NOTE: This is a treatment
for an interactive theatrical production written in the early '90s.
The audience is waiting outside. The door to the theater is locked and no one can get in.
At five minutes after curtain, the door opens and smoke comes billowing out. Emerging from the smoke is the quintessential hippie, bell bottoms, sandals, tie-died headband, beads, leather vest, and a joint in his hand.
HIPPIE HOST: Hey, far out. You’re here. I got started without you. Sorry, but I know you can catch up. Let’s see, what were we supposed to do? Yeah, the sixties, far out man, let’s go, this is gonna be great. Get out your tickets, man, like you can’t go through the sixties without a ticket. There are numbers on your ticket. Everybody who has a number on your ticket, raise your hand.
Everyone raises their hand except for one guy in a white disco suit.
HIPPIE HOST: Good, because all of the tickets have numbers on them, so like if you’ve got a ticket without a number, you belong somewhere else, like the fifties or, yuuck, the seventies.
The guy in the white disco suit sadly walks off.
HIPPIE HOST: If you have a ticket numbered one through ten, follow me.
Ten people at a time enter the theater. Each group has its own HOST, a new one appearing at the door to replace the old one every ten minutes. Since the audience is broken up into small groups, the cast inside constantly outnumbers the audience. The audience feels themselves lost in a crowd, following the tide of humanity leading them further into the past. There are few choices. Everyone is swept along by events, room to room, experience to experience. There’s little time to linger.
The first room is a standard fifties living room, just like Beaver’s. Everybody sits down in the fluffy furniture covered in plastic. The host turns on the TV. It is a two minute, black and white documentary on the fifties. After the documentary, the host turns off the TV and points around the room.
HIPPIE HOST: So like the fifties was like this, man. It all took place in someone’s living room. There was a father who smoked a pipe. With tobacco, man. And a mom who made pies, and cute kids who got into quaint misadventures. Then something happened at the beginning of the sixties that changed everything. It wasn’t just a new decade, it was a new everything. Let me show you what happened in 1960.
He opens a door and leads everyone into the next room where they are surrounded by scrim screens from floor to ceiling. Films and slides are shown on the scrim, creating the ground floor of the 1960 Democratic Convention. There is a large crowd and everyone is jostled around. John F. Kennedy is nominated as President of the United States. The crowd goes crazy. Balloons and confetti fall from the ceiling. Suddenly, everything freeze-frames, and the Host emerges.
HIPPIE HOST: It was a major change, but it wasn’t the most important thing that happened in 1960. The most important thing that happened in 1960 was the very first commercially available birth control pills.
He pulls out some candy pills and gives them to all the women in the audience.
HIPPIE HOST:
1960 is way, way, way before AIDS, and sex is good. Say it with me. Sex!
is! Good! (He does not stop until he gets everyone to say it) It is an
expression of love and there’s no reason why we can’t all love each other,
is there? In the 60s it was always possible that someone would fuck you,
right then and there, just for fun. Even the Pope didn’t come out against
contraception until 1968, so that gave us all eight years to fuck each
other’s brains out without any consequences. And that we did.
Even the president looked like someone who fucked. I mean we went from
this [Picture of an old decrepit Eisenhower] to this [Picture of a young
vibrant Kennedy]. It was almost as big a change as this [Picture of an
old decrepit Bush] to this [Picture of a young vibrant Clinton].
Except for sex, the new millenium is shaping up like another sixties, which
is why I have personally come back from the sixties to remind you about
what really went on. Nobody can tell you about it, you can’t read it in
a book or see it in a movie. The sixties were an experience. It didn’t
just HAPPEN, it was a HAPPENING, an ongoing thing, an adventure through
mindlessness but with a purpose. It was far out man, but like you had to
be there. That’s why everyone headed for San Francisco during the summer
of love, man, because Haight Ashbury was like something else, which means
it was like absolutely nothing else that has ever existed before or since
anywhere. Look, I know I’m going out of order, but damn it, Haight Ashbury
in 1967 was my favorite part of the sixties, and that’s where I wanna go
next.
He leads the group through the intersection of Haight and Ashbury Street in San Francisco, circa 1967. There is a line up of hippies offering, or seeking, grass, acid, hash, love beads, ankhs, incense, the Berkeley Barb, the Oracle, peace signs, the Free Press, speed, mescaline, peyote buttons, magic mushrooms, all leading to the HIPPIE HOST, offering a tour of “a genuine hippie crash pad.” The audience is led into a psychedelic painted Victorian mansion.
They are taken into a room. The HOST conducts a tour, using flashcards to explain all the words in quotes.
HIPPIE HOST: This is my “pad.” This is where I “crash.” That chick over there in the pile of pillows and the Pocahontas clothes with her breasts exposed is my “squeeze.” We practice “free love” together in a “waterbed.” That’s a “tie-dyed” parachute on the ceiling, and that far out smell is “patchouli” incense. This is my “ax.” I use it to “jam” with friends. This is our “bong.” We use it to smoke “dope” and “get high.” Then we “groove” to some “sounds,” like the “Airplane” or the “Dead.” This bowl over here is where we “stash” the “roaches.” This is a “black light poster.” It looks really far out when we turn off the lights. This is a “lava lamp.” I can stare at it for hours. This is the refrigerator where we can “scarf” some “suds.” Let’s see what’s in here. This is “organic brown rice.” These are “vegetables” because we don’t eat “our animal friends.” These are “hash brownies.” We use them to “get off.”
There’s a knock at the door.
HIPPIE HOST: Shit, it’s the “narcs.” They’re going to “bust” us. Here, everybody, we gotta get rid of the “evidence.” Hurry, finish.
He passes out brownies for everyone to eat while the narcs continue pounding on the door. Everybody gets at least a bite of a brownie. Finally, when everyone is finished, the door flies open. A dozen more hippies fall into the room, going “Hey man, got any dope?”
HIPPIE HOST: Wow, man, what a “bummer.” We just ate it all. Let’s “blow this joint.” (The card reads “get out of here”)
The HIPPIE HOST leads the audience out the door.
HIPPIE HOST: Are you experienced yet?
The audience walks along through hallways that keep getting stranger and stranger. The floor gets rubbery, things come out at them, black lights come on, they start bouncing off the walls.
HIPPIE HOST: Those brownies should be kicking in just about now.
All the lights go out. Thus Spake Zarathustra starts playing. The audience has been led into a planetarium. The stars come out. The ground feels bouncy. The earth rises. The audience realizes it is walking on the moon. A spaceman floats by.
HOST: Look, it’s the first man in space. Let’s have a few words with him.
The spaceman opens his helmet and speaks Russian.
HOST: That’s right, the first man in space was Yuri Gagarin, a Russian. Americans tend to think of John Glenn as the first man in orbit, not just the first American in orbit, as though it made any difference which country the first man in space came from. Americans think it’s bad to be sexist or racist, but they somehow think it’s fine to be nationalist. Our country, right or wrong, is the same thing as our sex or our skin color, right or wrong. What we thought in the sixties was that anything ending with an “ist” was wrong. We were all brothers sharing in this great big beautiful planet, which you could see really well from space. In any case, here are the real first men in space.
A flying saucer brings in Timothy Leary, Alan Ginsberg, Baba Ram Das, and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi who discuss the nature of reality.
Just around the corner from the moon, the audience gets into a B-52 bomber and flies away. The moon looks beautiful as it recedes behind them.
HIPPIE HOST: The bad part of getting high was that you always had to come down.
The audience now looks out the windows to see they’re flying over North Vietnam. Everyone has a joystick, and can electronically zap Vietcong hiding in the treetops. They are shot down. The plane starts shaking, and it feels like they’re going to crash. There’s an enormous thud. The plane has landed. The audience gets up, expecting to find themselves in the jungle.
When they disembark, they are the Beatles getting off the plane in America for their first stateside tour. Photographers take their picture, reporters ask questions, flashbulbs pop, fans scream and tear at their clothes. The audience is adored mercilessly as they fight their way to the airport terminal where they enjoy a short break till a military General shows up and starts inspecting them, ordering them to shape up and get in line.
One at a time, the audience comes through a door. Once again, they show their ticket to the HOST.
HIPPIE HOST: Congratulations, you are the very first soldier to arrive in Vietnam in 1961. Congratulations, you are the second soldier to arrive in Vietnam in 1961. Congratulations, you are the third... etc.
The audience is allowed to wander through a peaceful Vietnamese village. They are given no instructions. They get anxious. The wait is just a little bit too long. Suddenly, off in the distance, people start screaming “The Americans are coming!” Everyone is herded into a hut and told to keep quiet. They are led down a ladder to a small hidden room with no exit other than the hole in the roof. A thatched mat is put over the hole.
The audience can see nothing, but can hear gunfire, troops approaching, people screaming, helicopters flying by. Footsteps get awfully close. They can see several American soldiers walking on the thatched mat above their heads. One of the soldiers stops to light a cigarette, and looks down to look where to throw the match. He notices the thatched mat and calls over to his buddies. They gather around. They pull up the mat, look down at the audience, and laugh. One of them pulls up the ladder, leaving no escape. They set the hut on fire. One of them drops a grenade into the hidden room. One of them puts the thatched mat back down. They leave.
It’s going to blow in five seconds, four, three, two, one...
One of
the walls opens to a long tunnel. The HOST lights a joint on the burning
hut, then leads the audience down the tunnel to... a prison. We’re on Alcatraz.
The Indians have seized the island.
TO BE CONTINUED...
ACTUAL EVENTS TO DRAW FROM
1960
Disk jockey
payola
Opening of
Sun City
First black
sit-in, Charleston N.C.
U-2 Pilot
Gary Powers shot down over Russia
1st contraceptive
pills
Kennedy/Nixon
debates
1961
End of diplomatic
relations with Cuba
Start of
Peace Corp
1st man in
space, Yuri Gagarin
Bay of Pigs
Freedom Riders
firebombed
1st U.S.
Soldiers in Vietnam
1962
John Glenn
in orbit
U.S. Nuclear
tests in South Pacific
Marilyn Monroe
dies
1st black
student at University of Mississippi
Cuban Missile
crisis
1963
George Wallace
sworn in as Governor of Alabama
1st pop art,
Warhol, Rauschenberg, Johns
Cleopatra
opens
Medgar Evers
shot
Civil rights
march to Washington
Hot-line
from White House to Moscow installed
S. Viet President
Diem Assassinated
Kennedy Assassinated
1964
Beatlemania
Dylan
Johnson’s
civil rights act
Gulf of Tonkin
King receives
Nobel peace prize
China explodes
nuclear bomb
1965
US bombs
N Vietnam
Malcolm X
assassinated
1st US combat
troops at Da Nang
Selma march
Teach-in
opposed to war
Watts riots
Big Anti-Vietnam
rallies
NYC blackout
1966
LSD made
illegal
Black Power,
Stokely Carmichael
Riots in
Cleveland, Chicago, Brooklyn, Dayton, San Francisco, Atlanta
Jimmy Hoffa
elected president of Teamsters
Richard Speck
Charles Whitman
Beatles more
popular than Jesus
Vietnam war
cost up to $1.2 billion per month
1967
War opposition
enormous
400,000 protesters
in NY, 50,000 in SF
Muhammad
Ali refuses induction
Summer of
Love, flower children
Riots in
Newark, Detroit, New York, Cambridge, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Chicago
Thurgood
Marshall 1st black Supreme Court Justice
7 Americans
self-immolate in protest to war
1968
Pueblo captured
by Korea
Tet Offensive
Wallace runs
for pres
My Lai massacre
Johnson will
not seek or accept nomination for 2nd term
King assassinated
Students
take Columbia University
Kennedy Assassinated
Spock comes
out against war
The Berrigans
Riot in Cleveland
Pope Paul
comes out against birth control
Chicago democratic
convention, Yippies
Black Panther
Huey Newton convicted
Johnson halts
bombing of N Vietnam
Paris peace
talks
“national
turn in your draft card day”
1969
Nixon sworn
in
Secret bombings
of Cambodia
Chappaquiddick
Neil Armstrong
Woodstock
250,000 protest
war in DC
Indians occupy
Alcatraz
Charles Manson
