Vintage Corner: Lessons from the late ’60s

By Jamie Dandreta

Posted on Feb. 08, 2010, at 1:57 a.m.

All my life I have known one thing — I was born into the wrong generation. I have always had a strong fascination with the ’40s and ’50s. I started listening to Sinatra and watching Marilyn Monroe movies when I was 12 years old. But nothing has ever, or will ever, pique my interest more than the late ’60s — in this case, 1968, the summer of love.

The late ’60s were a combination of fads, protests, war, music, drugs, sex, peace, hair and love all blended together. The hippie movement was at its prime and the longer their hair got and the bigger their beads were, the angrier it made their conservative parents and neighbors.

For the past few months, I have been given an opportunity of a lifetime — to place myself in the shoes (or moccasins) of a hippie. Being part of the cast of “Hair” has not only been a lot of fun, it has opened my eyes to a world I have never seen before.

When I used to think of the words “peace” and “love,” I would think of the corny accessories that a 13-year-old would buy at Claire’s — peace signs and hearts plastered on nail polish bottles and makeup cases. Now it is clear to me how underestimated those words are.

When I first was cast in “Hair,” I knew it was going to be a huge challenge to portray a hippie in a realistic, nonstereotypical way. When we first started rehearsing, we felt uncomfortable and everything we did seemed so unnatural. Not everyone knew each other and we were asked to come together and feel love for one another. I don’t know when it happened, but one day we all let down our guards, stopped being afraid of touching each other and being touched, and suddenly the cast was transformed into a family or tribe.

We slowly started to form relationships within the tribe. Everyone in the cast gave themselves a tribal name and a full background story that went along with it. To begin my hippie transformation, I gave myself the name “Jewel,” and at each rehearsal I played around and experimented with the different characteristics my character could have. I soon discovered my place in the tribe — a young high-school dropout whose religious parents betrayed me as soon as I left them for chasing my dream of becoming a famous singer-songwriter in New York City.

As time passed, the words we sang became more meaningful. Because the play was written in the late ’60s, the lyrics are genuine. They were written with hope and true passion. The lyrics express the writers’ honest beliefs that we could all put our differences aside and just “let the sun shine in.”

Being in “Hair” has been an escape from a reality I don’t want to return to. I have been living in a dream world, where everyone I am surrounded by loves and is loved. I have been surrounded by people who don’t care for one second what people think of them. I have been surrounded by true believers of peace who think that if they “yip” up to the sun enough, all bad vibrations will disappear.

When I leave the stage, I enter a world that is self-centered and fast-paced, a world filled with so much hatred and fear. What people today often forget is, even with all of this hatred we are surrounded by, we still have the ability to believe in love.

When I am onstage, everything is different. When the lights shine above us and the audience enters, we will sit as a tribe. A tribe that loves and understands each other. A tribe that has not, and will not, give up on peace.

“Life is around you and in you. Answer for Timothy Leary, deary.”

- From “The Flesh Failures/Let the Sun Shine In”

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