Let the Sun Shine In

I’ve wanted to see Hair for ages, long before I donned long skirts and dabbled in hippiedom for a few years in college. I knew I’d love the music, the costumes, the astral-projection- groovy- can you dig it style of the entire thing, but I didn’t know I’d be slammed with one of the most powerful and moving pieces of theater and social commentary I’ve ever seen.

In the latest example of the socialization of art, the audience joins the “tribe” in a moment of transcendance – the Hair eParty – at the end of each performance. The audience is invited onstage to dance in the finale, and video footage is then uploaded onto Hair’s website. Audience members can tell their friends to watch back home, and then tag themselves in the video later on.  Improvising and then reproducing the final moments of a musical – by its very nature, something that must be experienced live, in real time – is the latest example of the increasing blurred line between spectator and performer, audience and entertainer. We all want a chance to take center stage and curate our own personal brands (well, maybe not that slightly awkward guy dancing in the middle. There is a sense of both humility and entitlement here; a sense that the insignificant details of our lives are somehow made meaningful in the very act of sharing them. It is affirming to share of ourselves, and validating to watch others do the same. I wonder if this is what the show’s creators, intent on spreading peace, love and understanding, had in mind all along.