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Now that Wendla understood she was to love a man in her own special way, and her budding curiosity and hormones longed to know more, she soon thereafter had her first tryst with a young man from her school (that was of course segregated by assumed gender). Some of you know that I am describing "Spring Awakening," Frank Wedekind’s first major play, that he wrote in Germany with a backdrop of social unrest and mores based on repression, control and delusion, rather than any semblance of the realities of human behavior and sexuality. I felt vulnerable and did not stifle sobs when a young character committed suicide. I felt exposed and awkward about eye contact, seeing as we were so close. Being in close proximity to humans emoting strongly, rather than looking at pixelated actors on a screen, is an intimate affair.
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When Wendla stood up and sang to us, desperately trying to figure out what the heck her mother had just said, time stood still in that way that only live theater can do. I was the fortunate recipient of a +1 ticket from a dear friend who's more important than I. I watched this scene unfold in a front row seat on opening night at the Porchlight Theatre this past Thursday. Only him… she must love- with her whole… heart. “For a woman to bear a child, she must… in her own personal way, she must… love her husband. She finally covered the girl’s face with her apron - oh the shame of it! - and launched in. Wendla hurried to sit on the floor at her mother’s feet, laid her head in her mother’s lap and looked off into the distance, waiting. Her mother relented and sat down in a sturdy high backed wooden chair. She begged her mother to tell her the truth about where babies come from. A sheltered girl, a student of a cruelly authoritarian institution of higher learning, had just turned 14. Chancellor Leo von Caprivi was not popular with the elite, as he sought to also address laborers' rights. The usual societal dilemma, feed the rich or feed the poor, was at hand. A loss I barely considered until I read today's report from Wilmette Bureau Chief Caren Jeskey: One cost of COVID's hidden costs is all the theater we've missed.