Hairless Hair at NYU

What were these people thinking? I read a brief this morning in amNewYork about a production of the musical Hair, presented this weekend, which is being billed as “an Artistic collaboration between members of THEATER MITU, NYU / TISCH and THE SKIRBALL CENTER.”

In the brief, Chris Mills (the dramaturg) talked about reimagining Hair to make it relevant today, and I guess for him that means shaved heads, an all-white set, and making the music slightly tonally darker. Woo. I don’t have the actual quote in front of me, but he said something to the effect of: “Hair (on your head, not the musical) was very critical to gender when the original production came out (1968), and today it is different. We thought that shaving the heads of both genders was appropriate for updating it.” Something like that. I will try to find the actual quote on my lunch hour, so as not to misrepresent him. But the essence of the matter is, this is why I find dramaturgy so suspect, in general, and why I am frightened to imagine what this production might be. So often, revivals of classic works (even modern classics) fail to really find out what makes the production relevant to today. How many versions of Shakespeare, for instance, have been produced in which the action is set in “modern day society,” the characters given “everyday” clothing as costumes, and the language updated? Such things amount to little more than gimmicks, and do nothing to examine the relevancy of the play. Neither does this make the production more palatable to a “contemporary audience,” by which is meant “dumb, short-attention span, doesn’t care about theatre.” It just insults and belittles, and turns the play into the very same popular entertainment so reviled by the theatre-crowd to begin with.

Now, this is not to say the NYU production will not be good. (Anyone seen it this week?) It is, of course, entirely possible that Mr. Mills did considerable homework, and the director, cast, and musicians could be top-notch. But that is beside the point. This production has lost any chance it may have had of being worthwhile when the publicity surrounding it centered on the radical notion of having no hair in Hair. By calling attention to the “ooh” factor of the production, there isn’t anything left to see. We are never allowed to question the reasons for these choices on our own. Instead, we are left scratching our own more-or-less hairy heads, wondering about how awful it must be for the actors to have to endure these haircuts. Especially the girls! Oh my God. I just cannot believe that girls would shave their heads. They are girls, for crying out loud! How absolutely awful for them.

Wait, you mean they get naked, too? Sweet.

EDIT - here is the actual quote: “We’ve reimagined the show to make it insightful today. The ways in which gender and hair worked in 1968 have changed, so we’ve chosen to remove hair from both genders.”

That is even battier than I remember it.