about [what was happening] and see film clips, but you'd never experience it. We thought, 'This is happening in the streets,' and we wanted to bring it to the stage.” It wasn’t just protest music at the heart of Hair ; it was the protest itself, live and in full celebration. COMMERCIAL SUCCESS NOT ONLY solidified the viability of rock musicals, but created space for scores of future musicals that held a mirror up to American politics, serving as a cultural reckoning. Without Hair, there may have never HAIR’S
THEATRICAL PERFORMANCE HAS AN UNIQUE ABILITY TO BRING US TOGETHER IN COMMUNITY. Theater demands that stories unfold in real-time, to a live audience, by fusing a variety of artistic designs into a singular, unified vision. Hair broke the mold by redefining what that vision could look like on a Broadway stage. "I'm proudest of the fact that we captured what was happening at that time," Rado said in a 2009 interview. "It was very important historically, and if we hadn't written it, there would not be any [theatrical]
b e e n Godspel l or Grease, Pippin or The Wiz, Evita, or Dream
Girls or Rent or Hamilton. Beyond a protest song, Hair paved the way for generations of artists and audiences to create small but meaningful protests night after night in theaters across America.
examples. You could r e a d
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