Creation of the Tribe HAIR: the American Love- Rock Musical By
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Creation of the Tribe HAIR: The American Love- Rock Musical By Adalia Vera Tonneyck B.F.A in Fibers, August 2008, Savannah College of Art and Design A Thesis submitted to The Faculty of Columbian College of Arts and Sciences Of The George Washington University In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Masters of Fine Art May 20, 2012 Thesis directed by Sigridur Johnannesdottir Associate Professor of Theatre Table of Contents List of Figures [Renderings] iii List of Figures [Production Photos] iv Chapter 1: [Introduction] 1-2 Chapter2: [The Vietnam War] 3-7 Chapter 3: [The Hippie Culture of America] 8-11 Chapter 4: [HAIR an American Love-Rock Musical] 12- 16 Chapter 5: [The Director´s Vision] 17-19 Chapter 6: [THE HAIR IN HAIR] 20-25 Chapter 7: [Bring the Vision to Life Through Costumes] 26-47 Chapter 8: [Conclusion] 48 Figures [Renderings] 49-62 Figures [Production Photos] 63-75 References 76-96 Documents [Pieces list] 97-100 Bibliography 101-102 ii Renderings Figure 1 [Berger] 50 Figure 2 [Claude] 51 Figure 3 [Hud] 52 Figure 4 [Sheila] 53 Figure 5 [JEAINE] 54 Figure 6 [Woof] 55 Figure 7 [Crissy] 56 Figure 8 [The Tribe] 57 Figure 9 [The Tribe] 58 Figure 10 [Margaret Mead] 59 Figure 11 [Hubert] 60 Figure 12[The Supremes] 61 Figure 13 [White Girl Trio] 62 iii Production Photos Figure 1 [Woof] 64 Figure 2 [Hud] 65 Figure 3 [The Supremes] 66 Figure 4 [Margaret Mead] 67 Figure 5[White Girl trio] 68 Figure 6[Dream] 69 Figure 7[Claude] 70 Figure 8[Berger] 71 Figure 9[Sheila] 72 Figure 10[Tribe] 73 Figure 11[Berger, Claude and Sheila] 74 Figure 12[Claude is died] 75 iv Chapter 1: Introduction All my fellow production design graduate students and myself were given our thesis assignments April 2011 at the end of GWU academic year. I was very happy and excited to get the musical because I had never designed a musical and for a cast of this size. This would be a wonderful challenge. I was also specifically very happy to do this show. I couldn’t wait to tell my dad and aunt about the show because they were hippies in New York at the time. This made the show real to me. It was about their lives at the time. I had also seen the show four or five years earlier performed by the Public Theater in Central Park. I saw the production with my aunt and she left the theater crying. I knew this was a very special topic and show to her. The major problem I did face after the show was assigned to me was I had no costume advisor. Both of the costume faculty members were leaving for different reasons. I would be starting my thesis process over the summer, researching and gathering ideas with no mentor to check in with me and see if I was going in the right direction. Also, the director of the show had not been picked yet, and there wasn’t any sign of who it would be. This was going to be difficult without the director’s vision of the piece and no advisor to help with images and looks of the time. I decided that I just had to start. I went to the library and to looked through books from the 1950s and 1960s and I ordered many books online. I looked at the political situation of the period and what kind of clothing people wore and what was in fashions. When school started in September, the department had hired a new costume professor as a visiting professor for the year. She would be the thesis advisor I was hoping for. I was ready to show her all the research I had compiled and see what she thought and what I should do next. 1 The next big event would be to meet our director, Roberta Gasbarre at the first production meeting in October and see where she would go with this iconic musical. The only thing that I heard about her before this meeting was that she was very active during the 60’s and that she still was a hippie in many ways. We all met for the production meeting and I could tell that everyone in the room was very excited to be working on this show, especially the director. One of the many ideas that she wanted to focus on was the anti war protesting movement. I showed her all the images that I had already put together and she liked a lot of it. Her main suggestion to everyone was that she did not want any neon colors. After this meeting I felt that I had to fully understand what the hippies were fighting for. Why the youth of America had chosen to leave their parents homes and start protesting the war? I needed to look into the Vietnam War and understand what was happening there and in the United States. 2 Chapter 2: The Vietnam War “Whether the preservation of South Vietnam was worth the actions of the United States and the human and financial costs such actions uncured is but one of many questions concerning the Vietnam War that is till debated”.1 This was one of the biggest wars in American history and was greatly protested at home. Many people still truly believe that the States should never have gone there. So many lives were lost for nothing. Many American lives were lost in this war as well as many Vietnamese. This was a very difficult war for the soldiers more than ever before, because of two main reasons. First; the way it was fought by both sides. Secondly; the unwelcoming home coming the soldiers received when they came back home. Kenneth Keniston is quoted saying “the issue of violence is to this generation what the issue of sex was to the Victorian world” 2that as a society it needed to be addressed. In order to understand this very controversial war I needed to take a look at when this war began and when the United States decided to get involved. To start, first need to go back to the end of War World II. We as Americans were a part of the Allied forces that were fighting on two fronts, one in Europe and one in Japan. After the Allies had defeated Nazi Germany and Hitler the war in Europe was over. Then the Allies focused all their resources in Japan. After sometime and moving from island to island it seemed that the war wouldn’t end. Americans used a new weapon on Japan, the Atom bomb (called the A bomb). 1.The Vietnam War: Opposing Viewpoints. (San Diego, California. Greenhaven Press, 1998)152. 2.Gitlin, Todd. The Sixties years of Hope, Days of Rage. (New York. A Bantam1 Book, 1987) 316 3 The A bomb was a terrible weapon. It wiped out anything in its path. Only after the United States dropped the second a bomb on Japan did the Japanese surrender. That is the day the war came to an end in 1945. On that same day in September in the country of Vietnam the people had found a new hope and that their own freedom was possible as they watched the Allies defeat the Japanese. The Japanese had been occupying Vietnam during the war. The French had been in the country as colonial rulers from the early 1800’s. The Vietnamese felt that it was time for their country to finally be free. When the World War II ended a man named Ho Chi Minh a Communist leader in Vietnam addressed a large gathering of his countrymen. He declared independence of his nation, and even quoted the United States’ Declaration of Independence: “We hold truth that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”3 Ho Chi Minh said on this day that he looked at The United States as his ally. Fighting broke out between the French and Vietnamese nationalists. The French were trying to hold on to their colonial presence in the country. Ho Chi Minh was determined to have full independence from them. However, Americans claimed they didn’t really have involvement, their belief was: “the right of all people to choose the form of government under which they live”4 But by 1954 the U.S. government had already given over 2 billion dollars to support the French war effort. Also they had started to send military advisers. 3.The Vietnam War: Opposing Viewpoints. (San Diego, California. Greenhaven Press, 1998), 15 4. Ibid.,30 4 However, it became more apparent after World War II that the Cold War had started. Many people believed this to be a real threat since other countries started to develop their own nuclear weapons. This war was fought over the ideologies of Democracy and Communism. The conflict between US and Britain on one side and China and USSR on the other grew clearer resulting in the cold war. In 1954 all the countries involved in the Vietnam war met in Geneva to create a military demarcation line, it became known as the 17 parallel, having communism in the north and non- communist in the south. They created elections to take place in 1956 to unite the country. When the election came around Diem, the Americans supported candidate that had lost power and the likeability of his people.