Great NY Times Article on Duncan Sheik

[Wanna Be A Foster]

Posted: 12/26/06 at 11:19am

Duncan Sheik lacks the wan look of an alternative rocker. He has a happy, welcoming face and comports himself with no signs of angst. During the many years he has worked as a singer-songwriter he has remained consistently immune from the grip of creative block. On the subject of the self-doubt that can afflict so many young artists, Mr. Sheik said, “There were a couple of moments but literally two or three moments.”

It is in some sense fitting then that Mr. Sheik should suddenly find himself, for the first time, at the glorious center of the Broadway musical’s generally buoyant world. He composed the score for “Spring Awakening” — his friend Steven Sater wrote the book and lyrics — the energetic new musical that has been praised so effusively by critics. (Writing about the show in The New York Times, Charles Isherwood proclaimed that Broadway “may never be the same.”)

Based on the 1891 play by the German writer Frank Wedekind, “Spring Awakening,” explores the exhilaration and terrors of adolescent sex and the traumas associated with its repression. The music is alive and intensely emotional, steeped in themes of anger and ecstasy, longing and expectation.

Read on...
Broadway Is Rocker’s Latest Alternative

Updated On: 12/26/06 at 11:19 AM