Monday, September 14, 2009
Uncategorized 7 Stages' Hair sprouts '60s idealism in Little Five Points
Posted by Curt Holman @Curt_Holman on Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 8:50 PM
Pop culture seems to be experiencing a collective acid flashback to the late 1960s. The film Taking Woodstock and other commemorations marked the 40th anniversary of “three days of peace and music.” Video games and digital music restoration have conjured up Beatlemania for a new generation. And the musical Hair, which put a starry-eyed face on the decade’s counterculture, has opened 7 Stages’ 30th anniversary season after a popular Broadway revival earlier in 2009.
The retro-vogue for flower power may be driven by more than just nostalgia for tie-dye, free love and readily available hallucinogens. The current revival comes at the end of a traumatic decade marked by terrorism, war, economic collapse and bitter political partisanship. Harking back to Hair or Yasgur’s farm (or even 1972’s Jesus Christ Superstar at the Alliance Theatre) expresses a longing to rekindle hippie idealism, the feeling of being at the dawn of an era when “peace will guide the planets and love will steer the stars.” That the Age of Aquarius turned out to be so short-lived only adds to its poignancy.
Continue reading "7 Stages' Hair sprouts '60s idealism in Little Five Points"
(Photo by Abby Gaskins)
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