Staged!’s second annual S! Conservatory Alumni Production opens HAIR at the Brunish Theatre inside the Portland Center for the Performing Arts (1111 SW Broadway, Portland, OR 97205)- a one of a kind production that gives a directing opportunity to a young and upcoming artist to work with professional mentors in theatre and to learn what it takes to direct a full length musical. Katie McLoughlin is an alumnus from the S! Conservatory program and the young woman directing this professional show starring S! Conservatory Alumni and professional actors in town. HAIR: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical follows a group of “hippies” as they question what is means to be the youth of America.  

“The 1960s was a vast era and this show highlights the questions looming over the youth of America- how does one revolt against a system when the revolutionary idea is peace? When wanting to abstain from violence and be who you are is against the status quo, what are you left with? Denying your own identity and morals to join your own society? Or try to change the world, knowing full well that change comes slow, and you are more likely to face the consequences than see the rewards of change?” said Katie McLoughlin, director of the HAIR. “Though so much of the 1968 production is specific to its era, this sentiment is not. Young people today are facing new cultural shifts and struggles, and how to effectively rebel against the injustices we see in our society are not clear- how to help ourselves, and each other, when parts of our identities- as natural to us as the hair on our heads- are criminalized, banned, rejected, and controlled, from the color of our skin, to our sexual identity, to our gender, to the soil upon which we were born.”  

 It is too easy to look at a production of HAIR and only see its history from 50 years ago. But looking deeper, we see the struggles are not over, and neither is the revolution- and our artistic youth at Staged!, don’t plan to let that be invisible. At Staged!, we grow artists. And we also grow game changers.