Phamaly, 'Spring Awakening' and boundaries of disability and stage intimacy

It takes some real soul-searching and courage for any theater company to stage “Spring Awakening.” The raucous, rocking, revolutionary 2006 Broadway musical is an adaptation of Frank Wedekind's tragic 1891 banned novel about hormonally charged German teens discovering the often frightening urges of adolescence that no adults in their strict religious community will simply explain to them. And here, the absence of any real information comes with deadly consequences.

But the courage it takes to stage this Tony Award-winning Best Musical is nothing compared to the bravery it takes to perform in it. Especially for the two actors who bring the first act to a frightening yet strangely beautiful moment of blind climax. Actors who, in the disability-affirmative Phamaly Theatre Company’s new production opening Friday in Northglenn, are blind or living with bipolarism themselves.

Imagine being actor Sam Barrasso, blind since birth, playing a naive teen girl who’s never been told about sex or pregnancy and finds herself alone with a book-smart boy whose only first-hand knowledge of sex himself was watching a colt mount a mare. It’s an intensely vulnerable moment in the play. How do you even prepare for that in rehearsal?

Barrasso couldn’t stop giggling, she says (with a giggle) – because she felt so safe and comfortable with her scene partner, Ryan Finn. And with her Intimacy director, Samantha Egle.

“When we went into the rehearsal process for that scene, it was the easiest, most gentle, most peaceful thing to do,” says Barrasso.

We’re not far removed from a time when the personal trauma that could be triggered in an actor by performing in a potentially personally invasive scene wouldn’t have been given a second thought. Then came 2016 and the #MeToo movement, a spring awakening of its own for the entire world.

The idea of having an intimacy director to help actors navigate all moments involving physical touching or difficult emotional terrain goes back to about 2006. But it wasn’t until a major Chicago theater company was dissolved in 2016 after allegations of ongoing misconduct that the “intimacy director” started to become regarded as an essential member of any creative team.

“#MeToo really exposed a need in the performing industry for more resources for performers and creative teams to have access for these conversations and protocols for how to do the work more safely and more effectively,” says Egle, founder of a company called Humble Warrior Movement Arts. “Spring Awakening” director Ben Raanan considers her the preeminent intimacy director in Colorado.

Her job, Egle says, “is to create safe, sustainable, story-driven movement.” And she does that by operating within her actors' very individual boundaries and confidence levels. That’s true for any client she works for, but given that every member of Phamaly Theater Company has a diagnosed disability (seen or unseen), one of Egle’s specific considerations going into “Spring Awakening” was this: What does intimacy look like on a disabled body – and how is it potentially different? “I think Phamaly does have different considerations and different boundaries,” she says.

Egle’s first meeting with the cast, in fact, was designated as a boundaries rehearsal.

“What I thought was really cool was that Samantha put us in a circle and she would kindly ask our permission for her to touch us,” says Barrasso. “She would say, ‘Can I touch your face?’ or, ‘Can I touch your nose?’ And she eventually got each of us to say ‘No.’ And that was the whole point. She got us to say “No.” I think that that was really helpful, especially with our actors who have had experiences where their boundaries have been pushed or not understood. It was a beautiful way to start out the rehearsal process. And it's been wonderful ever since.”

Those boundaries, Egle says, are fluid, and not hers to set. What might be comfortable for one actor might be traumatizing for the next. “My boundaries are the performers’ boundaries,” she says.

One scene in the musical involves a slap. The actor doing the slapping didn’t feel safe delivering it. So it’s not a slap anymore. Period.

“One thing I have learned is that some folks have never been allowed to have boundaries before,” Egle says. “They've always existed, but we often just didn't let anyone voice them. And what that so often meant is that those boundaries were sometimes violated.”

Like individual boundaries, Egle says, consent is fluid, too. Barrasso, who has been jonesing for the chance to play the tragic teen Wendla Bergmann in “Spring Awakening” since she first learned of its existence 17 years ago, is open to explore just about anything. But she appreciates that her consent is always asked and never assumed.

When “Spring Awakening” was bowing on Broadway, Barrasso was playing Emily Gibbs in Phamaly’s “Our Town” – another teen venturing into adulthood without the slightest clue. Which bears out the timeless importance of both stories. “Spring Awakening” just happens to have the added benefit of a catchy, contemporary pop score by Duncan Sheik that is meaningfully weaved into the historical tale as an intentional way of saying that despite all the information that is available to young people today – they are largely just as clueless about sex and intimacy now as they were in 1891 Germany.

While “Spring Awakening” quickly grew into a zeitgeist phenomenon, it is still a marketing challenge in heartland America. That’s because, on film: Sex sells. On stage: Sex scares people to death. And perhaps nothing might scare some people more than disabled people having sex.

To which Barrasso says: If you want to talk about fairness and equality in 2023, get over it. The disabled community often feels infantilized, she adds – something Phamaly has been addressing head-on since 2019 by presenting a succession of sexually robust musicals in “Chicago,” "The Rocky Horror Musical” and now “Spring Awakening.”

“The whole point of ‘Spring Awakening’ is that kids need to be given reproductive sexual education,” Barrasso says. “And the whole point of our ‘Spring Awakening’ is that disabled kids need to be given the same reproductive sexual education that able-bodied kids get – and if not, then you get these tragic results. So, yes: Disabled kids need to be taken seriously. And their autonomy needs to be taken seriously.”

Think of that as the one boundary that Phamaly is happy to disrespect.