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Broadway production of ‘Hair’ will close for matinee on Oct. 11 so cast can march in DC rally

http://www.devanandjanki.com/Assets/Images/Hair_5147e.jpgI just love this story: The Broadway musical Hair will be dark for its Sunday matinee  on October 11 so its cast and crew can attend the march for gay rights in Washington DC that day.

They will also perform at the event.

Leading man Gavin Creel is openly gay and has become an activist since the election of Barack Obama which delighted him but the day was also devastating because California voters banned gay marriage with the passage of Proposition 8. He then decided to help create the activist organization Broadway Impact to mobilize the theater community.

The New York Times reports that in May, Creel met Cleve Jones, creator of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, when he came to see Hair with Dustin Lance Black, author of the Oscar-winning screenplay for Milk. At a party afterward for the release of the cast recording, they all talked about the Oct. 11 National Equality March that  Jones was helping to organize. The rally’s organizers say they are seeking “equal protection in all matters governed by civil law in all 50 states” for lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people.

About a half-hour later Oskar Eustis, artistic director of the Public Theater, a producer of Hair, showed up and Creel immediately cornered him to ask if the whole tribe — the show’s term for cast — could go down for the march.

“I told him, ‘That’s a crazy idea,’ ” Mr. Eustis remembered. He walked away, but the idea stuck. What would be the ramifications, financial and otherwise, of closing one matinee, Mr. Eustis wondered. It was 11:30 at night, but he sought out the show’s general manager, Joey Parnes, to ask what he thought, and Mr. Parnes went to the box office to check on how many tickets had already been sold for that date and to run the numbe

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