First look: Growing ‘Hair’ with American Stage

For American Stage’s springtime out-of-doors show, producing artistic director Helen R. Murray reached into the big bag of beloved American musicals and came out with a chestnut from 1968: Hair, the famous Broadway-ization of that polarizing moment in history when young people began to seriously question the status quo.

You know it: Singing and dancing hippies, all races, all sexes, all sizes. Berger, Claude, Hud, Sheila, Crissy, Woof and the rest of The Tribe. “Aquarius,” “Good Morning Starshine,” “Easy to Be Hard,” “Where Do I Go” and “Let the Sunshine In.” And “Frank Mills.” And “Black Boys/White Boys.” And a dozen more.

The American Stage production opens Friday, March 28 at Demens Landing Park, and runs through April 27.

On a recent weekday afternoon, as the young cast rehearsed the Act 1 songs “Hair,” “My Conviction” and others on the enormous, purpose-built stage at Demens Landing, director Kenny Moten took a moment to marvel that the ideas espoused in Hair – that personal freedoms should be cherished, and that all you need, really, is love – have outlived the era it depicts.

“It will always remain relevant, because there’s always some sort of counterculture,” Moten said.

Not the time warp counterculture portrayed in dewy-eyed TV movies, where the hippies are fashion-mag beautiful, and all the clothes appear to be freshly-washed.

“They’ve been really willing to take the ride,” Moten says of his cast, none of whom were alive when Hair first premiered. “I’m so lucky to have the folks that we have, because they’ve done a lot of their own research to start making these real people, not just musical theater characters.

“I shared a lot of video with them of the first Be-in in San Francisco, and people hanging out in ’68 in Washington Square Park. And they were like, ‘This is a little different than I expected.’ I think a lot of times, when people do Hair, they romanticize the time; all ‘We’re going to paint a sunflower on our face.’”

His cast, he continued, came to realize “that everyone wasn’t just running around happy-go-lucky. They really did believe that love was going to change the world. That if we saw each other, we could change the world.

“And I think that’s why the show has remained such a piece of the culture. It’s like Rent was for the ‘90s, when something gets to be such a part of the pop culture zeitgeist.”

The Demens stage has been extended, so that it will literally wrap around the audience on three sides. The live band is set up on the north extension, and the rest is for the cast to explore. They will also spend a certain amount of time (and songs) on the grass, mingling with the crowds.

“We’re really just trying to bring the community into it,” said Moten, “in new ways. They have a larger lighting rig than they’ve ever had, so we can shine so much on the crowd. We’re using new microphones. This is really about connecting with the people.”

As an actor, director Kenny Moten (left) appeared in five different productions of “Hair.”

An actor, singer and dancer himself, Moten has appeared in five productions of Hair (playing Hud three times, and Berger twice). Therefore, he’s intimately familiar with the show and how it should work.

On two of those occasions, he was performing in revivals personally overseen by two of the musical’s creators, co-lyricist and book writer James Rado and composer Galt McDermott. “Every time I’ve done it, everyone talks about how it’s still relevant. Whether it was 1996 or 2003, no matter what year it is, that is always the conversation.

“That was one of the things that they kept talking about: There will never be a time that isn’t relevant … and that they weren’t prepared for it to be the thing that it became.”

American Stage produced Hair in the park in 2010, and it was the company’s biggest hit of the season. The message was relevant then, just as it’s relevant now. Just as it was in 1968.

“For the young people in this show, we’ve been talking about community, and connection,” Moten said.

“Because that’s such a big piece of the park show. I keep saying, ‘What other young people have the opportunity to have a thousand people in a park to clarify the message that they share on social media? And there’s no way you can’t lay over what’s happening around the world right now, with that message.

“I just think everybody can get behind the idea of connecting with people, and the idea of what it is to take care of each other.”

Hair is presented in preview performances Wednesday and Thursday. For tickets and all other information, visit the American Stage website.