Even before he graduated high school, Daniel Plimpton was ready to hit the road. In 2008, while still a senior at the Pioneer Valley Performing Arts charter school, he auditioned for the national tour of the musical Spring Awakening. Two years and four callbacks later, he made the cast of the company that’s been criss-crossing the country since last fall. The last U.S. stop in the 30-state tour—and the closest the show is coming to the Valley—is next Tuesday in Worcester.
“I saw the show the summer before my senior year and thought it was amazing,” Plimpton told me last week, phoning from a hotel room in Lincoln, Nebraska. “It’s unique, with pop music and modern choreography, the music’s addictive, and there’s an important message that everyone should hear. It’s a pretty brilliant piece.”
The piece, if you didn’t know, is that high school musical about teen suicide, rape, abortion, masturbation and homosexuality. The original play, by Frank Wedekind, scandalized Germany in the 1890s and is still pretty racy. The 2006 indie-pop musical, by Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater, won handfuls of Tonys on Broadway. Its “forbidden” themes have shocked some, but the implied message—that parents need to talk honestly with their children—has become a door-opener for frank discussions between parents and teens.
Plimpton plays Ernst, one of the students in a small town whose sexually repressed and repressive culture has a toxic effect on the kids’ lives. While his classmates, through ignorance or rebellion, are making disastrous choices, Ernst and his friend Hanschen are hesitantly choosing each other. Toward the end of the play, in what Plimpton describes as “a really tender, sweet scene,” the two boys share a kiss—which the actor says has gotten mixed reactions around the country.
“I was a little nervous to play the Bible Belt,” he confesses. “We have to hold the kiss for four bars of music. It’s not like we can stop and move on if the audience gets uncomfortable. But mostly people’s reactions have been much more accepting than I might have expected.”
Plimpton, who grew up in Leverett, has taken a year’s leave of absence from his training at the Boston Conservatory to do this tour. He says he’s learned things on the road that can’t come from classroom work. “You really learn how to give yourself to a show night after night, seven or eight times a week. You have to continue to remind yourself to ‘fresh-mint’ your words, as my freshman acting teacher put it—to mint them fresh every night, because the character is saying them for the first time and it’s the audience’s first time seeing the show.”
This Spring Awakening cast features 16 “kids” aged 18 to 25. Plimpton (who turned 21 last month) says, “It’s great that it’s such a young company. It’s everyone’s first tour, and the show is very exciting for all of us. It’s the perfect show to bring on the road, because we’re all energetic and young, and the crazy schedule doesn’t really get to us so much. And there are a few adults to keep us in check sometimes.”
Spring Awakening: May 10, Hanover Theatre, 2 Southbridge St., Worcester, (877) 571-7469, www.thehanovertheatre.org.
