Tom Kinstrey © 2023

HAIR at SLOC Theatre

Projection design for Hair the Musical at Schenectady Light Opera Company, March 2016.
Received TANYS Award for Excellence for Projection Design.

 

Michael Gatzendorfer, Director
Mary Darcy and Kim Reilly, Producers
Casey Ryan Gray, Music Director

TANYS Awards:

Outstanding Ensemble Acting to the Cast
Excellence in Lighting Effects to Lauryn Curtis
Excellence for Projection Design to Tom Kinstrey
Excellence in Direction to Michael Gatzendrofer

Adjudicator’s Comment: One of the most enjoyable and outstanding productions of the year. Brought back memories of the 60’s. Never have I felt so much energy from a cast on stage. It was a great evening of theater.

Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical is a rock musical with a book and lyrics by James Rado and Gerome Ragni and music by Galt MacDermot. A product of the hippie counterculture and sexual revolution of the 1960s, several of its songs became anthems of the anti-Vietnam War peace movement. The musical’s profanity, its depiction of the use of illegal drugs, its treatment of sexuality, its irreverence for the American flag, and its nude scene caused much comment and controversy. The musical broke new ground in musical theatre by defining the genre of “rock musical”, using a racially integrated cast, and inviting the audience onstage for a “Be-In” finale.

Hair tells the story of the “tribe”, a group of politically active, long-haired hippies of the “Age of Aquarius” living a bohemian life in New York City and fighting against conscription into the Vietnam War. Claude, his good friend Berger, their roommate Sheila and their friends struggle to balance their young lives, loves and the sexual revolution with their rebellion against the war and their conservative parents and society. Ultimately, Claude must decide whether to resist the draft as his friends have done, or to succumb to the pressures of his parents (and conservative America) to serve in Vietnam, compromising his pacifistic principles and risking his life.