With book and lyrics by Gerome Ragni and James Rado, and music by Galt MacDermot, HAIR first burst onto the scene at Joe Papp’s Public Theatre before evolving into its final Broadway form under the cosmic guidance of the visionary Tom O’Horgan. Somewhere between downtown experiment and full-blown cultural detonation, a new kind of musical was born. And nothing was ever the same again.
Pulled from the swirling ether of the Sixties anti-war movement, hippie counterculture, experimental theatre, psychedelic exploration, rock and roll, and the poetic frequency of Allen Ginsberg, HAIR didn’t just reflect 1967 — it was 1967. Loud. Messy. Beautiful. Defiant. A little high. Probably very high.
It’s a show that doesn’t politely ask for your attention — it grabs you, shakes you, hugs you, sings to you, and occasionally dares you to rethink everything. Decades later, it still hits like a flash of color in a black-and-white world, still capable of surprising you, shocking you, and opening up something you didn’t realize was closed.
The New Liners are proud to bring HAIR back to St. Louis for its 60th anniversary. Some shows age gracefully, but some shows just keep expanding. In 2000, New Line produced HAIR for the first time, in the Washington University blackbox theatre. Audiences and the New Line cast — now, “the Osage Tribe” — were so deeply affected by the show, that we brought it back for another run in 2001 at the ArtLoft Theatre.
In 2008, we needed HAIR again, so we brought it back once more, at the Washington University South Campus Theatre. This is the first time New Line has produced any show for the fourth time. Which either means we can’t let it go — or it won’t let us go.
Either way, the tribe is gathering again.
The music is starting.
The colors are getting brighter.
And somewhere, just at the edge of it all… the sun is waiting.