The Age of Aquarius generation are AARP members now. The leads in the Barn Theatre‘s upcoming production of “Hair” were born in the ’80s. Most of the apprentices who make up the “tribe” of hippies were born in the ’90s.
“Hair” is now a history piece. What do we get from revisiting this tumultuous era, via its tumultuous rock musical that’s now 46-years-old? To quote the parental characters of the show (Eric Parker and Penelope Alex), when they confront their shaggy son Claude (Jamey Grisham), “What do you have, 1968, that makes you so damn superior?”
Grisham’s is the focal character, a young man struggling to decide whether to obey society and go to war, or stay with his tribe and dodge the draft.
“It still feels very relevant to me, because this is where our rebirth and freedom for youth began, and yet we’re still experiencing that now,” Grisham (also choreographer) said.
He’s 29, and was first in the show at age 19 in 2005. Grisham gets it now, but he’s had difficulties understanding everything about late-’60s counterculture.
To provide perspective, Grisham has always had his father, a “Woodstocker” of that era.
“This dialog is a lot of gibberish, it’s so hard to memorize,” Grisham has complained.
Grisham said his father told him, “That’s kind of what it was like. You had a thought, and you said it whether it made sense or not.”
At least one scene is a psychedelic hallucination. On the surface — of both “Hair” and its era — there were the hippies, drugs and free love. And the musical has its famous scene of mass nudity.
But what has lasted to this era is “a real sense of personal power of vulnerability and whole-hearted loving,” Grisham said.
Grisham said he sees this in the younger generation of Barn apprentices. It’s as his father taught him, “we should be wholehearted, accepting, loving people.”