Poster for the Broadway musical Hair
date: label: date made
content: 1968
name: label: depicted (sitter)
content: Curry, Steven
label: designer
content: Ruspoli-Rodriguez
label: producer
content: Natoma Productions
notes: label: Description (Brief)
content: Poster for the original Broadway production of the musical Hair at the Biltmore Theater. The poster is printed with a photo illustration of a man's face, reflected on top and bottom of poster, top in blue (faded from original green) and bottom in red. The title of the play is printed in capital letters in white at the top of the poster, with information about the cast and theater printed in black at the bottom. The man in the photograph is Steve Curry, who portrayed the character Woof in the original Broadway production. His wild, untamed hair, the bright solarized colors, and psychedelic design of the poster represent Hair's provocative countercultural challenge to Broadway conventions.
label: Description (Brief)
content: This poster was created to promote the 1968 original Broadway production of the musical Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical, one of the most groundbreaking and influential works of musical theater of the 20th century. The rock musical, with book and lyrics by Gerome Ragni and James Rado and musical composition by Galt MacDermot, engaged with contemporary events and social change through the lens of American youth culture. The play openly discussed controversial issues including the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, the sexual revolution, and hippie counterculture. This politically, socially, and culturally conscious musical generated controversy itself, breaking new ground for Broadway with its nudity, depiction of illegal drug use, irreverence for the American flag, profanity, avant-garde score, story structure, racially-integrated cast and invitation for the audience to join the cast on stage for a “Be-In” finale. Hair influenced a new generation of composers, lyricists, writers, and performers who created hip, socially-aware, contemporary “rock musicals” in the coming decades.
label: Description (Brief)
content: Hair premiered off-Broadway at the new Public Theater in New York’s East Village on October 17, 1967 for a six week limited engagement. Despite lackluster critical reviews, the show was a popular success, and producer Michael Butler and director Tom O’Horgan spearheaded an overhaul to prepare the show for a Broadway run. The plot and characters were tweaked and thirteen new songs were added, including “Let the Sun Shine In,” which would become a major hit for The 5th Dimension in 1969 when combined with the show’s “Aquarius.” O’Horgan’s "organic, expansive style of staging" and improvisational, spontaneous, sensual direction helped the show capture the style and spirit of the era’s youth counterculture, perhaps best represented in the show’s new and immediately infamous nude scene, involving the entire cast, at the end of Act I. Hair opened on Broadway at the Biltmore Theatre on April 29, 1968, where it ran for 1,750 performances, closing on July 1, 1972. The show earned mixed critical reviews but was a popular success, and has become a standard for college and regional theater productions. Hair was adapted as a 1979 feature film, directed by Milos Forman, and has been revived on Broadway several times.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United States: New York, New York City
topic: label: associated subject
content: Theater
setName: label: See more items in
content: Culture and the Arts: Entertainment
label: See more items in
content: Popular Entertainment
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 2023.0152.01
label: accession number
content: 2023.0152
label: catalog number
content: 2023.0152.01
objectType: label: Object Name
content: poster
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: paper (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: ink (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 41 1/2 in x 27 in; 105.41 cm x 68.58 cm