Due to heavy subject matters such as puberty, sexuality, rape, child abuse, homosexuality, suicide, teenage pregnancy, and abortion, the play has often been banned or censored.[4][5][6]
Anarchist Emma Goldman praised the play's portrayal of childhood and sexuality in her 1914 treatise The Social Significance of the Modern Drama.
Camilla Eibenschütz played Wendla in the 1906 Berlin production.[7] It was first staged in English in 1917 in New York City. This performance was threatened with closure when the city's Commissioner of Licenses claimed that the play was pornographic, but a New York trial court issued an injunction to allow the production to proceed.[8] One matinee performance was allowed for a limited audience.[9] The New York Times deemed it a "tasteless production of a badly translated version [of] the first and most celebrated play by the brilliant Frank Wedekind." The production at the 39th Street Theatre starred Sidney Carlyle, Fania Marinoff and Geoffrey C. Stein.[10] Drama critic Heywood Broun panned the production but singled out Stein as giving "the worst performance we have ever seen on any stage."[11]
There was a 1955 off-Broadway production at the Provincetown Playhouse.[12] It was also produced in 1978 by Joseph Papp, directed by Liviu Ciulei.[13]
The play was produced several times in England, even before the abolition of theatre censorship. In 1963, it ran, but for only two nights and in censored form.[14][15] The first uncensored version was in May 1974 at the Old Vic, under the direction of Peter Hall.[16] The National Theatre Company took a cut-down version to the Birmingham Repertory Theatre that summer.[17] Kristine Landon-Smith, who later founded the Tamasha Theatre Company, produced Spring Awakening at the Young Vic in 1985.[18] The play has been produced in London, in Scotland, and at universities since then.[19]
