Where Do I Go?

I didn't expect our last show, High Fidelity, to be as meaningful and powerful as it was for me personally. I knew it was great material that I wanted to work on and share with our audiences, but I didn't think it would hit me right in the solar plexus the way it did. About halfway through the run, I realized why: I was at the exact same place in my life as Rob Gordon was. I needed to learn exactly the same lessons he needed to learn. And with both Rob and me, even when the show ended, our journeys did not. Rob had only begun his journey as the story of High Fidelity ended. (Actually, in the novel the story goes one narrative step further than the show does.) It's like the end of Company, where Bobby makes a decision about the road he will take now, but we don't know how it will work out, whether he will find happiness, etc. -- all we know is that he's made a decision. The same is true of High Fidelity.

And my life.

Luckily for me, I now move from that deeply personal, deeply meaningful experience to another! I already know that Hair carries some important lessons for me, some of which I learned the last couple times -- particularly the second time, when we closed just ten days before the September 11th attacks. But I also know I'm in a different place now.

I've always been a junkie for books about religion. I do not subscribe to any organized religion and do not believe literally in the stories any of those religions tell us. I know that the stories of Jesus, Moses, and The Gang are important stories that teach us important truths, but I also know that they rightfully belong alongside the great stories of Zeus, Thor, Jupiter, Zoroaster, Shiva, the Reverend Moon, and L. Ron Hubbard. Every tradition has its central myths and fables, none of which are true but all of which are truthful. In fact almost all of the Christian myths and fables originated in other Eastern traditions first. The Garden and the Fall of Man, the Great Flood, the Virgin Birth, all Jesus' miracles, the idea of the Trinity, the 12 disciples, the crucifixion and resurrection -- all of it showed up in other places before Christianity. Which makes it a little hard to take the Bible literally.

I'll offer up just one detailed example to prove my point. Jesus’ story shares many coincidences with the story of Horus -- and here's the crux of it -- an Egyptian story from thousands of years earlier. Horus was born to a virgin and was the only begotten son of God (Osiris). Horus’ mother was Meri and his (step-)father was Jo-Seph. Both births were announced by angels and witnessed by shepherds. Jesus was visited by three wise men; Horus was visited by three sun gods. Herod wanted Jesus killed as a child; Herut wanted Horus killed. There are no details on either of them from age 12-30. Both were baptized at age 30 in a river by a known baptiser. Both faced temptation in the desert by an evil god (Sut/Satan). Both had 12 disciples as an adult. Both of them walked on water, cast out demons, healed the sick, cured the blind, stilled the sea, and raised the dead. Horus’ ressurection of his dead father happened in Anu. Jesus resurrected Lazarus in Beth-Anu, or Bethany (beth means house in Hebrew). Both were killed by crucifixion, accompanied by two thieves. Both were entombed, then resurrected after three days, and in both cases the resurrection was discovered by women first. And all this happened to Horus thousands of years before Jesus even showed up! Odd, isn't it? But enough of that...

Lately, I've been reading books about Zen Buddhism, and I see great truth there, and a much more evolved sense that the closest we can come to God is metaphor, that literal language and stories will always be utterly inadequate, and most significantly for Christians, that we can't ever really know the nature of God, the nature of Life, the nature of Death, or any of the rest of those Big Questions. (Depends on the shit you're smoking!) It's the questions that count, not the answers; the searching for, not the pretending to know.

(If you ever want a really good laugh, listen to "The Bible Answer Man" on Chrstian radio. To paraphrase the Hair script -- Anyone who thinks they have all the answers is full of shit.)

The more I read about world religion and philosophy, the more I'm convinced that our primary duty as moral, rational beings is to Evolve. If we believe now exactly what we believed as children, then we're not doing our job, we're not serving our souls, we're not growing and striving toward our potential.

When I hear people say that "all the answers" are in the Bible, I feel sorry for them. The Bible is a history book and a philosophy book; it's not an owner's manual. And it does not have answers for us about 21st century technology or many other modern issues. The Bible is a guide, nothing more, and it's up to us to use the Bible, the Koran, the Torah, and others texts like them to learn what we can and keep pursuing the Big Questions. But we have to accept and even embrace the fact that we will never fully understand the answers (and sometimes, not even the questions). The idea isn't to get the answer -- that's what game shows are for -- the idea is to keep thinking and evolving. That's what makes us better people and the world a better place.

I'm hoping Hair will help me with that the way High Fidelity did. I consider myself quite a success professionally -- though I make precious little money, I do run a nationally known theatre company, I've published several books in my field, and I hope that I continue to get better as a director. But in my personal life I'm usually a failure, and I'm trying to figure out why that is and how to get myself on a different road. High Fidelity opened my eyes to a piece of the puzzle, but there are many more pieces to be found.

Part of me feels like it's awfully late to have my eyes opened at age 44, but another part feels like this life may well be just one rung on the great ladder of Enlightenment, that what we think of as a full adult life may really be merely an infancy in a much bigger, wider world of experience that our puny brains can't even imagine. I know we all have work to do, but I think I may have more than most...

If nothing else, at least I finally feel like I may be on the right road. And I have to accept that I don't know where that road is leading. I just have to stay on the road and Keep On Truckin'.

My body is walking in space,
My soul is in orbit, with God, face to face.
. . .
On a rocket to the fourth dimension,
Totally self-awareness the intention.

On with the Groovy Revolution!
Kerouac

Take Trips, Get High

This is such a different experience than the other two times I did Hair. Partly because I have such experience with the show this time and I came into the process with an incredible head-start. Partly because I could give this cast a much better idea of where they were headed than I could the other times. Partly because I think I'm a better director seven years later.

But a big part of it is this Tribe of ours. Everybody is so terrific to work with, the atmosphere in rehearsal has been wonderful, and they're all really working hard to find their place in the crazy quilt that is Hair.

We've run both acts separately, and they're both looking really good already. And on Monday night, newly ensconced in our new theatre for the first time, we'll run the whole show. Which will be so much fun to see the whole thing -- and for them to finally have the real space in which to play. We'll see what still needs work, what needs focus, etc. And the tribe will start to get an idea of the flow of the show, how all these pieces really fit together. I think it will be particularly helpful for a few of the actors who really have complex character arcs over the course of the show.

Today, we load in the set. Todd (Claude) is our set designer and he's already over at the theatre with our Trusty Stage Manager Trisha, getting everything ready to build. Several of us will be there shortly to help. Today we build, tomorrow we paint. Then Monday we finally get to play on the real set!

I can hardly believe it's already load-in day. It doesn't seem like we've been working on this show very long. But when I think about having a six-week run again, I'm reminded that this is one of those rare, cool experiences that's actually going to last a while. With most shows, even though we usually run four weeks, it's still hard to close the show, and it always feels like we could run longer. This time, we do get to run longer, for almost twice as many performances as usual. And that's a real gift. Tickets are already selling pretty good and people seem to be as psyched about the show this time as they were the other times. The first two times we had houses of 125 and 150 seats; this time it'll be 210 seats. But I still think we'll sell out most of the run. We'll see...

Well, I've gotta get my carcass into the shower and get over to the theatre, so I'll end my update here...

On with the Groovy Revolution!
Kerouac

Dead End

If we think we're a divided nation now, we just have to look at 1968 to see what amateurs we are today. On the morning of Martin Luther King Jr.'s funeral in 1968, the Chicago Tribune published an editorial that tells us everything we need to know about The Other Side of the Culture War, both then and now...

Yes, this nation and people need a day or mourning. America should mourn, but not for Martin Luther King. They should mourn because moral values are at the lowest level since the decadence of Rome....

Funny, isn't that what we're hearing today? And really, weren't they saying that 100 years ago? Isn't there some famous quote of one of the Ancient Greeks writing about the decaying morals of the Younger Generation? Ah well, the more things change...

...Drug addiction among the youth is so widespread that we are treated to the spectacle at great universities of faculty-student committees solemnly decreeing that this is not longer a matter for correction...

Oooo, "correction"! That sounds so S&M...! Sign me up!

...At countless universities the doors of dormitories are open to mixed company, with no supervision... Dress is immodest. Pornography floods the news stands and book stores. 'Free Speech' movements on campuses address themselves to four-letter words... We are knee-deep in hippies, marijuana, LSD, and other hallucinogens. We do not need any of these; we are self-doped to the point where our standards are lost...

Okay, first the idea of being knee-deep in marijuana sounds like Heaven on a Stick to me! But putting that aside, can you imagine if the people who wrote this editorial could leap from 1968 to 2008. I think it's a fair bet their heads would actually explode. Can you imagine a traveler from 1968 dealing with South Park, Cinemax after Dark, online porn, The Daily Show, Comedy Central in general, Janet Jackson's Nipple Scandal, Weeds, Deadwood, Avenue Q, Harold and Khumar, The Aristocrats, and of course, Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle...?

...If you are black, so goes the contention, you are right, and you must be indulged in every wish. Why, sure, break the window and make off with the color TV set, the case of liquor, the beer, the dress, the coat, and the shoes. We won't shoot you. That would be 'police brutality.'...

Except of course when we shoot you for no reason coming out of your own bachelor party the night before your wedding. Or when we drag you from the back of a pickup till you're dead. Or when we leave you to die in New Orleans...

Then again, we did let O.J. go...

...If you are white, you are wrong. Feel guilty about it. Assume the collective guilt of all your progenitors, even if neither you nor anyone you know is a descendant of salve owners. Yield the sidewalk to the migrants from the South who have descended on your cities. Honor their every want, because the 'liberals' tell you that it is your fault they have not educated themselves, developed responsibility, trained themselves to hold jobs, or are shiftless and dependent on your taxes.

Gee, that sorta sounds like the arguments coming from a lot of the Right Wingers today, doesn't it (though they usually dress it up in less obviously racist language)? Not McCain himself, of course. That would be unseemly. He leaves it to schmucks like Hannity, Limbaugh, Lou Dobbs, Trent Lott, Tom DeLay, and the Lesser Crazies... They even have the same trick of de-humanizing with labels: then it was "migrants;" now, it's "illegal aliens." And these terrible creatures don't "move to" a city; they "descend on" it. These Pundits of The Dark Side know that if people of color are just "people," they're not scary enough to rouse the rabble!

Then as now, half of America is always afraid of Anarchy, that those who are oppressed will rise up and up-end everything we hold dear. In retrospect it's hard not to see the original Planet of the Apes films as a fable about race fear in America. They feared that chaos would erupt (which it often did in 1968) and Order (i.e., White Defined Order) would never be Restored. The same fear is with us today -- many Americans told exit pollers during the primaries that race did play a part in their decision. Is it possible to see that as anything other than racism? If someone votes for Hillary over Obama, and says race was a deciding factor, doesn't that ipso facto make them racist? The pollsters have reported those numbers but are afraid of drawing the obvious conclusion...

When Don Imus can call black college women "nappy headed ho's," then the song "Colored Spade" in Hair feels as timely as tomorrow morning's headlines. Which is a shame.

The more I compare 1968 and 2008, the more depressing it gets. We really haven't come very far since then. Maybe we can blame Nixon and Watergate for short-circuiting the good work of the Sixties, but we gotta blame ourselves, too. And our fear.

So what do we do now?

On with the Groovy Revolution!
Kerouac

Ooooooo, The Bed!

As of last night, we've staged the whole show except The Trip in Act II, which we'll do Monday. It's still amazing to me how willing our tribe is to try crazy things, break rules, and throw themselves into the relative chaos of this beautiful, baffling show. So Thank You once again to the Osage for so cheerfully following me down this road, even when you think I may be losing my damn mind. Your trust is wonderful.

Hair is a very difficult show to stage, partly because it's really strange, using experimental theatre devices and so forth, and partly because it's also very complex, with lots of stuff going on much of the time (and The Trip is the most complex of all, which is why I saved it for last). When a show is supposed to feel spontaneous and sorta chaotic, it's extra hard to find ways to focus the audience's attention where it should be focused.

Because, after all, even though Hair doesn't feel like it has a plot, it really does...

This blog is supposed to be a truthful chronicle, warts and all, of our process, so here's one of the warts, a glimpse inside the messy process of making theatre. I realized when I got home last night that I don't think the way I staged "The Bed" works very well. The proof of this is that the tribe really didn't understand what I was going for. They seemed totally lost, even frustrated, which has not been true of any other moment in the show. If the actors feel that lost, it's most probably my fault.

So I need to re-think this number. Why is it here? How does it function? Deep down at its core, what is it about? How does it advance character, plot, or the show's themes? Is it just about playfulness or is there something more? In other words, maybe it's about something underneath that's different from the surface meaning.

Here's a piece of the very odd lyric from "The Bed":

You can lie in bed
You can lay in bed
You can die in bed
You can pray in bed
You can live in bed
You can laugh in bed
You can give your heart
Or break your heart in half in bed

You can tease in bed
You can please in bed
You can squeeze in bed
You can freeze in bed
You can sneeze in bed
Catch the fleas in bed
All of these
Plus eat crackers and cheese in bed...

What on earth??? This is a hard song to make work because it's one of those rowdy, silly, playful songs that populate so much of the Hair score, but it comes at a very intense, sad moment in the show. Why is it there? Why break up the intensity and the building dramatic tension that's leading straight into the finale? Why stop the show for a list of things you can do in bed (only some of them sexual), when we're about to send Claude off to the Vietnam meat grinder?

Part of the answer may just be the perverse pleasure the show's creators took in consciously rejecting expectations every chance they got. Part of it I think is the juxtaposition of Claude's sadness, fear, apprehension, guilt, etc. against the still playful, still stoned, still outside-real-life tribe around him. They will go on playing while he goes to Vietnam and gets killed. They will no doubt still be playing when he's sent back home in a body bag.

But is it about more than that? The first half of the song is exclusively non-sexual things you can do in bed. Them the bridge of the song describes the bed in analytical terms:

Oh the bed is a thing
Of feather and spring
Of wire and wood
Invention so good.

Maybe this is a song about rejecting the demonization of "what we do in bed." Maybe this is a commentary on how "the bed" became a strictly sexual symbol in the freaked-out 60s, which in turn made it something "dirty," "private," "adult," rather than a source of pleasure and rest and renewal. Everybody has a bed, the tribe is telling us, and it's silly to attach such heavy, "forbidden" meaning to such a simple, good, useful thing, to reduce it to nothing more than sex so that you can't even talk about it in polite company.

Then the last section of the song finally celebrates sexual acts, but only as one of many things you can do in bed. Sex is only one part of this picture. And notice that the song never uses the word fuck, even though it's all over the rest of the show:

Let there be sighs
Filling the room
Scanty pajamas
By Fruit of the Loom

You can eat in bed
You can beat in bed
Be in heat in bed
Have a treat in bed
You can rock in bed
You can roll in bed
Find your cock in bed
Lose your soul in bed

(Remember, the phrase "rock and roll" was originally a euphemism for sex.) And then the song ends with a warning: "You can lose in bed / You can win in bed / But never, never, never, never, never, never sin in bed." Is that telling us to stop demonizing both the bed as a symbol and also our own sexual exploits, however non-mainstream they may be, to stop thinking of sex as "sin"...?

And maybe the tribe is warning Claude -- he wants to sleep with Sheila before he leaves, but "You can give your heart, or break your heart in half in bed." Going to bed with someone can be complicated...

When I figure all this out (and I've actually come a long way just writing this blog entry), then I'll figure out how to physicalize that, how to make it as clear as possible to the audience, how to use staging to enhance and make the words even more meaningful. Maybe it calls for abstract movement or maybe concrete movement that literally "explains" the song... With things like this, I have to think really hard about it for a while, then forget about it and let it percolate in the back of my mind. As I move through this weekend, this song will sit in my subconscious and hopefully, it will suddenly become clear to me how to make it work. I say "suddenly" because it will feel like that, even though the process will probably take a couple days...

I learned a long time ago that making theatre is not always a conscious process. Sometimes the best art is made subconsciously, by just allowing your artist self to cruise along on auto-pilot. I've been using this same process since 1997 when we did Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris and 1998 when we did Songs for New World, both largely abstract musicals. When I'm having trouble with a number, I stop myself, ask myself, "What is this really about?", and that usually puts me on the right road. That may sound like Directing 101, but it's something too many directors never do... especially with a musical...

We'll see if it works this time... Hopefully I'll have new staging to show the tribe Monday night.

On with the Groovy Revolution!
Kerouac

Beads, Flowers, Freedom

I'm reading this new book, Nixonland, and it's really fucking fascinating. It's a portrait of how America changed from the 50s to the 70s, using Nixon's political rise as a structural device, and also asserting that Nixon was the guy who started the conservative movement that has so fucked up our country in the last eight years. The book makes a very persuasive case that without Nixon, there would have been no Reagan and no Dubya, and that Nixon was actually the guy who pioneered the dirty politics that we've come to know as "Rovian." (Believe me, you only THINK you know how dirty Nixon was...)

This book has confirmed a theory of mine, that America has been fighting the same battle for the last forty years, between those who want America to return to the certainties (and racism and sexism and cultural oppression) of the 1950s, and those who want to finally fulfill the social and political promises of the 1960s. That's what Grease and The Rocky Horror Show are both about. And I think that's what the 2008 Presidential election is about.

But this book is also an incredible journey through the politics and culture of America during that wild, disorienting, transitional time. I'm only about a third of the way through, but I feel like now I understand better how tumultuous that time was. Unintentionally, it was the hippie and anti-war movements that allowed Nixon to come to power, with the brilliant bullshit of his "Law and Order" campaign in 1968. It was bullshit, of course, because the federal government has very little to do with "law and order" -- that's almost always a state and local issue. The Constitution doesn't give the federal government much "law and order" power...

But Nixon knew that's what "the great silent majority" wanted, an end to the chaos and upheaval. They just wanted to get back to the 1950s. So that's what he offered them.

And the way Nixon got around his jurisdictional problem was to declare a War on Drugs, which has been under federal jurisdiction since the 1930s when another bullshit artist, Harry Anslinger, convinced the U.S. -- and many other countries -- to outlaw marijuana, jump starting the horrific, misguided, sometimes deadly, and mostly ineffectual War on Drugs, which has resulted in (among other things) a third of African American men being in jail at some point in their lives.

Right now, I've gotten to 1967 in this book, and it's talking about that famous March on the Pentagon, when the hippies put flowers in the barrels of the guns of the National Guardsmen. And the author of this book, Rick Perlstein, makes an incredibly interesting point about that moment -- he writes, "Others placed flowers in the barrels of their guns. On the surface, a gesture of sweetness. Deeper down, for a soldier steeled for grim conflict, just doing his duty, the most unmanning thing imaginable: you are slaves and we are free."

Fuck! That's intense!

And in a sense, that's the whole point of Hair. This hippie tribe has come together to hang out with us, rap a little, and show us The Way. They will show us Great Truths, they will shine harsh light on the bullshit, and they will open wide the Doors of Perception for us. It's up to us whether or not we step through. But underneath it all, the hippies know the truth -- that we (the audience) are slaves in so many ways, to money, to job, to family, to the advertisers, to the drive-thru's, to religion, to school, to the government, to social convention, to political correctness... and the hippies are free.

Wow. Now go smoke some of God's Goofy Green Goodness and try to wrap your mind around that...!

On with the Groovy Revolution!
Kerouac

How Dare They Try to End This Beauty

So I'm sitting at my computer working, listening to this stoner Mixwit tape Todd Micali has put on his blog, and I've just listened to "Puff the Magic Dragon" four times in a row. I always knew the song was about pot (well, maybe not when I first got the sheet music at age 6), but hearing it now in the context of working on Hair, I hear deeper things in it, about the danger of losing the beauty and ideals and innocence of the 60s and the drug culture -- sort of along the lines of the Hair songs "How Dare They Try to End This Beauty" and "Let the Sun Shine In"... Go listen to it and see what I mean...

Wow. That's heavy, dude!

You gotta check out Todd's mix tape -- it's fucking amazing!

And also notice the photo on his blog of the guy putting flowers in the gun barrels of the National Guard. This famous shot is from the October 1967 March on the Pentagon, when 35,000 people circled the Pentagon, held hands, and tried to levitate the building! Where did those 35,000 people go, I wonder...?

On with the Groovy Revolution!
Kerouac

Come to the Be-In

I just finished watching the coolest fucking documentary! It's called What Would Jesus Buy?, made by the same guy who made Super Size Me. It's about Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping, a church choir combined with performance art and political activism. The film follows their month-long tour across America to stage demonstrations/performances/protests at malls, Wal-Marts, Targets, Starbuckses, the Las Vegas strip, and the Mall of America, all during the Christmas holidays. They even visit (and protest inside of) Disneyland.

And as I was watching it, I realized the hippies are still with us! This is exactly what the hippies believed in, a rejection of consumerism and materialism, a return to valuing people above things, a return to humanity, a search for transcendent truths. At one point in the film, Reverend Billy and his choir are exorcising a Wall-Mart, and afterward he says he really thought they were gonna be able to levitate the Wal-Mart to show the strength of their message. A parallel event happened in October 1967 when the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam gathered 35,000 people in Washington D.C. to try and levitate the Pentagon. (In Hair, Sheila was at this event at the Pentagon.)

There's a playfulness about Reverend Billy and his Stop Shopping Choir, but there's also a deep seriousness underneath it all, a serious call to reject the addiction of consumerism, to stop feeling "forced" to go into debt every Christmas. It's a playfulness mixed with seriousness that is found in the hippie culture of the 60s as well -- and in Hair. In fact, it's not hard to see Berger in Reverend Billy -- charismatic, charming, equal parts shaman and bullshit artist.

The one moment in the movie that really grabbed me was outside a Wal-Mart somewhere out West. The choir is passing by the front of the store and there's a young couple there with a baby and a toddler. The father asks Reverend Billy to bless his baby, and so with back-up singing from the choir, Billy blesses the child and prays that she won't be afflicted with the curse of consumerism. It's both funny and really moving, and it reminded me how dangerous our brand of consumerism is to our health and happiness, both collectively and individually. It's obvious that this moment re-energizes Billy but it also makes you stop and think seriously about what they're preaching. Jim Wallis, minister and publisher of the excellent Sojourner magazine, says it all in the film: "Christmas is supposed to shake the world up!"

And so is Hair.

They're right, after all, Reverend Billy and his friends. For the first time since the Depression, Americans have negative savings. The Rev says we're lost in "the valley of the shadow of debt!" We've been hoodwinked and victimized. (Well, actually, when I say "we" I really mean "you," since I gave up credit many years ago, and it was mostly voluntary -- with only one exception in the meantime, to get a car.)

And there's the connection to Hair. The hippies in Hair are right too. Marijuana and sex are gifts from God and war is always wrong. But to understand that, your mind has to be opened ("wide, wide, wide") and not too many people know how to do that. Not yet.

Maybe Hair will help.

On with the Groovy Revolution!
Kerouac