T Minus 84 Days: The Archives At Last!

(A note to the reader: Because I have had to spend time double-checking facts and other things, the final posts from the trip to New York are out of sequence. I am posting them initially in the order I release them, so you will see them as they appear. Later on, I will reorganize them so that they appear in time sequence. - Jon)

Wednesday in Hatfield, Massachusetts, started delightfully. The Old Mill On The Falls Bed and Breakfast is a wonderfully restored old grist mill that sits right on a waterfall which used to power the grinding wheels. Proprietor Ted Jarrett served us a fantastic breakfast (the first really good breakfast we’d had since we left home) of fresh fruit and homemade waffles.

We called Nina Dayton and asked her when we should come over and she said “Now!” So we got into the car, drove the short distance (it turns out we could have walked it, but it was still very cold and we had our laptop, scripts and other stuff to carry, so in the end, we were glad we drove) and in less than 5 minutes, we were pulling into Nina’s driveway.

We had already met Nina, her husband Trevor and their daughter Annie at the HAiR dinner party in New York City on Saturday, but we really didn’t have a chance to spend much time with them. That was about to be corrected! In the end, we got to spend three very full days with some of the warmest, most gracious people we could have imagined we would ever meet. They welcomed us into their global family, as well as their own smaller local family with open arms.

A bit of history: Nina was just 14 when she started working at the Biltmore Theater where HAiR was playing in New York. She had been hanging out at the theater to see the show and meet the tribe, and her friend was working at the concession counter. When an opening came up, she was asked if she wanted a job, and she signed up. She remained in that position (while still going to school during the day) until the very last performance of the show on July 1, 1972.

Nina got the amazing opportunity to perform on stage with the Broadway tribe for the final performance of HAiR, which was already expanded by the participation of many of the alumni from the previous four years of Broadway performances. About a year later, she was given permission to produce and direct a very special HAiR production utilizing half professional actors and half inner city youth in New York.

Today she is the curator and director of the official Hair Archives, and runs both the physical archives and the Archives web site, as well as some portions of Michael Butler's web sites, and his blogs. She consults on many Hair related projects and current productions of Hair.

Wednesday, Thursday and Friday became a complete immersal in the culture of HAiR. We reviewed many articles and reviews written about the show, numerous script variations that have occurred going back to the original Broadway script, the revival script and the now licensed 1995 Tams-Witmark script. We looked at many photographs including the few available photos of the original set on Broadway. Costumes fared better than the sets in pictures. The set of a show is almost always in the background and most promotional photos which focus on the performers don’t show it very well, whereas the costumes are on the people who are typically photographed up close and personal ;-). Barb had a field day in learning about the styles of the original Broadway costumes.

Although there is no known video or film of an actual original first-run HAiR performance, we did get to look at a number of videos of those early tribes, from highlight clips of various Broadway and Los Angeles casts performing on the Johnny Carson, David Frost, David Steinberg, Ed Sullivan and the Smothers Brothers shows. One clip in particular demonstrated the unbelievable performing genius that was Ragni's Berger. During the Johnny Carson show, he gets up on Carson's desk while singing HAiR and throws Carson totally off his game, something that almost never happened to Johnny on the air.

We looked at a taping of the 1988 United Nations concert which covered almost all of the songs from the original production with authors Jerome Ragni and James Rado, composer Galt MacDermot, many stars who had been in original first-run productions of HAiR (Melba Moore, Donna Summer, Heather MacRae, Paul Jabara, Nell Carter, Andre DeShields, and more), Treat Williams who played Berger in the movie, as well as a number of star performers who just came out to help in the benefit performance (Bea Arthur, Rex Smith, Frank Stallone, Chuck Mangione, Dr. Ruth Westheimer and others).

We also got to view several videos of more recent productions. Some of these productions were very good, including excellent representations of the original staging and choreography. Some, as would be expected, were not as good as others, and we also observed a number of specific things that we felt were important to avoid in our show (for instance, costuming in one production was very non-period, including women in the tribe wearing high heels, something that would have been absolutely unfathomable for a group of 60s-era hippie girls).

We had also met Dr. Bill Swiggard on Saturday and we got to spend more time with him at the Archives. Bill played Claude in several of the original productions including the national Mercury Tour at the age of 19. After spending a dozen or so years as an actor, he found himself out of work in the 1980s in theater and turned to his earlier "day job" experiences as a lab technician to make a living. Bill is incredibly brilliant, and, as he saw the damage being wreaked on the theater community by the spread of HIV/AIDS, he plunged himself into finishing college despite already being in his thirties. He continued his education and ended up with both a Ph.D. from Rockefeller University in immunology and a medical degree from Cornell. In 2002, he met Nina while visiting the Hair Archives, fell in love with Massachusetts and is now a noted physician there, specializing in infectious diseases. He also donates time every week to work with AIDS patients.

Bill lives in the same town as Nina and her family, and every day, after work at the hospital, Bill came by and had dinner with all of us. We discussed politics, medicine, computers, theater, people in general, and of course, HAiR. The pictures of Bill as a 19-year old Claude are extraordinarily affecting. He is a genuinely beautiful man, who also has a genuinely beautiful soul.

Bill and Nina (along with Trevor and Annie, and their delightful Jack Russell terrier Jennifer and their cat Mouse) became family to us in just a few days, making us once again admire the quote: “There are no strangers, only friends you haven’t met yet.” Truer words were never said.

We were originally going to only spend two days in Massachusetts, and we didn’t want to overextend our welcome, but when Nina insisted that we consider coming back on Friday, we instantly changed our plans so that we could avail ourselves of another day of her amazing support and assistance. I can honestly say that there is no way we could have become better prepared for this voyage we are about to embark on (creating the San Jose production of HAiR) than spending these three days in Hatfield. What an amazing experience! What amazing people!

After three days, we finally had to bid a teary adieu to Nina, her family and Bill. We all agreed we would keep in touch by phone, email and the blogs (the Hair blog and this blog). Not only had we learned things that we couldn’t have learned any other way but we made what are sure will be four lifelong friends.

As Barb and I drove back to New York City, we played the Broadway cast album again. Not just once, but three times. All of us (me, Barb, Nina and Bill) agree that one thing about HAiR is undeniable: the music is timeless. You can listen to it over and over again and it doesn’t become jaded or stale or boring. It remains infectious and exciting no matter how many times you listen to it!

We knew that we were now ready to begin.

LET THE SUN SHINE IN!