[Mb-hair] Re: Our HAIR

[Michael Butler]

Dear John,

Thank you so much for taking the time to write us about your experiences
about HAIR. I am sorry to have missed what you have done with the show.
I do hope that you will stay on the HAIR List as a subscriber to keep in
touch with this extended family of tribes. We all have the same concern for
what is happening nowadays.

Peace and Love,
Michael
--Those who have experienced altered forms of consciousness, by whatever
means, never forget that space in which they have been. Now that they have
learned how to function within the system, it is time they act to run it. MB


 

> Dear Michael Butler and Galt MacDermot;
> 
> As director of the ECU/Loessin Playhouse production of HAIR, I'm writing to
> tell you gents what a great pleasure it has been to work on this beautiful
> show. A Vietnam vet, I got out of the Army in 1968, as the HAIR phenomenom was
> coming into full flower. That summer, a college student at William and Mary, I
> was in an outdoor drama in Williamsburg, Virginia and every Saturday night,
> after the last performance of the week, we would have a big cast and crew
> party in our hilltop picnic shelter in the woods surrounding Lake Matoaka
> Amphitheatre. The ultimate happening of the night was always to put on the
> HAIR recording (original B'way cast on vinyl) and have our own version of a
> be-in, well-lubed with cheap beer, Boone's Farm/Ripple, and/or various
> mind-altering, vegetable-based roll-your-owns. It was an occasion of great
> joy--singing along with the original cast, dancing wild-and-free in various
> stages of consciousness and undress--that stayed with me lifelong. Later,
> after grad school, as a fledgling actor in New York in '73-'74, I was a waiter
> at Sobossek's down on Cooper Square, and a participant in the thriving East
> Village Theatre scene, where I got to meet Ragni, Rado, Tom O'Horgan, and
> several of the original cast members--a crazy and wonderful group of  creative
> folks. So now, thirty-six years later, an aging boomer, I decided to direct
> and produce the show at our university theatre, not for reasons of nostalgia
> but because the show seems to speak directly and clearly to current times,
> resonating loudly with the Vietnam era. It was a very good decision, if I may
> say so myself. Our student performers embraced the material wholeheartedly and
> our Tribe (the Nez Perce, in memory of Chief Joseph) developed a coherence and
> commitment to the work that has been exemplary. If "jump-up" standing
> ovations, cheers, and completely sold-out houses are an accurate indicator,
> the production has been a great success with audiences, as well. Nightly, we
> are transported both to the past and to the future, to times when we could
> believe that love could steer the stars and the world could be lit by joy, not
> by the glittering malice* of the present.
> 
> So, thanks, Michael, Galt and all the other progenitors of HAIR.
> 
> --John Shearin
> 
> * "glittering malice"--accurately and beautifully-coined phrase by Garrison
> Keillor in Homegrown Democrat
> 
> John Shearin, Director
> School of Theatre and Dance
> East Carolina University
> Greenville, NC 27858
> tel: 252-328-6390
> 
>