Gerard Canonico in Spring Awakening: a Guide
Most people these days know Gerard from Be More Chill, but one of his first big roles was in the iconic broadway musical Spring Awakening. It debuted off-broadway in 2006 when Gerard was 16 and transitioned to Broadway about a year later. Here are some pics of him during this period:
Gerard started out as a swing for all the male roles except the lead and was a member of the ensemble. In SA, the ensemble sat among the on-stage audience members ‘undercover’ until about 20 minutes into the show they pulled out their mics and started singing along (often scaring the audience members next to them half to death). During Touch Me and Totally Fucked they would actually stand up and perform the choreography with the main cast, and Gerard was pretty infamous for a certain move.
There’s this part at the end of Totally Fucked where the entire cast starts jumping and dancing around, and Gerard would always jump up and down on his chair. Somehow, he never broke anything while doing this over the course of the show, but what he did manage to break was about eight chairs. Eventually they got him a metal chair, which he also managed to break a bunch more times! Talent.
Over the course of the show Gerard went on for all of the male rolls he could do. I’ve included some noteworthy audios here of him understudying Hanschen, Georg and Ernst + a gif of Gerard as Georg:
Eventually Gerard took over the role of Moritz Stiefel, the secondary male lead. Moritz is a very tragic character with a lot of angst who does some major rocking out during his songs, so you can probably imagine why Gerard would be a good fit. Luckily, there’s not one, but two public recordings out there of him playing Moritz on Youtube!
The first one we have (my personal favourite version of SA out there) is from the very first time Gerard played Moritz when he took over as a swing. Next to Jonathan Groff’s Melchior, Gerard’s Moritz is extremely precious during the dialogue scenes, and he’s explosive during the songs!
The other boot is from during the time Gerard officially took over the role of Moritz, and you can tell he’s a lot more practiced here. The quality is not as great and I prefer the other boot, but it’s worth it to at least skim through for comparison + Matt Doyle is equally great as Melchior!
Lastly, I’ve collected some bonus material in this playlist including Gerard singing One That I Want from Grease as Hanschen for the Easter Bonnet (must watch!), the cast singing Bitch of Living a capella during the stagehand strike, and some more live performances!
Hope you enjoyed this little guide!
