Cabaret Written Response HOB

Copyright ©2010

In the 1960s, Americans could no longer count on the automatic, inherent “rightness” of our national behavior. For perhaps the first time, Americans were evaluating their obligations and rights, individually and as part of a civic, national and global community. Early in the decade, social and political unrest were slowly building, but they did not explode until around 1964-5. The era that began then—and continued until about 1972— is the era generally referred to as “The Sixties.”

Inequitable practices in employment for women and minorities, as well as social and racial injustices, contributed to the growing national discontent. When President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered the bombing of North Vietnam in 1965, the powder keg was lit (Jones, 2003). Many people were jolted into the realization that America just might be “the bad guy.” The tear in our patriotic fabric produced chaos, distrust and a loss of blind faith in political authority.

Once a hole in America's patriotic fabric was perceived, outraged Americans from many diverse groups saw an opportunity to march through the divide and demand a redefined American identity. Emotional, combative lines were drawn: conservative versus liberal, black versus white, women versus men and young versus old (Knapp, 2005).

What began as non-violent protests and peaceable methods for achieving civil rights changed when the leader of the black civil rights movement, Martin Luther King, Jr. was gunned down on April 4, 1968. Angry protests and riots became common platforms from which changes were raucously—and sometimes violently—demanded.

Off-stage, the Broadway community continued its fight for members’ rights, often under the leadership of Actors’ Equity Association (AEA). The issues for which Equity rallied were much the same as those that were being argued nationally. The union achieved many significant changes:

· The Equity-League Pension & Health Trust Funds were created as the result of a 13-day strike which closed all Broadway theatres in June, 1960.

· In 1961, the League of Theatres and Producers agreed that no actor would be required to perform in any theatre or place of performance where discrimination is practiced against any actor or patron by reason of race, creed or color. This policy has since been extended to prohibit discrimination based on gender, sexual preference or political belief.

· Equity has also adopted policies to help increase employment opportunities for actors of color, disabled, senior, and women performers.

· 1964 saw the equalization of the rehearsal and the minimum performance salary.

· A "Principal Interview" requirement (since expanded to include auditions) was also established, providing an opportunity for Equity performers to be seen by producers. [Producers are currently required to see all eligible union actors before casting the roles in their shows.] (AEA, 2011, “Historical Overview”)

Dance in both musicals and movies began to decrease as serious civil issues affected the national mood. The number of movie musicals waned, though a few of those produced became American classics. Onna White recreated her choreography for the film version of The Music Man (1962), and Marc Breaux and Dee Dee Wood choreographed magnificent numbers for Mary Poppins (1964)—which eventually made its way to Broadway in 2006. Bob Fosse choreographed the movie of Sweet Charity (1969)—with Shirley MacLaine stepping into the role of Charity and Chita Rivera portraying the character Nickie.

In a parallel of intensity that matched the slow boil of national activism, Broadway musical themes also progressed rather slowly in their portrayal of civil unrest. The number of all-black musicals sharply decreased. Musical theatre historian John Bush Jones suggests that the civil rights movement, with its message of shared humanity--regardless of race--impacted the portrayal of black stories on the stage. Where previously black music and dance had been celebrated as distinctive and unique, now the main goal was to highlight that which was common for all Americans. According to Jones:

A shared humanity was the basis for equal civil rights…With America’s blacks making demands to enter the nation’s mainstream in education, employment and non-segregated public accommodations,…musicals that emphasized black singularity were out of sync with the times. In addition, black writers in the 1960s may have felt that the issues blacks were fighting for were too serious to turn into musical theatre. (2003, p. 204)

Black themes continued to be treated with caution by white creative teams. The 1961 production of Kwamina (1961) is one such example. Set in Africa, Kwamina focused on two storylines: 1) the conflict between a modern, British-educated physician (Kwamina) and his chieftan father, and 2) Kwamina’s interracial love affair with a visiting British doctor (Eve). Librettist Robert Alan Aurthur was criticized for his avoidance of the miscegenation theme.

One critic stated that the interracial relationship was handled in so light a manner that the show might as well have cast two white actors.

It might be argued that the mere casting of an interracial couple as romantic leads in… Kwamina…was in itself a political statement for the Broadway of the early 1960s. Such a move seemed to validate Actors’ Equity’s vision of an integrated Broadway…Yet, as early as 1961, this vision of the mid-1950s seemed to be outdated by the quickening pace of the civil rights movement. In this context, the avoidance of issues concerning race at a time when race was being continually debated in government, in the courts, and in the mass media, a race-less image for the Broadway musical was clearly becoming irrelevant. (Woll, 1989, p. 245)

Agnes de Mille’s choreography for Kwamina was praised, but the show closed after only 62 performances.

Throughout the country in the early 1960s, the issues of civil rights—voter's rights and voter registration for blacks, integration, and fairness and equality in the workplace—were in the news and on television nearly every day, but mostly absent on Broadway. In 1962, Richard Rodgers produced…an original piece called "No Strings," for which he would write both the lyrics and the music. Set in contemporary Paris, "No Strings" was about a love affair between an expatriate writer and a fashion model. The model, an American, was played by Diahann Carroll, an exquisite and talented black actress and singer, who had made her Broadway debut in 1954. Although the interracial aspect of the romance was apparent to anyone who was watching, it was never mentioned specifically…A show that looked to be socially progressive appeared, upon reflection, to be finicky at best, cowardly at worst. (Maslon, 2004, “Civil Rights on Broadway”)

Other white-written musicals incorporated interracial couples and avoided addressing any of the social issues that these relationships represented. One musical, Hallelujah, Baby! (1967), gave a history of the civil rights movement, but critics felt the story was “100 years too late” (Lindsay Patterson [black historian], cited in Woll, 1989, p. 247).

Golden Boy was also written by a white creative team. Adapted from the play by Clifford Odets, it was rewritten several times to bring current issues of civil unrest and racism to the original story of an Italian boxer.

Choreographer Donald McKayle was the only member of the creative team who was black. McKayle was born in New York City on July 6, 1930, and he grew up in Harlem. His parents were Jamaican immigrants.

McKayle trained in modern dance, studying under and dancing with the companies of many teacher/choreographers now considered the pioneers of modern dance: Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, Pearl Primus and Anna Sokolow. Almost from the beginning, McKayle began choreographing modern dances for the concert stage.

In the late 1940s, McKayle attended a benefit concert at the Ziegfeld Theatre that featured the Jack Cole Dancers. It was there that he was first exposed to theatrical jazz. He became an instant fan.

The lindy was very important to the Cole style and feel, according to McKayle. "Jack had lots of sequences based on the lindy, cause every time you auditioned for him, you had to do a lot of footwork. Which was based on the music and the shifting and partnering, but taken solely without a partner. I think he used that and just took it somewhere else." Along with most who rubbed shoulders with Cole, McKayle remembers him with fear as well as reverence. "Jack would put you through it, and you had to look like you could survive. And if you didn't survive, he would just run right over you. He was a scary guy!” (Boross, 1998, “Donald McKayle”)

In 1951, McKayle formed his own modern dance company, Donald McKayle and Company. By then, he had already performed as a chorus dancer in his first Broadway musical revue, Bless You All (1950). In the years that followed, McKayle traveled between the intertwined worlds of modern concert dance, Broadway musicals, film, and television, choreographing dances for all four entertainment genres. He often incorporated theatrical Cole-style jazz into his works.

McKayle directed and choreographed musicals off-Broadway, and in 1959 he assisted Bob Fosse in choreographing Redhead for Gwen Verdon. McKayle was credited as associate choreographer. In 1962, he choreographed a concert jazz ballet piece called “District Storyville” which caught the eye of producer Hillard Elkins. Elkins had recently talked nightclub singing and dancing star Sammy Davis, Jr. into doing a new Broadway musical.

The following is an excerpt from “Civil Rights Era on Broadway” by Laurence Maslon (2004):

Elkins caught up with Davis in London and dangled the prospect of adapting Clifford Odets' 1937 play "Golden Boy" into a musical. The original play was one of the depression era's great dramas, about a boxer who in his quest for ambition loses his soul -- and his life. It would be a serious musical and, in signing Davis, Elkins determined that it would not only be updated but also reflect the struggles of an ambitious young black man in America...

As "Golden Boy" moved toward its 1964 opening, the project began to accommodate its star and, more compellingly, its times. Davis' character was originally called Joe Bonaparte, a poor Italian American, the son of immigrants with a disapproving brother who works as a labor organizer. Here, in one of the show's rare bits of whimsy, he's renamed Joe Wellington, a Harlem resident, whose brother now works for CORE (the Congress of Racial Equality). Strouse and Adams provided a score that banked heavily and effectively on urban jazz. One of Davis' nine numbers (nine numbers, plus a prize fight at the show's climax, is an unfathomably large load for a performer -- even Davis) has him returning as a success to his old neighborhood. In a funky gospel number, Davis and his cohorts mock both white attitudes and George M. Cohan:

Don't forget One Hundred and Twenty-seventh Street –

Don't forget your happy Harlem home!

Don't forget One Hundred and Twenty-seventh Street –

No, siree! There's no slum like your own!

Don't forget the cultural life on this here street –

Richer than the outside world suspects!

Hark! The cheerful patter of all the junkies' feet –

And the soothing tones of Malcolm X!

It was undoubtedly the first time a Broadway audience had heard Malcolm X [a powerful, revolutionary black activist] mentioned in a show. Even better, it was the first time an audience had been confronted with anger, real anger, in a musical for a long time. The social and political frustration in "Golden Boy" -- its hero asks, "Who do you fight/When you want to break out/But your skin is your cage?" -- brought the anger of the musicals of the 1930s to the issue of civil rights. In the original, Joe has a doomed love affair with the mistress of his manager, Lorna. In 1964, the woman was still the mistress of the manager, but now she was white. The kiss between Joe and Lorna in Act Two sent off shock waves during the show's tryouts. Although its tryouts were troubled by other creative issues, "Golden Boy" eventually opened as a slick, stark, well-intentioned piece of Broadway craftsmanship, with a dynamite, once-in-a-lifetime performance by Davis at its center. Despite its ethical message, the show still wowed audiences for its sheer performance quality, and Elkins insulated Davis and the company from the various death threats and other hostilities leveled against the musical. Soon after the opening, Martin Luther King Jr. came to see it. He admired its message, particularly a number called "No More":

Well, you had your way! No more!

Well, it ain't your day No more!

Well, I'm standing up, I ain't on the floor.

I ain't bowin' down No more!

Sammy Davis, Jr. insisted that the cast be half white and half black. (Baayork Lee—an Asian-American dancer who we will discuss in the next unit—was also a member of the ensemble.) Golden Boy made great strides in presenting black struggles, but still shied away from discussing the implications of the interracial relationship that was a central theme. It was noted by critics, but not specifically mentioned or addressed in the musical (Woll, 1989).

Golden Boy received four Tony Award Nominations: Best Actor (Sammy Davis, Jr.), Best Choreographer (Donald McKayle), Best Producer (Hillard Elkins) and Best Musical. However, all four awards went to Fiddler on the Roof, which received nine Tony awards in all. [Jerome Robbins won for Best Direction and Best Choreography.]

There were a few black musical authors during this period. Langston Hughes, an author and poet who blossomed during the Harlem Renaissance, began writing a new type of black musical. These new musicals--which played during the early 1960s--were about Afro-American* life, from a perspective of Afro-Americans, and the target audience was Afro-American. Writing for blacks was Hughes’ answer to both the black unemployment dilemma and the lack of authentic black material on Broadway.

[*historical term]

Although dance is not mentioned in the description of any of his musicals, I mention Hughes' shows here because they began a new genre of black musicals, musicals in which real issues and authentic Afro-American life were portrayed. [Hughes had also written the book and lyrics for two musicals in the 1950s, but both quickly closed. The Barrier (1950)—choreographed by Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman—closed after only 4 performances and Simply Heaven (1957) closed after 62.] In 2010, Hughes’ poetry and his life were set to music in the musical Langston in Harlem, which played at Urban Stages on 30th Street in New York City.

In the 1950s, the extent of youthful American rebellion extended mainly to music. Rock ‘n roll, rock ‘n roll artists, and dancing to rock ‘n roll were all viewed as “wild” to parents of the 1950s. But the 1960s began an era where challenging political authority became commonplace, and acceptance of this new behavior changed the power structure of the nuclear family. Young people, growing accustomed to questioning political authority, began to challenge their parents as well. This change did not happen overnight.

The generation gap and the uncomfortable shift of the younger generation from traditional apple pie ideals to rebellion made its appearance on Broadway in the form of dueling musical forms: traditional escapism entertainment vs. issue-driven productions.

Choreographers like Gower Champion kept traditional Broadway alive. Champion was the keeper of the old-fashioned, glamorous Broadway flame. In the midst of an era of harsh realism, Champion enabled audiences to escape into a land of beauty, laughter and spectacular entertainment, while changing the future of “musical staging” by moving the musical production forward from start to finish (Kislan, 1987). “He established a style of staging that placed every prop, set piece and performer into a dynamic flow of song, story and motion” (Kenrick, 2003, “The Director-Choreographers”).

One of the best examples of this seamless movement of song, dance and scenery is “Telephone Hour” from Bye Bye Birdie (1960). Champion won the Tony Awards for Best Direction and Best Choreography.

Video: Bye Bye Birdie - “Telephone Hour”

(2009)

In addition to directing, choreographing or staging several plays, musicals and television episodes, Champion was both director and choreographer for nine Broadway musicals, including some of the most beloved: Bye Bye Birdie (1960), Hello, Dolly! (1964) and the Broadway adaptation of the film 42nd Street (1980). Champion received 15 Tony nominations for direction and choreography. He won 8 Tony Awards.

42nd Street was Champion’s last contribution to the Broadway stage. He passed away on opening night for the show.

Champion posthumously received the Tony Award for Best Choreography in 1981. After Champion died, Frank Rich wrote the following for The New York Times:

For all the commercial and critical success Mr. Champion achieved during his lifetime, perhaps he was never fully appreciated on his own terms. That may be because he was an anachronism. He was no innovator, like Jerome Robbins or Michael Bennett. He never created his own distinctive choreographic style, like Bob Fosse. He didn’t try to tackle daring subjects, like Hal Prince. And yet Mr. Champion’s body of work is as much a part of the history of the contemporary musical as that of his talented peers. By applying an unstoppable imagination, galvanizing enthusiasm and the taskmaster’s professionalism to a series of unpretentious, empty-headed entertainments, he almost single-handedly kept alive the fabled traditions of Broadway’s most glittery and innocent past. (cited in Kislan, 1987, p. 113)

Mainstream, commercial shows continued to draw mostly-white audiences. However, Mark Grant (2004) posits that the promotion of choreographers to director-choreographers caused the decline of the Broadway musical in American culture. He states that while de Mille and Robbins pushed dance into a position of equality with song and story, later choreographers, given the additional responsibilities of directing, tipped the balance of these elements. Dance became too important and the story began to be overshadowed by the visual spectacle of production numbers. Storytelling gave way to “conceptual showmanship” (p. 278) with choreographers such as Bob Fosse and Gower Champion leading the charge.

Grant criticizes conceptual showmanship, stating that it pretends to be offering depth of message when, in fact, it offers nothing but aesthetic. His definition: “Conceptual showmanship: staging that exalts a director’s visual composition but does not psychologically investigate the text” (2004, p. 283).

Grant views de Mille and Robbins as “playwrighting choreographers”. He believes the end of the road for quality Broadway musicals was heralded by director-choreographer Gower Champion, and Hello, Dolly! (1964) was the vehicle that drove it there. According to Grant, Hello, Dolly! brought the Broadway musical backwards by decades to a time when the story was used to loosely string lavish production numbers together. [Ziegfeld, anyone?]

In direct dispute of Grant’s criticism is one of the most innovative, politically provocative musicals of the decade and, perhaps, in Broadway history.

Raymond Knapp explained the manner in which Broadway shows portray historical events:

Musically and dramatically, the shows must… speak the language of their audience;…conceived for American audiences, each show had to build its story, characters, and situation around images...that America already had in place. Moreover, their success, both with audiences in addressing the issues identified here, depends less on their sense of history than on their sense of their audience’s received view of history, of what they already know and of what they are ready to be told. (2005, p. 230)

Cabaret managed to deal with the serious issue of Nazi Germany by putting a mask on it. The events of the dawning of the Nazi takeover are viewed from the perspective of a tawdry nightclub called the Kit Kat Klub. Anti-semitism, oppression and female exploitation are all delivered via the smiling face of the Master of Ceremonies as he introduces his girls. The show “pushed hard against the perceived boundaries of acceptability” (Knapp, 2005, p. 240).

Cabaret used extremes in its portrayal of characters. The over-the-top performances, especially Joel Grey’s Master of Ceremonies, allowed the audience the freedom to relate to the characters while at the same time offering an escape route in case the character behaved in a reprehensible way that required audience members to distance themselves. In other words, the audience could wave away unpleasant behaviors by pointing out how ridiculously extreme the character was.

The Kit Kat Klub [by all accounts, the initials “KKK” were an unintentional match to those of the white extremist Ku Klux Klan organization] points out parallels in America’s history of racist behaviors and warns against pointing the finger at others. The dances demonstrate a freedom of sexuality wrapped in the oppression of the club in which the dancers are forced by their circumstances to perform. Almost all of the female dancers in the show were required to play an instrument. This criterion added to the already considerable bag of tricks that a Broadway dancer needed to have in order to work on the Great White Way.

The original Cabaret was choreographed by Ron Field, and the show won 8 Tony awards, including Best Choreographer, Best Director (Hal Prince) and Best Musical. The revival was choreographed by Rob Marshall; his associate choreographer was Cynthia Onrubia.

Video: Cabaret (Original production) – “Willkommen” (1966)

Hair marked a deliberate attempt to create a viable alternative to the musicals of the older generation, grounded in a documentary-like approach to life as it is actually lived, and steeped in the emergent political issues, alternative life-styles, iconoclastic manner of appearances--and, of course, the music--of the younger generation. (Knapp, 2005, p. 153-4)

The show's audience members universally recall three creative elements from Hair: The music, the free-flowing “spontaneous” energy of the cast, and the nudity. Hair offered a new 1960s mythology: the celebration of nonconformity, freedom of expression and non-violent protest.

Although rock music had made its musical debut in 1960 in Bye Bye Birdie (Wollman, 2006), it had been presented in a traditional, musical comedy scene-song-dance format with a traditional boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-wins-girl-in-the-end theme. In fact, rock and roll was cleverly inserted into the storyline: Conrad Birdie—a fictitious rock star—goes off to war with a send-off kiss from a lucky contest winner. Rock music was inserted as a character development in an otherwise mainstream musical. The musical was well-received, but the rock songs were labeled by some as noise. As if to prove the older generation was right about this new music, no further musicals used rock until Hair. Hair is considered to be the first rock musical.

James Rado and Gerome Ragni wrote the book and lyrics for Hair as a performance piece for themselves. Their goal for the show was to marry artistic freedom to commercial success. With Galt MacDermot, who wrote the music, they auditioned the show for several producers. Many of the powerful producers of the time turned their backs when they found out the show was about “hippies.” Joseph Papp took a chance, and Hair was originally produced as the premiere show at the newly constructed Public Theater, a venue that would provide a home for revolutionary theater pieces for years to come.

Hair integrated all of the creative elements into its message of freedom, peace and love. Its method of development followed the philosophy of the musical: freedom of expression and peaceful protest against established oppressive organizations and practices.

In rehearsals for Hair, the creative team emphasized a collective approach to music making. In marked contrast to a traditional Broadway pit band—which is usually rehearsed separately and brought in to work with the company a week or two before the preview period begins—the band members joined the cast during the length of Hair’s rehearsal period. As Natalie Mosco remembers, the result was a production that Hair grew out of intense collaboration among musicians, actors, and the creative team:

Galt [MacDermot] would just let everyone sing. And we were basically allowed to make up our own—and then if Galt liked what we made up, we kept it. Actors like Leata Galloway had five octaves. So Galt would turn around and say, “Leata, can you give it one of your dog notes, one of your freak notes?” Or, “Could you give me a wail Melba [Moore]?” and that would be it. Throw something out and let people do it. Then he would give the rest of us, after we had experimented, a more solid foundation… Hair came out of free-form rock, theater, and dance. (Wollman, 2006, pp. 51-2)

[Years later, Michael Bennett would formalize this collaborative development process into the “musical theatre workshop” model that is still used to develop new musicals.]

Modern dancer, Anna Sokolow was hired as choreographer, but was fired by Joseph Papp after the final dress rehearsal. Her dances were eliminated, and director Gerald Freedman was credited with staging the movement for the original production. The show received a lot of buzz, and the limited run was sold out. A politician, who happened to see the show, was so impacted by it that he co-produced the same version in a Broadway nightclub. Then, he reinvested in the show and left his political career to become a full-time producer and bring the show to Broadway.

“The eight-week Public run of HAIR was as a distant cousin to the show that would sprout to life on Broadway less than six months later” (Grode, 2010, p. 36). Although many people believed that the show would never have been seen if not for the structure and guidance that Gerald Freedman offered to the wandering creativity of the show’s writers, a new director—Tom O’Horgan—was hired for the Broadway run. In fact, other than the show’s writers, almost every creative production staff member was replaced.

Julie Arenal was hired to choreograph the Broadway production. Director, Tom O’Horgan, led the cast through many “theater games” that built trust and a communal world among the cast members.

Arenal’s choreography…also stemmed from group exercises. Steve Gillette, the show’s lead guitarist, would sit in on rehearsals and jam—a marked departure from the standard practice of relying solely on piano accompaniment…and the company would start to dance. “What I’d then do was isolate individual moves from people and build a vocabulary,” Arenal says. “And once I got four or five good moves, I put them on the rest of the company.” (Grode, 2010, p. 53)

Cast member Natalie Mosco said,

We would all dance. And the choreographer would go around and say, “Let’s do a [cast member] Marjorie Lipari step!” and we would put that into the show. I had one that was my step, which was a kick thing. And we had another one which was somebody else’s. And she would grab what we were doing individually and we would all do it as a group. (cited in Wollman 2006, pp. 51-2)

There was another noteworthy collaboration. According to theatre critic Eric Grode, creators Rado and Ragni got advice from Jerome Robbins, who met with them several times to offer constructive criticism. In addition, Robbins had created an experimental theatre group, the American Theatre Laboratory (1966), and Anna Sokolow (who choreographed the off Broadway production) and Julie Arenal (who choreographed the Broadway production) both came from his group (2010).

The choreography by Arenal for Hair very much reflected the rebellion of the late 1960s. Hair evidences an evolution in the Broadway musical and in its dance, for its anti-efforts, its purposeful choices to not choose that which was conventional or standard. In this regard, the dance in Hair was equally “anti-dance” (Knapp, 2005).

However, this method did not preclude Arenal’s choreographing set dances. Sequences of steps and acting beats were carefully structured by Arenal and O’Horgan. Said cast member Marjorie Lipari, “Tom framed every beat with these beautiful images. It was sort of like, ‘Movement-movement-movement-FRAME. Movement-movement-movement-FRAME.’ There was precision, and it was choreographed , but it wasn’t nailed to the floor. It was organic. It came out of our bodies” (cited in Grode, 2010, p. 53). In fact, the dance was so integrated into the action and such an integral element in portraying the freedom of the musical, that Arenal has historically been given little credit for her work on the show. Says Grode:

Many directors and choreographers believe their work is most successful when it is least visible, when the audiences accept their actions and words as unforced. By that definition HAIR was nothing short of triumphant, especially when it came to Arenal’s choreography—or dance direction, as it was ultimately credited. “In 1968, Dance Magazine asked me why there is no dancing in the show. Natural movement was not dancing to them. Other choreographers got it back then…but not Dance Magazine.” Slights of this nature would become commonplace in describing nearly every element of HAIR. (2010, p. 53)

Raymond Knapp points out that there was a “mythology” of organically developed material, which included the dancing, when in fact all were carefully crafted. I’m not sure whether this is a complement or a criticism. Comments on Arenal’s choreography remind me of the dilemma in which Katherine Dunham found herself. She was given no credit for dances that included organic movements. Arenal's success at choreographing movement that seemed spontaneous was seen as a lack of choreography. How does one do a stage show without staging what will happen?

Creators Rado and Ragni always meant for Hair to be a commercial success (Knapp, 2005). Otherwise, they could have easily presented their work as a happening in Central Park or in the Village.

Hair broke many traditions and rules in its effort to portray rebellion against the establishment. These challenges against tradition were as mild as consistently breaking the fourth wall* to mingling and talking with the audience in the show, to onstage nudity and drug use. Cast members talked directly to the audience before and during the show and, after the final curtain, invited spectators up onto the stage to mingle and dance. [*In acting, performers are taught to act as if they are in a room with four walls, so that what is happening to a character in a particular setting seems “real.” The audience, is, therefore, not a part of the characters' consciousness.]

Hair’s indifference to the fourth wall is reminiscent of live rock performance, which has always served as an important site for bonding, both between audience and performers, and among fans. Rock concerts allow fans to immerse themselves temporarily into a community that has a shared sense of purpose; many musicians play off this sense of community by, for example, engaging in banter with fans; stage-diving into the waiting crowd;…selecting audience members to bring up onto the stage; asking fans to sing, shout, or dance along to songs. (Wollman, 2006, p. 70)

Hair endeavored--through careful crafting--to let audiences experience a free-flowing, wandering “happening” rather than a structured show, giving the audience the disoriented feelings that corresponded with experimental drug use (Knapp, 2005).

Knapp seems to criticize Hair for its connection to commercialism and its awareness of potential audience response. However, by developing the show with its audience in mind, Hair was able to get its message to its target. In fact, Hair, its music and its powerful message of peaceful protest were intertwined with the civil rights movement. Rado and Ragni were genuine hippie protestors who decided to express their rebellion on stage. Hair was received by many audience members as a profound, transcendant experience, and so did its job. The music from Hair moved audiences physically and emotionally. It also exploded onto the radio. The song “Aquarius” became the iconic musical representative for the Sixties freedom movement, and many of the show's other songs were played at protests and sit-ins.

There is however, some truth to Knapp’s criticisms of Rado and Ragni’s conservative portrayals of characters. According to Knapp, the writers presented a fairly middle-class, conservative version of racial inclusion and homosexuality, and they presented freedom and uninhibited interaction within a secure homogeneous group to which the mostly conservative, white middle-class audience could relate (2005):

Hair was able to give a palpable and focused presence to a number of disparate trends among America’s young, creating a sense of a vibrant and extended youth-based commune that had come to exist outside the mainstream establishment, whose members had successfully forged a new way of living in the wake of rejecting the values and structures their parents had tried to impose on them. Within this vision of the counterculture, prejudice, war, and taboos of every kind were replaced by “harmony and understanding, sympathy and trust abounding,” as set forth in the opening number, “Aquarius”—a song whose very name seems to offer itself as a substitute for the similarly sounding “America.” The hard fact that this was merely a vision, and often quite far from reality (especially regarding the presumed melting away of racist attitudes), hovered uncomfortably around the edges of the show, most clearly stated in the ways Hair catered to its often middle-class audience by presenting token representations of its various contributing strands (e.g. black, or still not fully explicit homosexuality), all sharply etched as intriguingly different against a familiar, basically white, middle-class background. Audiences who were not already “converted” might thereby see a version of themselves, freed of inhibitions and joyously forging new relationships and embracing new ideas and behaviors within the security of the “Tribe” that was already dominated by their “own kind,” and governed by their own values in a purer form (that is, their aspirational values, however unactualized). This was especially important for those many in the late 60s, on either side of the generation gap, who had been frightened by the rapidity and extremity of change over a mere handful of years, yet who were perhaps ready to embrace a less threatening embodiment of those changes. (Knapp, 2005, pp. 155-156)

This video shows the 2009 Broadway revival cast in rehearsal for “Aquarius.” Notice how the movements of the cast enhance the music. That’s choreography!! Though there are few “steps,” the movement is integrated with the message and story of the show. Watch the movement, choreographed by Karole Armitage, carefully, then try to imagine the song without it.

Video: Hair (Revival) – “Aquarius” rehearsal

(2009)

In addition to the music, most audience members who saw the original Broadway production remember their shock at seeing the cast nude, an element that was added when the show moved to Broadway. In this decision, too, movement—or in this case, lack of it—would prove to be significant:

Castelli and Butler [producers] had done their research before agreeing to such an event. “They looked it up,” Rado recalls, “and found a law on the books that said nudity was legal if it was in a tableau, with no movement.” The presence of naked bodies was only actionable if these bodies were to start moving…So O’Horgan had the tribe untie a parachute-like background scrim…and then ritualistically spread it across the stage and over a table. Slits had been cut into the scrim, and while Claude sang “Where Do I Go?” [towards the end of Act I] atop the table, the actors disrobed underneath the scrim; they would then rise up through the slits and stand stock still as…light projected a…floral pattern from directly overhead for about 20 seconds. As soon as the lights went out, the actors scurried offstage. (Grode, 2010, p. 70)

Publicity by word of mouth, local papers and national media all mentioned the nudity in the show. When the musical went on tour, both the nudity and the simulation of sexual acts during performances came under fire. Twice the show was shut down—once before it opened!—and the producers were forced to bring their resulting court cases all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Twice the show prevailed against censorship. Justice William O. Douglas’ written ruling in the second case supported free speech in the theater:

I do not believe any form of censorship…is permissible…A municipal theater is no less a forum for the expression of ideas than is a public park, or a sidewalk…As soon as municipal officials are permitted to pick and choose, as they are in all existing socialist regimes, between those productions which are “clean and healthful and culturally uplifting” in content and those which are not…the path is cleared for a regime of censorship under which full voice can be given only to those views which meet with the approval of the powers that be…

There was much testimony in the District Court concerning the pungent social and political commentary which the musical “Hair” levels against various sacred cows of our society; the Vietnam War, the draft, and the puritanical conventions of the Establishment. This commentary is undoubtedly offensive to some, but its contribution to social consciousness and intellectual ferment is a positive one. (cited in Jones, 2003, p. 256)