“Hair” is one of those shows that has it all – memorable music, interesting characters, a large, cohesive ensemble and relevant themes. For their production of the rock musical, Arts Bonita Directors Kody Jones and Joseph Brauer have assembled a cast of exceptional vocalists to showcase the musical’s many memorable songs. They’ve also opted for a live band rather than backing tracks. And they’ve integrated the band into the ensemble.
“At some points in the show, they might get up from the drum set or wherever they are and pick up a different instrument and join the crowd and do the choreography in a different way,” said Brauer. “So it really is meant to feel very integrated and very encapsulated with that idea that they’re a big tribe and it’s all in this world of New York City, where you can find street musicians and subway musicians and stuff like that.”
The cast is filled with rising high school and college stars.
“Some of our cast [have] been off at school in great theater programs. We have Sophia [Gurule], who goes to NYU and studies theater up in New York,” Brauer noted. “And then we have kids that have gone off to college all over the country and come back for the summer. A lot of familiar faces if you come to other Arts Bonita shows and then there are 16-, 17-, 18-year-old kids who are getting ready to spread their wings and take the next step. A lot of them are going to college for theater, at least pursuing something in the arts.”
And then there’s the theme.
“Hair” is, and continues to be, a protest piece. The musical reminds us that people interpret silence as tacit acceptance, if not approval, of government action. But protest prevents the dreaded spiral of silence, which begets further misapprehension about what a society collectively believes and wants.
“At this point in our history we all make the choice to either come together and share things and try to collaborate and try to walk a mile in other people’s shoes — or in this show maybe you’re barefoot — or people can decide to live in their own little bubble and then try to push away from everybody else,” Brauer said.
“Hair” is onstage at the Arts Bonita Performing Arts Center July 11 to 20.
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Hair tells the story of the "tribe," a group of politically active, long-haired hippies of the "Age of Aquarius" living a bohemian life in New York City and fighting against conscription into the Vietnam War. Claude, his friend Berger, their roommate, Sheila, and their friends struggle to balance their young lives, loves and the sexual revolution with their rebellion against the war and their conservative parents and society. Ultimately, Claude must decide whether to resist the draft, as his friends have done, or serve in Vietnam, compromising his pacifist principles and risking his life.
“Hair is set in 1968, so it’s kind of right before Woodstock,” said Brauer. “The Vietnam War is in full swing, and we’re really seeing a lot of culture wars at that point. We’re also coming out of a period where there’s a lot of really amazing music and there’s a lot of the Beat poets and a lot of prolific work, and that’s influencing the hippie movement. So that’s kind of the world setup.”
Production History
Hair was conceived by James Rado and Gerome Ragni. They met while performing in a show , “Hang Your Head and Die,” that closed Off Broadway after one night. Rado had written several musicals as a student at the University of Maryland and, after spending two years in the Navy following graduation, eventually moved to New York to pursue acting. Ragni, who had attended Georgetown University, moved to New York in 1964 to understudy in the Broadway production of “Hamlet” starring Richard Burton.
Of their partnership, Rado wrote in 2009:
"‘Hair’ was created as an original idea by Gerome Ragni (Jerry) and, myself. We collaborated on the story, text, characters, dialogue and lyrics beginning in late 1964 and continuing over the years 1965, 1966 and 1967. From the start, I envisioned that the score of ‘Hair’ would be something new for Broadway, a kind of pop rock/showtune hybrid. At first we had considerable difficulty finding a composer; we rejected several, until finally, in late 1966, we found the man to make the music for our songs. It was a case of love at first sound. Meeting the composer, Galt MacDermot, was more than a fulfillment of our dream. I would call it a clear illustration of a marriage made in heaven."
In 1967, Joe Papp was still building The Public Theater, but he agreed to produce the musical at the new Off-Broadway house. It premiered Oct. 17 of that year and ran for six weeks. During that run, businessman and aspiring anti-war politician, Michael Butler, saw the show several times and then worked with Papp to find another venue to continue the show. For 45 performances, the cast did the show at The Cheetah, a club at 53rd and Broadway beginning in December.
During this time, the show underwent numerous changes, including the addition of the nude scene in “Let the Sunshine In.” A few Broadway houses passed on the show, concerned that it was inappropriate and even Joe Papp left the production team. Finally, Butler secured the Biltmore Theater, making ‘Hair’ the first musical to transfer from Off-Broadway to Broadway.
At its Broadway opening, the cast consisted of Rado, Ragni, Diane Keaton, Sally Eaton and Meat Loaf.
The Act I finale was the first time actors and actresses had ever performed entirely nude in a Broadway show. As if that were not controversial enough, scenes depicting the desecration of the American flag, the liberal use of obscene language and profanity, its treatment of sexuality and illegal drug usage, and the musical’s blatant anti-Vietnam War theme attracted threats of violence and litigation when the show opened on tour in other cities. Two cases eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court.
“Hair” was nominated in 1969 for Best Musical and Best Direction of a Musical Tonys, but did not win either. It did, however, take home that year’s Grammy for Best Score from an Original Cast Show Album. The musical would go on to log 1,750 performances on Broadway. A London production notched 1,997 performances.
A Broadway revival opened in 2009. It earned strong reviews, winning the Tony Award and Drama Desk Award for Best Revival of a Musical.
Many critics argue that as the first rock musical, “Hair” paved the way for shows like “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” “Rent” and “Spring Awakening.”
The Cast
As Brauer noted, the Arts Bonita cast for the show features a number of rising high school and college musical theater ingénues. Mia Zottolo, who plays Ronny, is headed to the NYU Tisch School of the Arts in the fall. Sophia Gurule, sho plays Sheila, is already there.
Lantz Hemmert (Woof) begins studies for his BFA in musical theater at the University of Miami in August. Hadley Murphy (Jeanie) is headed to Yale. Abby Young (Dee) is going to Belmont University in Nashville for musical theater; Lucas Campero (Claude) is transferring from FGCU to Rowan College in Glassboro, New Jersey, to secure his BFA.
The rest of the cast consists of Arianna Joy Schipper in the role of Linda; Michael Martinez as Miguel; Cassie Grossarth is Pam; Halle Heckman is Emmaretta; Kyle Socarras plays Walter; Jaelynn Lias is Rain; Samantha Calero plays Tammy; River Reed appears as Hiram; Kennedy Fields plays the part of Mary; Carter Gurule is Willy; Eric Ortiz is Hud; Grace Layne Ryan is Crissy; Caitlyn Clark plays Natalie; Addie Easterly is Suzannah; Tavi Hunt plays Bron; Georgia Rainero appears in the role of Diane; Lyla Black is Corry; Shennan Nelson is Hubert/Leata; Braden Heckman is Paul; Landon Maas is Margaret Mead/Steve; Declan Ireland is Berger; Ethan Mohring is Guitarist; and Ciel Yasukawa is the Keyboardist.
“We have a huge cast,” said Brauer, “compared to other casts for ‘Hair’ that I’ve seen. So there’s an energy that’s just not like anything else. They really do a great job of lifting each other up and challenging each other. We try our best to make an atmosphere where they’re really challenged. To our delight, they’ve also gone on to really push each other and carry each other along in a way that’s very, very supportive and very inclusive and has great results, as far as we can tell.”
Although the cast occupies Gen Z, they’ve really warmed to the material since rehearsal began.
“It was a tough sell when we first announced it,” Brauer conceded. Most were completely unfamiliar with the show and its premise.
“It hasn’t really had its moment,” Brauer noted. “There hasn’t been a Netflix remake of it or anything like that. There was a movie that was made back in the day, but it didn’t really follow the plot of the show.”
In fact, several members of the cast originally thought they were doing “Hairspray,” which also grapples with a number of cultural issues from the 1960s.
The Music
The music has served as the cast’s portal to the past and calling card. Even those who’ve never seen the show have listened to, sung and danced to the show’s renowned score.
The lyrics were written to shock audiences of the ‘60s and ‘70s. But in an era denoted by allegations of cancel culture and woke-ism, the songs’ treatment of protest, war, race, sex and religion can feel just as raw and evocative.
Although it’s permissible for any creative team to drop words, lines, scenes and entire songs from a production without running afoul of copyright laws, Jones and Brauer have remained largely true to the 2009 script. Further, they’ve incorporated live music into the performances to further engender the street feeling that the original score conveyed. That wasn’t entirely by design.
“We’ve used tracks before, backing tracks, because our space doesn’t have an orchestra pit,” Brauer pointed out. “There’s not a big backstage area where we can put that. So like a lot of theater programs now, we have used instrumental, orchestral tracks.”
For this show, Jones and Brauer originally planned to have a couple of musicians onstage as actors in several scenes, where they’d play along with the backing tracks.
“And then we ended up having a better turnout than we thought when we were looking for musicians, and it was getting harder and harder to cut those instruments out of the tracks where they could still follow each other,” Brauer explained. “Then we had a really good keyboard player show up and we realized we don’t need tracks at all.”
Having musicians onstage and appearing as characters in the musical’s various scenes has paid unexpected dividends.
“They’re really rehearsing in a different way,” said Brauer. “A lot of times when you have a pit orchestra, even an onstage band, they’re kind of sequestered in a different rehearsal area. They have different schedules, and they’re not really involved in the staging or choreography or vocal rehearsals until things get to tec and everything comes together. But our band has been learning the vocals and doing scene work along with the rest of the cast. That’s enabled them to really gel with the rest of the cast so it becomes a really unified ensemble that includes the instruments.”
At its essence, “Hair” is a protest show
“Every generation has its own culture war. There’s always some kind of political unrest,” said Brauer. “There’s always war happening somewhere. So while there’s content [in “Hair’] that is very specific to the ‘60s, it nevertheless echoes throughout the generations.”
In Brauer’s opinion, America is just as bitterly divided today as it was in 1968.
“Right now, there’s a lot of unrest,” he said. “You see what’s happening in the Ukraine and in Palestine and across the world, and there’s a lot of different opinions about what it means to be an American, what’s our responsibility, our duty to our country. We’re not necessarily being drafted right now but there are things that our country is doing that people may or may not support and then it’s up to everybody to decide how exactly they feel about things and if they’re going to take political action.”
A show like “Hair” reinforces the message that protesting government action is built into our American DNA. That was one reason that Jones and Brauer decided to produce the musical at this point in time.
“There’s people right now protesting all kinds of stuff,” Brauer continued. “I just saw an article about the whole Alligator Alcatraz project happening right now. A lot of people protesting right in our back door here, and California has had protests, and there’s been others all over the country.”
By coincidence, Betsy Levy Paluck published an article in The Atlantic on July 1 titled “What a ‘Spiral of Silence’ Can Do to a Democracy.” In it she writes, “A protest can be a fine way to get people’s attention—particularly the attention of those in positions of power. But one of the most important, and most overlooked, functions of protest is to prevent the dreaded ‘spiral of silence,’ which can begin when people wrongly believe that their own point of view is not widely shared.”
Those who adhere to political positions that are considered by those in power as politically unpopular or dangerous are often prone to sit on the sidelines, mute themselves online, and remain silent at the water cooler or the lunch room at their workplace or school. They may think they are being polite or non-confrontational, but their silence is almost always perceived as acceptance or approval.
“Others use it to inform their own decisions about whether to speak out,” Levy Paluck continues. “Political and psychological scientists like me who study this phenomenon have found that a ‘spiral of silence’ is one way that unpopular policies and regimes persist. One major reason is a muted, acquiescent public—the proverbial people watching the naked emperor’s parade.”
That certainly was not true of the tribe in 1968 Central Park. That certainly is not true of the hundreds of thousands who just participated in the No Kings protests, and those objecting to ICE raids across the United States.
“Hair” reminds audiences that there is value in protest, not only for the participants, but also everyone else who encounters or hears about them.
It was for this reason that Jones and Brauer felt it important to bring “Hair” to Southwest Florida at this point in time … and equally important for their young cast to deal with this and the show’s other themes as part of their theatrical education.
“So for me, it’s the way that I see it,” Brauer confirmed. “It’s really almost like a Jackson Pollock painting, where there’s parts of it that don’t necessarily make a lot of sense. If you’re just listening to the words, it’s kind of that Expressionist, stream-of-consciousness … if anybody’s familiar with Beat poetry and that kind of form. You see a lot of that echoing in the lyric structure in the music. So I think with this show, I would encourage everybody to look back in time, realize that we are special, but we’re not that unique ‘cause things have happened before. People have felt a certain way before and it’s always better when we can come together and let the sunshine in.”
Restrictions
Arts Bonita’s production of “Hair” is not meant for younger children.
“There are some things in the show that are more mature,” Brauer cautioned. “There’s some loud noises, some language that might feel jarring even to some adults, depictions of a bit of violence in wartime, and there are topics discussed that might be a little uncomfortable, even now. So we definitely recommend it for ages 14-plus.”
Support for WGCU’s arts & culture reporting comes from the Estate of Myra Janco Daniels, the Charles M. and Joan R. Taylor Foundation, and Naomi Bloom in loving memory of her husband, Ron Wallace.