"Hair" - First Runthrough, Second Act

On Sunday, MikeMac suggested that if I couldn't help him and Chris Neff build the "Hair" set during the day, maybe the early evening would work. I dallied, and didn't show up till 9 p.m. I figured I couldn't help that much, but I did want to tell Chris Neff my dream from the night before and see what he thought of it.

I was too late, of course, but I did get have the privilege of seeing the first runthrough of the second act of Artistic Difference's "Hair" (Erik Daniells, Producer; Maggie Hollinbeck Director; Elaine Lord, Musical Director). I recognized a few of the actors - Jerry Lee, Ryan Adame, Inertia DeWitt, Lindsay Grimes - but many were new and unfamiliar to me.

I've never seen "Hair" before, so I didn't know quite how I would react to this musical's portrayal of the Counterculture Sixties and its complicated legacy.

My first two reactions were:

• this cast is way too young to be singing about these matters; and,
• I am extremely uncomfortable about this subject material.

In other words, from a theatrical perspective, Act II has a promising start.

I did have some trouble understanding people speak in The Space - mostly an acoustic difficulty, from too much echoing. Part of the trouble is that the roof is zinc-plated metal. Tapestries might help, but I don't know if that is practical, given their flammability.

The fundamental tension of the CounterCulture, between political involvement (the Berkeley pole) and the departure from rationality (the Haight-Ashbury pole) was never satisfactorily resolved in real life, so it would be hard to expect "Hair" to resolve the tension on stage in just a couple of hours. Nevertheless, the musical ends with what amounts to a deep, almost-intuitive understanding that the irrational pole is the most important, and the most enduring - just like the CounterCulture found in real life:

Let the sunshine
Let the sunshine in
The sunshine in

The War in Iraq and the War in Vietnam have so much in common that "Hair" has rarely been more topical and pertinent. The tricky part is figuring out whether the differences matter more than the similiarities. Important differences are:

• 540,000 troops in Vietnam vs. 140,000 in Iraq - the scale of the involvement destabilized 1960's America, whereas it hasn't done so yet in this decade;
• Despite rigid Cold War-liberal ideology, Indochina was never central to U.S. security (the biggest lie of the 60's), whereas Iraq might be central to U.S. security, simply because most of the world's oil resources are nearby;
• The Administration in the 1960's prided itself on its supposed 'rationality', whereas today, the Administration prides itself on its ability to create its own reality (the biggest lie of this decade).

The similarities are so glaring, however, that it's important to recount:

• The 1950's were a remarkably passive period in American history, as was the period just after 9/11;
• Elite opinion was paralyzed. LBJ did the trick by offering conservatives what they wanted (War in Indochina) and liberals what they wanted (The Great Society and Civil Rights), thereby co-opting everyone who mattered. Bush did the trick by grossly exaggerating Al Qaeda's threat, by corrupting the lazy corporate media, and through authoritarian intimidation. New voices had to break through the logjam, from the fringes, and they had to resort to new approaches to do so.
• Similar wars within just 40 years suggests that American society's ability to face the world has broken down in an important, fundamental way that will require a long time, perhaps a century, to resolve.

My best guide to the Sixties was my girl friend (1992-95), Katherine Arthur, who moved to San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district in the Summer of Love, and whose career faithfully reflected the journey of her generation. She died not long ago (reminisces here).

At a gathering after Katherine's death, friends told a story I had never heard, how she once lost her temper with Janis Joplin at the Fillmore over a man, so apparently there were limits even to the Summer of Love (it may have been Grace Slick - I only heard the story once!) In the early 70's, she relocated to the country, as so many others did. She adopted the Buddhist religion and became its advocate. She raised her family in Marin County's Monte Rio, and in the Sierra Nevada's Nevada City, before relocating to Sacramento in the mid-80's, to attend law school. She eventually passed the California bar, and ultimately ended up in the Peace Corps in Ukraine before being disgnosed with breast cancer. CounterCulture, through and through, to the end.

Katherine taught me to be more intuitive than I would otherwise be.

I always fancied myself to be post-Boomer, not from the Sixties generation - more responsible, less radical. But when the center is paralyzed, when silence means being complicit, the Sixties approach of throwing caution aside, breaking taboos, and directly challenging authority really is a better solution. A damn sight better, anyway, than just sitting still. Like the radicals of the Great Plains used to say, "Raise Less Corn, And More Hell!"

One can sympathize, to some extent, with the befuddlement of the World War II generation when facing its own rebellious children. Even objects of CounterCulture derision, like General Curtis LeMay, with his obsession with nuking Indochina, was at least speaking from an understandable martial tradition that prized taking the initiative against the enemy. With apologies to the estimable 'Daily Show' crew, the reptiles in power today in Washington don't even merit derision - just contempt.

Anyway, where was I? Yes my dream. On Sunday, Chris Neff and I had discussed how we navigate in our daily lives. I use dead-reckoning based on the sun's position, whereas Chris tends to ignore direction, and thus is prone to getting lost. We both also saw a squirrel get run over while driving through Davis Sunday afternoon. And we both have roles as Indians in DMTC's "Annie Get Your Gun."

I dreamt Chris and I, in our Indian garb, were kidnapped and taken through a combination shopping mall and U.S. Marine Base and placed in a suburban ranch-style house in the Mojave Desert, where a furtive ax murderer lived in the shadows. I escaped briefly, but was captured and brought back to the desert prison by an unfamiliar back road. An American version of Patrick McGoohan's "The Prisoner" ! To me, the dream seems to resonate with various Sixties themes, but maybe it was just that unfortunate squirrel....

In any event, "Hair" will be at The Space, 2509 R Street, from May 3 - 26, at 8 p.m., on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, with two midnight performances, on May 12th and 19th.