Last spring I was looking at the bulletin board outside my favorite coffeehouse when I saw that the community theater was going to put on a production of Hair and was looking for people to audition. Since I missed the "Age of Aquarius" by only a few years (by the time I had the means to run off to San Francisco and become a hippie, the flower children were no more), I thought, why not?
So I auditioned and to my great surprise, landed a part! It was quite an experience for this aging wanna-be hippie to be cavorting on stage with a bunch of high school and college students. It was also very humbling. For me and anyone who lived through those days, the Sixties and early Seventies was where it was happening, man. It was the most exciting time on earth. But these kids didn't think so. It was all old hat. Ancient history. While the director was trying to explain the context and the times, they were busy twittering and texting. Bo-o-oring.
For those who aren't familiar with Hair, the "plot", such as it is, centers around Claude, an 18-year-old hippie who has just received his draft notice. Yes, back then, they made you go to war. Claude has a choice, go to Vietnam and face the possibility of being killed, or burn his draft card and flee to Canada. Claude doesn't know what he wants to do. Some days he wants nothing more than to hang out with the Tribe and get high and have sex; other days, as he says to his best friend Berger, he wants more to life than that.
About midway through the first act there is a scene involving Claude and several of the Tribe members who take turns playing his parents. I ended up being one of the "moms". Together, we all launch into a tirade about the mess he makes in the house, his unsuitable clothes, his unsuitable friends. At the very end I have to shout in his face, "START FACING REALITY!"
"What reality, Mom?" Claude replies. And all of a sudden I was transformed back to my childhood, only now I was my mother and Claude was me. "Start facing reality." "What reality? Whose reality?" My reality wasn't real. I had been told that often enough. To my mother, Claude's reply wouldn't have made sense. There was only one reality--hers.
Ah--but this was the Sixties. As Bob Dylan put it, "The times they are a-changing." The message of the hippies--the message of "Hair"--was that there are other ways of viewing life. Turn on, tune in, drop out. Timothy Leary. Do your own thing. All this was in the atmosphere. And here I was, an Aspy kid on the cusp of puberty. I can understand now why she felt threatened. Here she was trying to raise me so I would fit in socially and become a productive citizen and the Pied Piper was calling. Everything that she believed in was being turned upside down. The rules were changing. And so our house became a battleground. It only ended with my surrender. But inside nothing had changed. I was only biding my time . . .
So "Hair" brought back bittersweet memories. Little did that director know that when he picked me to play that scene what that one little line would trigger. Now it is over, and I am back to ordinary life.
So I auditioned and to my great surprise, landed a part! It was quite an experience for this aging wanna-be hippie to be cavorting on stage with a bunch of high school and college students. It was also very humbling. For me and anyone who lived through those days, the Sixties and early Seventies was where it was happening, man. It was the most exciting time on earth. But these kids didn't think so. It was all old hat. Ancient history. While the director was trying to explain the context and the times, they were busy twittering and texting. Bo-o-oring.
For those who aren't familiar with Hair, the "plot", such as it is, centers around Claude, an 18-year-old hippie who has just received his draft notice. Yes, back then, they made you go to war. Claude has a choice, go to Vietnam and face the possibility of being killed, or burn his draft card and flee to Canada. Claude doesn't know what he wants to do. Some days he wants nothing more than to hang out with the Tribe and get high and have sex; other days, as he says to his best friend Berger, he wants more to life than that.
About midway through the first act there is a scene involving Claude and several of the Tribe members who take turns playing his parents. I ended up being one of the "moms". Together, we all launch into a tirade about the mess he makes in the house, his unsuitable clothes, his unsuitable friends. At the very end I have to shout in his face, "START FACING REALITY!"
"What reality, Mom?" Claude replies. And all of a sudden I was transformed back to my childhood, only now I was my mother and Claude was me. "Start facing reality." "What reality? Whose reality?" My reality wasn't real. I had been told that often enough. To my mother, Claude's reply wouldn't have made sense. There was only one reality--hers.
Ah--but this was the Sixties. As Bob Dylan put it, "The times they are a-changing." The message of the hippies--the message of "Hair"--was that there are other ways of viewing life. Turn on, tune in, drop out. Timothy Leary. Do your own thing. All this was in the atmosphere. And here I was, an Aspy kid on the cusp of puberty. I can understand now why she felt threatened. Here she was trying to raise me so I would fit in socially and become a productive citizen and the Pied Piper was calling. Everything that she believed in was being turned upside down. The rules were changing. And so our house became a battleground. It only ended with my surrender. But inside nothing had changed. I was only biding my time . . .
So "Hair" brought back bittersweet memories. Little did that director know that when he picked me to play that scene what that one little line would trigger. Now it is over, and I am back to ordinary life.
