What’s that underneath the set? The band.

As audiences take in the musical “Spring Awakening” at the Oregon Contemporary Theater this week, they’ll be keenly watching German youths explore their sexual identities, belting out odes to experiencing love as they come of age in a repressive society. 

But another group of spectators will be paying close attention from within the action. 

Jake Jernigan, almost so close to the actors he could reach out and touch them, will be watching for something different: an actor’s stomp. That’s the cue for the guitarist to start playing “The Bitch of Living,” timing the song’s initial downbeat with the stomp as best he can from inside the set.

“Spring Awakening” is Jernigan’s first time playing live for musical theater as part of Orchestra NEXT, a Eugene nonprofit created by Brian McWhorter focused on training the next generations of orchestral musicians in the city. The band for “Spring Awakening” is largely composed of alumni of the University of Oregon’s jazz studies graduate program like Jernigan. 

The band and the cast are reliant on each other. If someone misses a line, the cue isn’t there to start the song. If the band plays a tempo that’s too slow, the singers can run out of breath. Too fast, and they can’t pronounce the words right. 

For Jernigan, 30, “Spring Awakening” is an opportunity to play in more kinds of performance environments, particularly ones that require minute, coordinated attention to timing and transitions. Prior to this musical, his comparable stage show experience was playing in a large Led Zeppelin tribute concert as part of a 70-piece band.

“I was mainly just playing a bunch of Jimmy Page guitar parts,” he said. “It wasn’t the same extent of really specific cues of what’s happening on stage.”

At OCT, the partnership means that this season has two musicals in one season, a rarity for the intimate theater space.

“Using live musicians is a struggle because it’s expensive, and yet I think both ballet and musical theater are enhanced by the presence of live music,” OCT producing artistic director and “Spring Awakening” production director Craig Willis said of the partnership with Orchestra NEXT. “We have the benefit of access to some of the best skilled players in the community, both professional and student. And I think the idea of getting the students working alongside professionals is great, and it’s a win-win for all of us.”

Two musicals, one season 

“Spring Awakening” did not start life as a rock musical with ample electric guitar; it began as a frequently censored 1891 play by the German dramatist Frank Wedekind, a tragic youth melodrama about how oppressive culture can beget youths acting out via sexual acts they don’t truly understand. 

In 2006, the rock musical adaptation of “Spring Awakening” hit stages in New York City, making a stir Off Broadway but not packing the main theaters until after it swept the Tony Awards. Willis fell in love with “Spring Awakening” that year; he had read the original play and was surprised to hear that the story was being turned into a rock-forward musical. Willis was in New York and saw it a few times in those early Broadway days, able to snag inexpensive tickets before it took home Best Musical and seven other awards. 

But it wasn’t until last fall’s production of “Lizzie” at Oregon Contemporary Theatre, a rock musical about the famed axe murderer Lizzie Borden, that Willis thought of bringing the tale of Wendla, Moritz and Melchior to Eugene. 

The sets could be interchangeable. The same wooden structure that became the Borden household was a neat fit for the needs of “Spring Awakening,” where German youths prance about their hometown, classes and — in one pivotal scene — in a hayloft. 

The band, too: The live music for “Lizzie” last fall was played by musicians from Orchestra NEXT. In that show, the band was nestled in the lower level of the set under the elevated platform. They’re in the same spot for “Spring Awakening,” with the set labeled “LIZZIE” just above their heads.  

That programming kismet means a new milestone for the theater: OCT is an intimate, black-box style theater space typically focused on plays, programming new works, West Coast premieres and more as part of its season. This year marks the first time OCT is putting on two back-to-back musicals in one season. (“Lizzie” was such a hit last year, Willis said that they will do it again in October.)

Live music adds a warmth and a depth to stage shows, Willis said, making it worth the effort to figure out how it can work in a production.

But “Spring Awakening” with a live band of five musicians is likely at the upper capacity limit for an OCT musical production, Willis said, though bringing more smaller musicals into the season is an option.

“This is probably as big as we’d ever want to get,” he said. ‘It’s a 13-person cast, and the audio engineer is trying to perform magic to make it all happen.”

Under the set

On a recent Friday rehearsal, the band was working with a skeleton crew: Jernigan on guitars (he switches between four of them), music director Robert Bohall on piano and Casey Bedney on the drums. Even then, space under the set was tight as they played along during a stop-and-start rehearsal. 

Bohall, who graduated from the UO jazz studies program with a master’s degree, said working with Orchestra NEXT and OCT has been his first professional experience playing in musical theater. He was the rehearsal pianist for last fall’s production of “Lizzie,” and McWhorter offered him the music director gig for “Spring Awakening.” 

Bohall said that playing live music for theater presents new challenges that aren’t true of other performance environments, where musicians play through a piece of music from beginning to end. 

“Every single thing we’re doing is preplanned,” he said. “We’re understanding how they’re moving their body, when they start their lines, when they start a song. Even in the middle of songs, sometimes there’s physical cues that we’re following. Sometimes we’re listening for a certain line to go into the next section. There’s one scene where a student is being held by the ear by his teacher and scolded, and the teacher kind of throws him, and he stumbles. Right when he stumbles is the downbeat of our song.”

For Bohall, playing underneath the set of “Spring Awakening” brings another key difference: he can actually see the audience. As a jazz pianist, he said, he’s usually facing inward toward the band. 

But in the set, he can see how the audience is responding to the show in real time — in addition to having one of the best seats in the house, inches away from the live performance. 

“The actors are by far the hardest-working people in the production,” he said. “They do choreography, lines, blocking, music. Watching them is very cool to see.”

If you go: ‘Spring Awakening’ at Oregon Contemporary Theatre

“Spring Awakening” opens with a 7:30 p.m. performance on Saturday, Sept. 12, and runs through Sunday, Sept. 27. Performances are scheduled for 7:30 p.m. on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays and 2 p.m. on Sundays. There will be talk-back discussions with the actors starting at 4 p.m. after the Sunday matinee performances. 

Tickets are available online at a range of prices, starting at $34.