HAIR is the Bruin's Cover Story

Let your hair down
After arduous training, students bring political message of controversial rock-musical to UCLA

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.

Related Program

Keywords

"mel shapiro" "nicholas gunn" 

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