Back to his roots
Ken Gargaro lets the sun shine in for his directorial return with the musical ‘Hair’
Ken Gargaro admits it’s a little weird directing a show in a theater that bears his name.
“I still have trouble saying it out loud,” said the founder of Pittsburgh Musical Theater, which started as Gargaro Productions 29 years ago.
He has returned after a two-year absence from directing of any kind to take on “Hair,” the “American Tribal Love Rock Musical” that debuted off-Broadway in 1967, went to Broadway the following year and stayed there until 1972 — six months before the end of the Vietnam War draft that is a central theme in the musical.
It was a show of its time: The Civil Rights Act was just 3 years old, and the Black Power Movement was even younger, and songs such as “White Boys” and “Black Boys” could still shock.
Women went braless to demand equal rights, men burned their draft cards as an anti-war protest, and LBGTQ+ people were closeted or shunned.
People young and old experimented with Eastern religions, “psychedelic” and “groovy” were jargon staples, and hippies grew their hair “shoulder length or longer” to signal their anti-establishment leanings.
The generation gap? It was wider than the 240,000 miles traversed to land a man on the moon.
And into this mix, on a wave of pop hits, rode “Hair.”
“Good Morning Starshine,” “Aquarius,” “Easy to Be Hard,” “Hare Krishna” and the title song were just a few that made it onto radio. The cast album topped the Billboard 200 charts for 13 weeks in 1969.
Speaking of generation gaps
Mr. Gargaro, 71, has been fully retired since leaving as head of the Robert Morris University theater department two years ago. When he was asked to return to PMT, the time was right.
“I was starting to feel like it might be fun again,” he says, in his natural habitat, a rehearsal room. It is empty for now, but there was music in it moments ago — Mr. Gargaro was playing the trumpet, his instrument of choice when he studied music at the University of Pittsburgh, Class of ’79.
“After 50 years of doing this, I do love a lot about it,” he says. “But I needed a break.”
“Hair,” which he has directed twice before, seemed as good a place to return to as any. But when he told his wife, Jane, her response was: “Why ‘Hair’?”
So Mr. Gargaro made it his mission to answer her question.
He decided to explore if the show was truly as dated as it might seem. “I started doing my research, and I began to realize, oh, let’s see, the roots of Earth Day are there. The roots of the #MeToo movement. The roots of Black Lives Matter. …”
He began saving current articles from The Washington Post, The New York Times and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that he believed to be “resonant to the fundamental notes that were struck from 1968 to ’71.”
It wasn’t long before he had amassed more than 50 articles and decided to stop.
“Every day, there was something that was reflective of the era,” he said.
Then the world shifted. The president of the United States had a top Iranian general killed, and the word “war” was not far from everyone’s minds.
Mr. Gargaro had initial reservations about how 2020 audiences would view the dilemma of a particular character, Claude, who is deciding whether to resist being drafted into the Vietnam War or accept his fate as his conservative parents believe he must.
“Is he going to go, or is he going to burn his draft card, as his friends have done? I thought that was a weak link, because there is no draft now,” Mr. Gargaro says. “But now, well, things have changed.”
Would you have been drafted?
The cast has an average age of 21 — Anthony Marino is the youngest at 19. They did a sobering exercise where they looked at birthdays being called at certain times in the draft and realized who would be called if there was a draft now.
The director told the actors stories of how he and three friends who were of age would listen for draft news on the radio.
“You listened to the radio?” one of the actors asked.
They all laughed, but another cast member recommended a podcast about waiting for draft numbers to be called.
“So now they could really relate to the story,” Mr. Gargaro says.
He has added a framing device to the story. To the inevitable question about nudity before intermission, he says he and the cast have decided against it, but at the time, he had not resolved how the scene would play out.
One of the less obvious themes that strikes a chord with the director is “the spiritual journey for transcendence” of young people finding their way in the world.
“Many people thought the show was blasphemous,” he explains, “but it was a rejection of institutionalized religion and a search for transcendence in a different way. And even the impression that it may be unpatriotic is actually their brand of patriotism.”
And then there are the songs that have been woven into the fabric of pop music.
“To this day, the music kicks butt,” Mr. Gargaro says. “They captured a feeling — that joyous nature of being young and thinking you are invincible.”
He sometimes feels 30 years younger when he’s in rehearsals, partly because of the cast and partly because of the creative team he has assembled.
He is working with Steve Wilson, who most recently directed “Much Ado About Nothing” at Point Park University. Back in eighth grade, Mr. Wilson was a student of Mr. Gargaro’s. Now he is a sort of youth liaison.
That theater name
As for his return to Pittsburgh Musical Theater and that plaque bears his name, “It’s very weird,” he admits.
More importantly, the company he founded has established itself in the West End while meeting the challenges of maintaining a foothold in a very robust theater city.
His successor, Colleen Doyno, “has done a great job of bringing our mission to the attention of politicians — much better than I ever did. I’m really impressed with that,” he says.
He thinks he has an answer now to “Why ‘Hair’?” — and why here — and why now.
“I took the project because I wanted to have some sort of impact,” he says finally. “And I thought this is a show that could catch on if the timing is right, and I think it is.”