Why does Ilse begin singing Purple Summer?- Page 2

[ChildrenwillListen]

Posted: 3/17/12 at 2:33pm

Purple Summer was hands down my favorite song in the show. Other than that, I just couldn't quite connect.

[TimesSquared]

Posted: 3/18/12 at 6:10pm

Hey Aces,

I understood the free-spirited, sexually active Ilsa to be a stand-in for nature. She doesn't go to school with the other children, she's not under the thumb of her parents. There's an adult knowingness to her character (and not accidentally, a more idiosyncratic vocal quality to the actors that were cast to play her). I found it fitting that Ilse ends the play with a song that the rest of the children join in singing, as they come to terms with adulthood, as Ilse, in her particular way, already has.

To me, the song simply says that there is hope, in that the beauty of fertile summer will follow the abrupt agony of spring/the awakening to adulthood, when sexuality hopefully changes from something terrifying to what it simply is, and what we all are: part of the continuum of nature. The repetition at the end: "all shall know the wonder of purple summer" seems to make the play's bigger point: a call for a time when we cease to pass the fear, guilt and shame for our sexuality on to our children.

Maybe the lyrics seem obtuse in the reading, but lyrics aren't meant to be read, they're meant to be heard sung, optimally in the context of the show they were written for. I understood it, and I thought the song (with its gorgeous melody and vocal arrangement, by the way) was a perfect finale to this show.