Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical is a rock musical with a book and lyrics by Gerome Ragni and James Rado and music by Galt MacDermot. The work reflects the creators' observations of the hippie counterculture and sexual revolution of the late 1960s, and several of its songs became anthems of the anti-Vietnam War peace movement. The musical's profanity, its depiction of the use of illegal drugs, its treatment of sexuality, its irreverence for the American flag, and its nude scene caused much comment and controversy. The work broke new ground in musical theatre by defining the genre of "rock musical", using a racially integrated cast, and inviting the audience onstage for a "Be-In" finale.
Robert Edwin Lee was an American playwright and lyricist. With his writing partner, Jerome Lawrence, Lee worked for Armed Forces Radio during World War II; Lawrence and Lee became the most prolific writing partnership in radio, with such long-running series as Favorite Story among others.
William Alan Finn is an American composer and lyricist. He is best known for his musicals, which include Falsettos, for which he won the 1992 Tony Awards for Best Original Score and Best Book of a Musical, A New Brain (1998), and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (2005).
James Alexander Radomski, known professionally as James Rado, was an American actor, playwright, director, and composer, best known as the co-author, along with Gerome Ragni, of the 1967 musical Hair. He and Ragni were nominated for the 1969 Tony Award for best musical, and they won for best musical at the 11th Annual Grammy Awards.
Gerome Ragni was an American actor, singer, and songwriter, best known as one of the stars and co-writers of the 1967 musical Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical. On June 18, 2009, he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
Arthur Terence Galt MacDermot was a Canadian-American composer, pianist and writer of musical theater. He won a Grammy Award for the song "African Waltz" in 1960. His most-successful musicals were Hair and Two Gentlemen of Verona (1971). MacDermot also composed music for film soundtracks, jazz and funk albums, and classical music, and his music has been sampled in hit hip-hop songs and albums. He is best known for his work on Hair, which produced three number-one singles in 1969: "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In", "Good Morning Starshine", and the title song "Hair".
Robert Sanford Brustein is an American theatrical critic, producer, playwright, writer, and educator. He founded both the Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut, and the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he remains a creative consultant, and was the theatre critic for The New Republic. He comments on politics for the HuffPost.
Benjamin Rush "Rusty" Magee was an accomplished comedian, actor and composer/lyricist for theatre, television, film and commercials.
Rinne Groff is an American playwright and performer.
Manu Narayan is an American actor, film producer, singer, songwriter, composer and saxophonist. He served as a Trustee of Carnegie Mellon University, his alma mater, from 2013-2016.
Rick Shiomi is an internationally recognized, award-winning Japanese Canadian playwright, stage director, artistic director and taiko artist, and a major player in the Asian American/Canadian theatre movement. He is best known for his groundbreaking play Yellow Fever, which earned him the Bay Area Theater Circle Critics Award and “Bernie” Award. Over the last couple decades, Shiomi has also become a notable artistic and stage director. He directed the world premiere of the play Caught by Christopher Chen for which he received the Philadelphia Barrymore Award Nomination for Outstanding Direction. He is currently the Co-Artistic Director of Full Circle Theater Company.
John Michael Friedman was an American composer and lyricist. He was a Founding Associate Artist of theater company The Civilians.
Chad Henry is an American composer, actor, lyricist, playwright, and author. He has written over twenty musical theatre titles that premiere in his home state, Washington. He has long been associated with director/producer Linda Hartzell, artistic director of Seattle Children's Theatre, and with the late John Kauffman, director of many early Empty Space Theatre and Seattle Repertory Theatre works.
Norman L. Berman is an American theater composer and playwright.
Sybille Pearson is a playwright, musical theatre lyricist and librettist.
Goddess Wheel is a musical adaptation of Lysistrata by Aristophanes. The show contains music by Hair composer Galt MacDermot and lyrics/book by Matty Selman. The first presentations of the musical starred Tony Award winner Cherry Jones at Harvard's American Repertory Theater and Prince Music Theater in Philadelphia. In 2005, Collaborative Arts Project 21 (CAP21) further developed the musical and presented it from November 30–December 10.
Jean-Claude van Itallie was a Belgian-born American playwright, performer, and theatre workshop teacher. He is best known for his 1966 anti-Vietnam War play America Hurrah;The Serpent, an ensemble play he wrote with Joseph Chaikin's Open Theatre; his theatrical adaptation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead; and his translations of Anton Chekhov's plays.
Lee Summers is an American theatre, television and film actor, singer, librettist, composer, director and theatre producer best known for creating and producing Off-Broadway's From My Hometown. As a director, Summers is a two-time winner of both the 2022 and 2018 Audelco Awards for 'Best Director of a Musical' for "Ella, First Lady of Song" and for "On Kentucky Avenue," respectively. As an actor, Summers made his Broadway debut in the original production of Dreamgirls. His one-person show Winds of Change would garner him the 2010 Bistro Award for "Most Outstanding Entertainer." In 2018 he was nominated for an Audelco Award for 'Best Featured Actor in a Musical,' for "On Kentucky Avenue." Summers has appeared in numerous TV/Film roles, such as Core FOI in Malcolm X, a neurosurgeon on Law & Order; a turn-of-the-century cook on Boardwalk Empire, and as a Police Sergeant, opposite Tom Selleck on Blue Bloods.
Dave Malloy is an American composer, playwright, lyricist, and actor. He has written several theatrical works, often based on classic works of literature. They include Moby-Dick, an adaptation of Herman Melville's classic novel; Octet, a chamber choir musical about internet addiction; Preludes, a musical fantasia set in the mind of romantic composer Sergei Rachmaninoff; Ghost Quartet, a song cycle about love, death, and whiskey; and the Tony Award winning Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812, an electropop opera based on War and Peace.
Ran Avni is the founder of the Jewish Repertory Theatre (JRT) and was its artistic director from 1974 till 2004. JRT specialized in Jewish related plays in English and grew over its 30-year history to become a major theatrical institution in New York City. His vision for the company was to produce material "about Jewishness, about roots, about their value, their loss, the search for roots, the distaste of roots, the joy of roots". JRT produced original works by renowned playwrights such as Arthur Miller, Arthur Laurents, and Galt MacDermot, and presented rare revivals by the likes of Jerry Herman, David Mamet, Ira Levin and many more. As important as the theater's role in developing and presenting plays by new playwrights and was its role in launching the careers of actors, directors and designers. The theater was privileged to work with stars like Dianne Wiest and F. Murray Abraham as well as numerous prominent New York theater actors. Mr. Avni also directed many of the theater's productions, plays among them 'Up From Paradise', 'The Grand Tour', and 'Kumi Leml', for which he received the Outer Critics' Circle Award and was cited in the 1984-85 "Best Plays" publication as best director of a musical Off or On Broadway. He directed the Broadway production of 'Yiddle with a Fiddle', an English adaptation of the Yiddish classic. Many of the more than 120 productions the theater presented over the years have moved into commercial venues in New York and nationally.
