Kitchener-Waterloo Musical Productions is known for high quality, family friendly musicals such as "Shrek" and "Anne of Green Gables."

But the company is now trying something completely different and it might shock a few audience members expecting fun and frivolity.

"Spring Awakening" opens Thursday night at the Conrad Centre for the Performing Arts and it is without doubt a bold and provocative show, definitely not for children.

"A show like this is rarely done at the community level," said director Amanda Kind, during a recent dress rehearsal.

She referred to the sensitive issues in the play and how she had to address them with this largely young cast through intimacy workshops, instructing the youth how to approach the subject material with maturity without it having a deep effect on their psyches.

So what is the subject matter that could have everyone so rattled? You name it: suicide, first time sex, teen pregnancy, bullying, zealous church authority, gay love, abuse, learning disabilities, teens looking for answers from adults and getting nothing but silence or lies to avoid embarrassing conversations.

The teens look to each other for information but those friends also don't have any knowledge and so the teens go through life frightened and confused.

The issues sound current, but the play was written in 1891 by German playwright Frank Wedekind, and the story is set in the late 19th century. It was turned into a musical in the late 1990s, opening on Broadway in December 2006, winning eight Tony Awards.

Heather Agnew plays Wendla Bergman, an adolescent who is desperate for her mother to explain sex: Where do babies come from? Mom, however, is much too embarrassed and simply tells the girl that she will have children only if she truly loves her husband.

We see Wendla fall in love with a boy and when they get physical, it's a rather graphic portrayal, without the nudity of course.

"I know the story and the impact," said Agnew, a graduate of Sheridan College's musical arts program, where she had a role in the same show a few years ago.

"I was excited it was coming," she said. "I knew it could be a challenge to put on this show. But I think it's important, it's outside the boundaries for a company that is known for family-friendly musicals."

The action takes place in a quaint German village where a group of teens are just starting to feel hormonal urges - while at the same time dealing with home issues of abuse, high expectations and emotional confusion - and there are no adults they can turn to for advice.

Wendla and her beau, Melchior Gabor, played by Trevor Middleton, have known each other from childhood. But as they start budding into adolescence, their relationship has shifted to one of passion, but they are not equipped to handle these new emotions.

Melchior's buddy Moritz Stiefel, played by Brenden Stehouwer, is an intense young man who, though he is smart, struggles in school and he can never live up to his parents' high standards, a situation that eventually crushes him.

Stehouwer has performed in several productions with the K-W company, and admits this one is very different.

"This one is more dark," he said. "It's different than what I've done in the past.

"Our goal isn't to put on a show that is just entertaining, it's about what people think about sexuality, abuse, all those taboo subjects."

He said all the characters play roles that show them struggling to understand what is happening to their lives as they graduate from the innocence of childhood into adulthood, without support. The adults are there, they are just indifferent and so caught up in what other people think that they fail to support their struggling children. Their position in society is more important than the safety and happiness of their vulnerable children.

The work, said Stehouwer "opens up the dialogue" to the same problems today that teens had in 1891.

"It's talking about a repressive society and we're still shocked," he said.

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Stehouwer is happy the director provided extra help through the intimacy workshops.

"It was to make sure we remember, it's a play and to have support for the cast," he said.

There is another emotional aspect to the show's history.

Earlier this month six of the students who survived the mass shooting at the Parkland high school in Florida appeared at in Boca Raton, Fla., at the Boca Black Box Center for the Arts in its production of "Spring Awakening."

The musical had been in rehearsals five weeks before the shooting and six brave survivors decided the show must go on. There was tremendous outpouring of support for them, including the arrival of eight of the original cast members from the Broadway show, actors such as Lea Michele of "Glee" who provided master classes for the young actors. There were also death threats against the six young actors, but they did not give up.

As Kind said in her director's notes, adults need to trust and empower kids, noting they are wiser, braver and more creative than they are given credit for.

Spring Awakening

Conrad Centre for the Performing Arts, 36 King St., W., Kitchener

May 31 to June 9

Tickets: advance general admission $30 + HST and box office fee

At the door: $37

https://kwmp.ca, email info@kwmp.ca