Let your hair down

When the name of the rock-musical “Hair” comes up in
any ordinary context, your mind immediately deviates to an entire
cast of beautiful dancers ““ yes, stark naked, flag-burning
and tripping on acid. The play’s reputation precedes it. It
was this controversy that helped make it so well-known in the
’60s and early ’70s, and this trademark will continue
as it comes to UCLA’s Little Theater from May 30 through June
7. These outrageous elements, though, can make people overlook the
equally controversial social and political statements the play
makes, as well as the amount of work that goes into a work of such
dimensions.

The Training The play is essentially about a tribe of hippies
struggling both with the Vietnam War and a drug culture that
intends to solve this problem. The director of this year’s
UCLA production, UCLA’s own Tony Award-winning Broadway vet
Mel Shapiro, had a huge task on his hands: he had to turn a group
of students ““ many of whom did not know each other beforehand
and had never done musical theater ““ into a believable tribe
of dancing hippies. Elizabeth Alegria, a fourth-year theater
student, described the remarkable process of making this happen.
“On the first day Mel asked us to do a rant, or to come in
and talk about something we were pissed off about to help us get to
know each other,” Alegria said. “We were faced with the
question, “˜I don’ t know you, so why am I going to want
to get naked with you?'” All of the cast underwent a
rigorous training program, not only for the skills they would need
in the show but also to help them place themselves in the context
of America in the late 1960s. “We had a military person come
in teach about Vietnam, which was frightening,” said Alegria.
“He was like, “˜Never carry a gun with your finger on
the trigger. It takes half a second (for me) to pull up (my) gun
““ and I’ll never miss.'” The cast also had
to research the drugs of the time and their effects, to help them
with the “trip” scene in the play when Claude, the
protagonist, undergoes a long hallucination ““ courtesy of a
laced joint. “The play focuses on the hippie mentality, on
being genuine about how shitty the drug experience was and yet how
necessary it was for the escapist route,” said Alegria.
“Genuinely people thought they were going to get some kind of
enlightenment from LSD.” Chad Amsel, a first-year graduate
theater student who plays Woof, did some even less conventional
research. Because his character is based on a wolf, he actually
went to the zoo to observe the real thing. “They were asleep,
so I didn’t get too much out of that,” Amsel said.
Since “Hair” only uses one set design throughout the
entire show, costume is a crucial part of the production. For
example, many of the costumes will be made out of the colors of the
Vietnam flag to show the sympathy that the tribe has for those that
they are being drafted to kill. “A lot of the costumes have
to do with mutilating the body, or making it different from the
norm,” third-year theater student Eric Whitehead said.
“The big masks during the trip-out scene make the head really
large, almost to the point of being grotesque.”

“˜Hair’s’ impact today While the play abounds
with quirky eccentricity, those involved feel the political message
rings especially true today. Shapiro, the director, used one word
to describe how the play ties into today’s political
atmosphere ““ “completely.” “I thought it
was one of the few musicals of these days that actually said
anything,” Shapiro added. “The piece was chosen last
spring because it looked like we were going to war, and it reminded
me of the Vietnam era all over again.” Nicholas Gunn, the
director of choreography, sees “Hair” as a particularly
relevant production at a university. “It was the university
kids that started the revolution during the ’60s,” Gunn
said. “They ended a war.” One way the play conveys a
pro-peace stance is to emphasize the sameness, rather than the
difference, that the makers felt should unite America and anyone it
attempts to go to war with. It doesn’t villainize the
military, or sympathize with the Vietcong, but shows various sides
of the issue. “There’s a lot of satirizing through
exaggeration of stereotypes between black and white and East and
West,” said Whitehead. “There is a lot about the
juxtaposition between two armies and how everybody is in the same
situation. In other words, (it’s) not pulling sides apart but
putting them together.” During the ’60s,
“Hair” was taken to the Supreme Court twice because of
controversial elements in the play, including a flag-burning scene.
In the UCLA production, this scene has been changed so that the
flag-burner gets stopped before he makes it to the flag. Fear not
though. The play’s subversiveness has been anything but
erased from the script. Many of the songs are about sex and
masturbation, and the dancers reflect these themes by assuming
various sexual positions onstage. Given the scattered sexual,
political and hallucinatory elements of the show, director Shapiro
had a prodigious task in turning it into a powerful, moving show.
“The script is a very vague text, it’s people getting
high and drugged out, spaced out of their mind and saying crazy
things that don’t fit together on their own,” said
Amsel. “To be able to string them together and tell a story
clearly, powerfully, coherently requires a minimum of brilliance on
the part of the director.” “Hair” will run from
May 30, 2003 to June 7, 2003 at the Little Theater. Showtimes are
May 30, 31, and June 4, 5, 6, 7 at 8 p.m. and May 31, June 7 at 2
p.m.