Being the second night of auditions, director Reed Brown felt optimistic and is excited for the Cerritos community to come see the musical.
Last Wednesday marked the 30th anniversary of the first time the Cerritos Theatre department hosted the musical, Hair.
Hair is a historic rock musical, which premiered in 1968 and is based on the political changes during the 60s, drugs and sexuality. Other issues the play confronts are race and freedom of speech.
There’s a few topics in Hair that are relatable to some of the issues going on today that people deal with on a daily basis.
“I thought it was interesting that in 2015 that it was still relevant that with everything that’s going on in Ferguson, Missouri, the political strive from the streets that after all these years, we are still faced with race riots, armed police, a lot of the strive that was happening in the 60s. You’d think we would’ve resolved and we haven’t,” Brown said.
Ivan Oyarzabal, theatre and communications major, said, “I think there’s a lot of relatable themes that Hair has that talk about the current political temperature, especially with all these talks of a particular involvement in the Middle East.
“This talks about a group of unconventional friends that are trying to protest the war in Vietnam. So in a sense this kind of reflects the current political temperature that we have here in, I guess I would say, liberal America.”
Besides the relatable topics, Hair will also be full of top 40 hits and music that everyone knows and has heard of, for example, “Age of Aquarius,” by The 5th Dimension.
Most of the students were open minded to any role and didn’t really care what part they’d get as long as they get to be part of the play.
And for others, the audition for this play was a chance for them to challenge themselves as actors.
Theatre major Jorge Folgar said, “I think musicals are the hardest for me, so I just decided ‘You know what? Do the hardest thing you can and we’ll see how it goes’[…] if you’re even slightly interested in doing any kind of theatre, try out for it, it’s actually a lot of fun and you make a lot of friends who are like family.”
Hair seems to be a very different but yet a very relatable musical. Brown hopes the audience comes to see the performance with curiosity and open minds.
“It spills off the stage, I’ll leave it at that. It comes out at you quite a bit,” Brown said.
Natasha Lopez, theatre arts major who’s also currently in Trojan Women adds, “I think the audience will really like it. I saw the movie when I was a kid and I thought it was really catchy, so I think they’ll like it. It’s a fun musical, all the songs are really good […] go see the show.”
Hair performance dates will start in May (see bottom of page for more details).
