Aristotle's Hair Essay

Aristotle wrote the book called the Poetics. In this book Aristotle talks about the six elements that make up a play; they are plot, character, idea, language, music, and spectacle. In a play response one should keep these six elements in mind. Hair was written by James Rado and Gerome Ragni in 1967 and is a rock musical. The first element we should talk about is plot; the plot structure for Hair is a variation. The two plot structures Hair is most similar to are climatic and circular. The characteristics of a climatic plot structure are few characters, few locations, few plots, and late point of attack. Hair shows few characters, few locations (one set, no change in scenery), and late point of attack (when Claude decides not to burn his draft

I’ve never seen Hair preformed until now but from what I have heard everyone was how I imagined them to be. After watching Hair I must admit my favorite character in the play was Woof. Not only from an audience member’s point of view but also from retired actor’s point of view. He’s my favorite because he is the funniest character in my opinion (audience) and he seems like the most fun to play (actor). The idea behind Hair was to explain what the youth of American and hippies thoughts about the war and life were. We see this throughout the play within the songs and how Claude is debating about burning his draft card. The best scene that depicts what the hippies/kids are thinking is when the tourists came and asked them what they were doing and why. The language used in Hair is mostly anti-war talk in the hippie way like peace and love. However there are very few words actually spoken throughout the play since it is a musical but we can even see how they write/use the langue in the play. We can see this when they are protesting and are holding up signs. My favorite sign and a good example of the language they used was “Bombing for Peace, is like Screwing for