Quotes from my version of 'Hair'

I have been interested in the musical 'Hair' recently. It's about a group of hippies living in New York in the '60s and a hippie named Claude agonizing over whether he should join the war or burn his draft card. The script is very loose, changes often, and most of the show is songs. It is definitely not school safe. The show praises the use of drugs, has a character have a very vivid hallucinogen trip, uses racial slurs, has cast members urinate on the American flag, has the cast emerge nude, mocks organized religion and criticizes the American Government. The song 'Sodomy' praises many sexual actions (a school production censored it humorously). I decided to make it more school safe. I set it in the modern day, cut the nudity, toned down the drug use, rewrote some of the songs, made different people sing different things in some cases, and gave alternatives to potentially racy lyrics/phrases. I was pretty unfamiliar with the actual script at the time so I pretty much wrote it from the ground-up. Because I don't want to format it for Mibba, I'm going to put some the explicit version of my favorite quotes from my version of the script in a blog. If you are interested in reading the full version, there is a badly-formated version here and a playlist of the songs here. If you listen to the playlist, it would be good to look up the lyrics before in case you aren't comfortable with the content (racist slurs, salute of drugs, ect.) Also note that my script has homophobia and transphobia expressed in it.

_____________________________

CLAUDE:

I am Aquarius. They are Aquarius. Destined for greatness or
for madness. This is the youth of our generation, a confused group
like the youth that preceded them. This is nothing new. Growing up
is hard whether you were born in the times of The Summer of Love
or part of the MTV generation. We are Cyper-Aquarians. The losers,
the drop-outs, the liberals, the stoners, the activists, the free-loaders,
the hippies, the 99%. We “clog” the Government buildings either
collecting our meager financial assistance or protesting the bullshit [crap]
we see there. A confused group with so much potential for greatness
but often turned to madness under the flag you salute so much.
So when people say ‘kids these days are fucked’ give
us a thought. We are the fucked screwed generation.
This is who we are, these are our stories.

_____________________________

CLAUDE:

Welcome ladies, gents, and anyone in-between and beyond!
And hello stone age! Have you ever though about how your living
in the digital stone age? Everybody is a part of it nowadays.
The age of texting, downloads, blogging, online dating,
instantaneous communication, inadequate talk-only phones,
laptops, and wi-fi. We have found the to perfect way to
disconnect from society while we connect to everything instantly!

_____________________________

CLAUDE:

Why is it so hard to make the obvious decision?
I want to be a man to my parents but I’m also a pacifist.
War is horrifying to me and I love living with the tribe
but I still want to be a man to them. What do I do?

_____________________________

CLAUDE:

Well, I did it. I moved from the comfort of home to the streets.

HUD:

Sweet man. What happened?

CLAUDE:

Well, basically my parents kept on yelling at me to be a girl
and join the army. I got mad and started packing.
Mom hated that I was going to live on the streets
and dad said why lot let me live in Hell?

BERGER:

They’re jealous of our homelessness.

_____________________________

BERGER:

America has died! Liberal America and hippiedum has died!
The simplest solution is never the answer, repeat the simplest solution
is never the answer! Time heals wounds, education is the key! War, war!
Murphy’s law! Murphy’s law! War, war, war is wrong! Respect the
soldiers not the war! It’s up to us to male a new America! Love, drop-out, be-in!
Beads, flowers, freedom, happiness! Beads, flowers, freedom, happiness!

_____________________________

CLAUDE:

Sometimes I want to be invisible. It would be easier. No pain,
no fear, and this awful world couldn’t touch me
because no one would know I exist.
I fucking hate the world.

_____________________________

CLAUDE:

I’m invisible. One of a million faces in uniform.
And if I get back alive then I become a man to my parents.
I’m sorry guys. They got me. Like it or not, they got me.
September 2nd, 2012 at 05:56am