Mānoa Valley Theatre opens its next show, the rock musical “Spring Awakening,” on Thursday, March 19. Its director is Lurana Donnels O’Malley, a recently retired professor of theatre for the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa’s Department of Theatre and Dance. She will be making her debut at Mānoa Valley Theatre and is joined by her daughter, Teia, who is the scenic designer for the production.
O’Malley worked at UH Mānoa until 2025, when she retired after 34 years.
“Spring Awakening” runs through Sunday, April 5, and will be performed as theatre in the round, which means attendees sit on all sides of the stage. The rock musical with music by Duncan Sheik and book/lyrics by Steven Sater is based on the play by Frank Wedekind and explores the lives of a group of teenagers as they navigate societal pressures and adolescent sexuality. It is part of a music and comedy series supported by a grant from the Kosasa Foundation. The show sponsor is Johnny Valentine.
The rock musical "Spring Awakening," explores the lives of a group of teenagers as they navigate societal pressures and adolescent sexuality. (Courtesy Brandon Miyagi) 
The musical features several authoritarian figures, including parents, teachers, a priest and a doctor. (Courtesy of Brandon Miyagi) 
“Spring Awakening” runs Thursday, March 19, through Sunday, April 5. (Courtesy Brandon Miyagi)
“It's very powerful,” O’Malley said. “It’s a rock musical, but [the songs] are the characters' inner emotions and feelings and expressions, and so it really is an intentionally disorienting effect, because they will be acting in a scene that takes place in the 1890s in Germany, and then they'll burst out into a rock song that is their pent-up emotions. And some of them are just about struggles at school. A lot of it is their burgeoning sexuality. Repression. There’s desire. And all those things — that is what rock and roll is about.”
Does being a retired professor impact her directing style?
“I'm quite sure that it does,” she said. “In fact, a couple of the cast said to me, ‘It's so different and interesting having a professor/director.’”
O’Malley laughs.
“Because I was able to come in and present all of the research I had done and give them a little bit of a context of the style that the original playwright was writing in, which was called expressionism,” she said. “And overload them probably with some of the analysis of poetic influences because Steven Sater, who wrote the libretto but also the book for the musical, is himself a poet, and he's really got a way with words. He is drawing on all kinds of forces — Shakespeare and other poets — in what he creates for this.”
“Spring Awakening” is a musical she had been previously slated to direct at University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in 2020, but the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic led to the cancellation of that show. When Rob Duval, the artistic director for Mānoa Valley Theatre, reached out about directing this production, he didn’t know that, she added.
“It's come full circle, and here we are,” O’Malley said. “Six years later, working on it and with a great group. It just has turned out to be a fulfillment of a dream for me.”
The actors playing the musical’s adult characters each play six or more specific roles, she added.
“There's a lot of authoritarian figures — from their parents to teachers to the priest to the doctor — and some of those are written in quite an exaggerated way, so there's even yet another style layered on,” O’Malley said. “I am a retired theater historian so all of this is fascinating to me — what it was originally and then what these creators did with it 20 years ago in that really iconic Broadway production.”
That production, which opened on Broadway in December of 2006, featured the “Glee” actors actors Lea Michele and Jonathan Groff. The musical won eight Tony Awards.
There will be a few twists to this show, even for theater goers who have seen "Spring Awakening" before.
“Without giving too much away, I have a very particular take on one of the characters,” she said. “Her name is Ilse, and she is a former resident of the town, but I have reframed her somewhat as a person who is an artist looking back at her memories of the town, so she is present in every scene, watching it or engaging with the characters as almost a narrator, but a silent narrator. A witness to the memories.”
In this production, some of the characters also hold up scenic elements.
“For instance, there's a window in the headmaster's office, and the headmaster and the head mistress hold the window up while they're looking through it,” O’Malley said. “They're a sillier couple of characters, and it has a great comic feel. For us, it symbolized all of these ways that the adults are kind of getting in the way of the students and their growth by putting up barricades.”
Since the musical is presented as theatre in the round, actors play to the entire room.
“It's turning out great to have audiences on all sides,” she said. “People may need to come see it four times because it's a different view from every angle.”
The musical drew large numbers for auditions, she added.
“We've all been talking about how relevant we feel a lot of the issues are, even though it's set in the past,” O’Malley said. “There's a lot of conflict, but I do want to say it is ultimately an uplifting show, because they have so much spirit, these kids.”
Performances run Thursday through Sunday. Tickets start at $25.
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Katie Helland can be reached at katie@alohastatedaily.com.
