Talk about a makeover. Just over one year ago, Diane Paulus was merely a freelance director with a hit on her hands. Now, that hit - Hair - is a Tony Award winning musical, and she a Tony-nominated director, not to mention also being the newly appointed Artistic Director of one of the most prestigious regional theaters in the country (A.R.T. in Boston). Paulus will soon be triple-tasking on productions on Broadway, in London, and at A.R.T. - all in between raising two young children.
Last November, BroadwayWorld spoke with Diane for the first time about her transition from being an internationally respected freelance director to being the new gal on campus at A.R.T. With Hair running smoothly on Broadway and still high on her Tony success, the multi-tasker was focused on launching her first series at A.R.T., Shakespeare Exploded!, consisting of three productions inspired by Shakespeare plays: The Donkey Show (based on A Midsummer Night's Dream), Sleep No More (Macbeth), and Best of Both Worlds (A Winter's Tale).
Not to be stymied by inertia, Paulus is on the move again, and she is about to get a whole lot busier. As previously announced, Hair will be opening in the West End on April 14 at the Gielgud Theatre, with most of the original Broadway cast. A new Tribe will be coming to Broadway on March 9, with rehearsals beginning this week. And then there is Johnny Baseball: The Red Sox Musical that Paulus will be directing for May 14 opening at A.R.T.
But right now, it is all about Hair, Hair, Hair. Having recently completed a massive non-equity open casting call for the new Tribe (yes, she will be pulling from that pool of 1000 - nearly half of the original Tribe came from a similar crowd of aspiring hopefuls), and rehearsals to begin tomorrow, Hair is very much on her brain. In this Part II of the interview series, Diane gives her take on how Hair became HAIR (who among us recalls the endless Zabar's breakfasts at 6:00am on picnic blankets in the park waiting in line for tickets?), and how she is keeping everything organized.
Let's start at the beginning. How did you get attached to Hair? Why was it so important for you to take this job?
It was 2007. I was called by the Public Theater and they said "You know it's going to be the 40th anniversary [of Hair's inception], and we're thinking about bringing it back. Would you be interested in directing?" Hair originated at The Public in 1967. And I, now famously, almost dropped the telephone because I am a Hair fanatic. And I said right away "Oh, you don't understand, Hair is my favorite musical of all time." I knew the music and I loved the score and I grew up on the album.
So clearly taking the job was a no-brainer for you.
Well, that's how the conversation began. I had seen the movie in 1979, but I had never seen a stage version of Hair before, and I wasn't actually informed on what the theatrical version of it was. So I asked the Public to send me the script so I could get acquainted with it. The proposal on the table originally was to do a concert version of Hair in the park in September of 2007. But I knew that if we were going to do Hair, even in concert form, there had to be certain things. So I laid my requests on the table pretty clearly, like if we're going to do Hair, we have to have the right people in it. It can't be just sort of rolling out your Broadway regulars to sing the music from Hair and there's your concert. I knew it had to feel authentic and you have to have people singing that material who were "the Tribe." So we agreed upon an extensive casting process for that concert. I also felt it had to be costumed, that it couldn't be people kind of showing up to do the concert in their fancy leather pants and all the wrong clothes because so much of Hair is about who these people are and what they look like. And what their hair looks like!
What kind of "extensive casting process" did you employ, exactly?
Normally when you do a concert, you think okay, it's not a production so maybe you look at the pool of "regulars" who frequently participate in concerts like this and make offers. I knew that for this concert, we had to have a comprehensive casting process. Which meant a non-Equity open call, auditions that went on for weeks, searching to find the right Tribe to put in that concert. So it was a comprehensive search for the right people, as is done with a full production. About half of the Tribe we found from that non-equity call. And 23 of those 26 cast members went onto Broadway. All of those actors were singers and dancers. That effort really carried through to the production the following summer, and then onwards to Broadway. It was cast very particularly.
