatre of the University of Iowa Theatre Building.

Subsequent performances will be held at 8 p.m., Saturday, Nov. 10, and Wednesday-Saturday, Nov. 14-17, and at 2 p.m., Sunday, Nov. 11.

Spring Awakening is a bold, radical, provocative, and brave new rock musical based on the controversial and once-banned German play by Frank Wedekind. With its soaring melodies and urgent lyrics, Spring Awakening, which won eight Tonys (including Best Musical), explores the secret yearnings, anxieties, disappointments, and rage of teenagers as their bodies and minds become consumed with their burgeoning sexuality. The production, featuring music by Duncan Sheik, is an explosive and thrilling event that perfectly captures the confusing, mortifying, and electrifying experience of becoming an adult.

Nathan Halvorson will direct and choreograph Spring Awakening for his UI MFA thesis. Halvorson says, “The essential question for the 11 students at the heart of Spring Awakening is, ‘Am I an adult or a child?’ They are bound to their parents, lectured by their teachers, and manipulated by their clergy, all while their minds and bodies are maturing without their consent. New ideas, nagging questions, sexual desire, and erotic impulses are infiltrating their thoughts as they try to hang on, follow the rules, and navigate the treacherous terrain of adolescence. And each of them is fundamentally attempting this journey completely alone.”

Although the show is told through the eyes of the students, Halvorson feels it appeals to a much wider audience. “To me,” he says, “Spring Awakening is necessary viewing for people of all ages. Leaving childhood behind and venturing into adulthood can be a mortifying, exciting, and confusing endeavor. The results of which will reverberate through the rest of our lives. This show explores this time with great care, detail, and respect.”

Jenni Page-White, the dramaturg for the UI production and an MFA student in dramaturgy, says, “It’s no wonder that Wedekind’s play, featuring adolescents struggling with puberty, rape, child abuse, homosexuality, suicide, and abortion, was outrageously scandalous for its day. Yet Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater, when adapting Wedekind’s play, transformed it into a rock musical juxtaposing the world of 19th-century repression with a world sung in contemporary rock idiom. Rock and roll itself grew out of rebellion and has always been intertwined with sexuality. The hidden yearnings and anguished cries of Wedekind’s characters feel instantly familiar, and this time-jumping structure speaks to the enduring relevance of the difficulty of adolescence.”

Halvorson says the more than 100-year-old play and its more recent musical adaptation still appeal to today’s audiences. “The characters in this play are singing, dancing, and screaming one thing: listen to me,” he says. “In this way, 1891 Germany and 2012 Iowa are interchangeable. We are still struggling to find our own personal voice and, even more importantly, someone to listen to it.”

Tickets are $20 ($15 for senior citizens; $10 for youth; $5 for UI students with a valid ID) and are available in advance online through the Hancher Box Office, by phone at 800-426-2437, or in person in Old Capitol Town Center.

Spring Awakening is intended for mature audiences and contains nudity, adult language and themes, and simulated violence. Potential audience members who are concerned about whether it is appropriate for them should contact the Department of Theatre Arts, 319-335-2700, for additional details.

The Department of Theatre Arts is part of the Division of Performing Arts in the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. For a UI arts calendar and details about upcoming events visit the new Arts Iowa website.