Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Hair at MSU



I'm currently serving as dramaturg for MSU's upcoming production of the musical Hair.  Here are some links I sent to the cast a while back, to give them some resources for immersion in the 1960s counterculture. 

General 1960s History:

There’s some good stuff here:  http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/us/the-sixties 

Literary/Spoken Word Sources:
Timothy Leary: “Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out”

Alan Ginsburg, reading “Wichita Vortex Sutra” over music by Philip Glass:

Ginsburg’s poem “Howl” also seems relevant: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/179381

Arlo Guthrie, “Alice’s Restaurant”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIz8f3b1KqQ

1960s Music:


You could also create your own 1960s station on Pandora or Spotify.  Some things to consider:

Harmonies in groups like We Five; The Mamas and the Papas; Simon and Garfunkel; Peter, Paul, and Mary.

Folk-rock singer-songwriters: Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Judy Collins. 

British Invasion: The Beatles, The Who, The Rolling Stones, Herman’s Hermits
Girl Groups: The Angels (“My Boyfriend’s Back), The Shangri-Las (Leader of the Pack), Lesley Gore, the Shirelles, the Supremes, Martha and the Vandellas.  Here’s a documentary about Girl Groups: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyzL6D-5znY
Also check out http://hairdramaturgy.blogspot.com/ which was created for a production at UC Santa Cruz in 2010.

Films to Consider:
Days of Wine and Roses (1962)
8 ½ (1963; dir. Federico Fellini)
Dr. Strangelove (1964)
A Hard Day’s Night (1964)
Blow-Up (1966; dir. Michelangelo Antonioni)
Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
The Graduate (1967)
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Barbarella (1968)
Rosemary’s Baby (1968; dir. Roman Polanski; Polanski’s 1971 Macbeth is also interesting, as is  The Ninth Gate)
Wild in the Streets (1968)
Yellow Submarine (1968)
Easy Rider (1969)
Midnight Cowboy (1969)
Hair (1979); dir. Milos Forman
Hairspray (1989)
A Mighty Wind (2003)
Across the Universe (2007)

Some of these are suggested by Scott Miller’s book Let the Sun Shine In: The Genius of Hair (2003); others are just things I thought might be interesting.

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