[Mb-hair] Visceral connections

[Martin Eayrs]

Richard asks:

>i got an interesting question
>obviously many of these companies youre seeing are wonderful
>and the show itself is so penultimately good
>but im curious
>when one sees a company now
>the generation being so divorced from the actual physical
>reality of the period
>eg i was 10 - 11 at the time and ill be 47 this summer
>
>the passion of the struggle etc
>do the kids now know what " it " was about?
>what is their visceral connection
>i wonder
>?

I suppose a deconstructionist approach to this would be that the 
AUDIENCE will get out of it according to it what they are able to 
bring to it - that is, it will be the interaction of the event with 
their own bundle of experiences and expectations. This could lead to 
some unexpected interpretations...

The event itself will be the aggregated accumulation of what the 
ACTORS and DIRECTOR(S) themselves are able to bring to it. In the 
case of a 21st Century High School production this may not be 
comparable with early off Broadway productions whose cast   -it is 
often alleged - lived the parts they played and even lived partly in 
the playing area. Comments very welcome :-)

And, big question, what was/is Hair about? Can the war in Iraq 
compare with the Vietnam War?  Obviously not - no conscription, no 
draft card to burn. Sexual liberation (through freely available 
contraception) is no longer a newly liberating thing. The mystery and 
romance had already gone out of drugs by the time I reached San 
Francisco in Autumn 1969, when Haight Ashbury was a disaster area of 
bombed out panhandlers and the Summer of Love a two year old memory. 
Or perhaps i just met the wrong people ;-)

That said, i think Hair has a lot to offer present generations - and 
not just recidivist hippies in their fifties ad sixties. (Terrible 
thought, but if you lived the sixties you are - or soon will be - in 
the sixties). And if you dig it, does it matter why ? The point is 
that audiences do dig it - and I think they will, even if they react 
to it within terms of reference that have no relationship to the late 
60s.

End of long incoherent rave .. and back to work, or what passes for it

Martin
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