Today, my friends and I woke at 5 in the morning and headed off to Central Park, to see the cast of Hair, the tribal love rock musical, perform some of the songs from the play. Unfortunately, the performance was sponsored by abc.com, and television is mainly something I am opposed to. This meant that there were a bunch of people who hadn't come for the music, but to be on tv. We even met a woman who thought she as going to see hairspray! That made me angry, because that is completely not what the play, or the subject of the play,w as about. And then of course it was totally directed for the cameras, doing takes and retakes of each song until it was perfect. The audience was only there so that they could be shown, loving the performers. They literally told us, at times, when to clap and shout. And that is just selling out! The whole play is about resisting the system, doing what you want, being free. Grrrr. But there were others who felt this way too. When my friends and I got in to the area, the first thing we noticed was that there was astroturf place over the actual grass. But, later on, we found they couldn't completely get rid of nature, since after all, it was in the middle of a park. Sparrows were nesting in the supports of the stage, and as the performers sang, they would fly out, above everyone's heads.
So here we are, and there are bunches of people holding signs to the cameras and crowding around the stage. No one really is on it, and we can listen from farther away, so we set out our blanket away from the crowd and sit to eat our breakfast. Others, real Hairheads began to spread down too. We happily munched and crunched and when we looked up, we saw that three men, all dressed like Jimi Hendrix except for they were white, were setting up behind us. They had these wonderful, colorfully batiked flags that they began to twirl and spin and create colors in the air with. They let us try it. It was amazing, and they had just because they wanted to, not because they had been hired. I laughed at all the people in front of us, pushing to see an empty stage, while they were missing a real show behind them!
Finally, the cast began to come onstage, and we had a great time, despite the cameras. The music was amazing, and Berger (one of the main characters, the actor is Will Swenson) actually came down and took people's hands, and totally held on to his for about five seconds! Yes, I was extremely excited, thank you very much. Flowers in my hair, beads around my neck, I jumped and sang, and then it began to rain. Loving it, we reached up and pulled it down, in sheets of drizzly mist. It didn't dampen our party, it only made it better. Since Michael Jackson had died the day before, the cast of Hair did a tribute to him, by singing I'll Be There, and it was great. The concert ended, and we dispersed. My friends and I (to be exact they were the wizardress and Miss Lizzy) wandered away, and began to get ourselves back to school(we had missed the first hour or so, but it didn't matter since it was the last day of school).We stopped by Bethesda fountain, where oh, so many weddings are held, and listened to a man play Michael Jackson jazzy-like on his sax. We waded into the fountain until someone made us get out, then proceeded on our merry way. After getting out of the park and taking many detours, we came to The Wizardress' grandmother's house, and stopped by to dry off. Her house was filled with chotchkes. As we walked up the street, people stared at us strangely, especially since I was singing the lines of the title of this post over and over. I remembered how we looked and who we were and I was so happy that I was who I was and that we were the sort of interesting people tourists stared and talked about. I was so, so, happy.
If you would like to see what you all missed, go here and click on the let the sun shine in and aquarius links on the top bar, or just search for hair in the park. There is also the cast blog telling about all the actors if you did see hair, which I thought was pretty cool. You can see it here.
Title Quote: Hair, I Got Life
No comments:
Post a Comment