Wavestage set to make first splash with “Hair”

July 10, 2013 · 0 Comments

By Brock Weir

Standing on a relaxing beach watching the waves come in and out, Aurora’s Sarah Kyle was struck with an idea.

Ms. Kyle, the long-time director of the Aurora Performing Arts Group, has seen her troupe grow and evolve over the years to something far beyond simply a local theatre company. Casting calls bring aspiring actors in from far and wide, they come in to better their craft, or learn different and out-of-the-ordinary aspects of the theatre world, and when they move on, they leave a sea of change in their wake.

“I realised these waves is what being an actor is all about,” says Ms. Kyle. “If you give a fabulous performance, there is an energy transference, and the audience member goes home changed and they create waves in their lives. Our actors go onto other experiences, they are creating waves out there and I all of asudden thought that was a better name for what we’re doing.”

The Aurora Performing Arts Group is now a thing of the past. Enter “Wavestage”, a new spin on an old theatre stalwart.

Since the company’s inception, Ms. Kyle says they have toured across Ontario, in other provinces, and down into the United States and their shows are now representing Aurora on a wider stage. From her perspective, this makes them more of a Regional and Provincial theatrical company.

“We realised we weren’t just a local community theatre,” she says. “Our expectations for our actors were high and we were being recognized in the country as a really quality professional experience. I have found some [of our alumni] are directing, many are performing professionally, and I felt our company is working really hard to connect with today’s generation.”

In connecting with today’s generation, Wavestage plans on opening up their new season this month re-connecting today’s generation with the harbingers of change of a previous generation with Hair, the iconic hippie musical of the 1960s.

“Hair is a show that almost makes an assault on many things,” she says. “It satirizes just about everything from discrimination to pollution, to repression and a whole variety of societal evils. I thought we would go out there in a big wave.”

With this big wave, they’re also making a big splash, bringing up the curtain for the first time at the large Richmond Hill Centre for the Performing Arts.

While Hair made its first waves on the Broadway stage in the last year or two of the 1960s, before becoming a feature film a decade later, and experiencing various revivals during its lifetime, Ms. Kyle believes its message is “hugely relevant” now more than ever. It speaks, she says to a year of violence the world has experienced in situations such as the Boston Marathon bombings, and school shootings in places such as Newtown, Connecticut. It asks all the questions that should be asked, and should still be asked today, such as the deployment of American soldiers around the world.

“Why can’t we talk openly about sex, and why are some words dirty while other words that meant the same thing are acceptable,” she says of some of the challenges that are thrown out there to the audience through the musical. “Why are there so many offensive words for black people and hardly any for white people? Why are so many straight people interested in what gay people do in private? Is it right to protest and refuse to follow laws which are unjust?

“These are the relevant questions Hair provokes in a wonderful way and one of the ways I like it is because it expresses the power in a young person’s voice.”

The big questions Hair asks about society is not, Ms. Kyle admits, the first thing people think of when they hear “Hair” or any of its songs. The big question people often have is the on-stage nudity. It seems funny, she says, that that is the often the first question out of people’s mouths, considering the violence in video games, as well as in movies and television.

“A 10 second non-sexual clip of nudity that is dimly backlit in a peaceful protest is considered a worse thing,” she says. “I think there is something wrong with that.”

Ms. Kyle says she left it up to her actors whether they wanted to shed their clothes, some didn’t, some did, and there will be some on stage.

“In the play it shows the extreme of what these hippies wanted to do to get their voices heard and how desperate they were,” she explains. “Hair is unbridled energy, it is unwaveringly truthful. It’s fun for the actors and a really great teaching tool. It often breaks down that invisible fourth wall because there is a lot of interaction with the audience.”

For today’s audiences, Ms. Kyle hopes that it gives people the taste that “civic liberty” is a good thing, particularly knowing that the voice of youth remains unique and important.

Wavestage’s production of Hair runs July 25 – 28 at the Richmond Hill Centre for the Performing Arts. Their 19th season continues in November with Hello Dolly, in February with Fiddler on the Roof, and A Little Princess in March. For tickets and further information, visit www.wavestagetheatre.com.