Tom O'Horgan

Tom O'Horgan (May 3, 1924 – January 11, 2009) was an American theatre and film director, composer, actor and musician. He is best known for his Broadway work as director of the hit musicals '' Hair'' and ''Jesus Christ Superstar''. During his career he sought to achieve a form of "total theater" described by ''The New York Times'' as "wittily physical", and which earned him a reputation as the " Busby Berkeley of the acid set".

Biography

Early years

Born in Chicago, Illinois, O'Horgan was introduced to theater by his father, a newspaper owner and sometimes actor, who took him to shows and built him footlights and a wind machine. As a child he sang in churches and wrote operas, including one entitled ''Doom of the Earth'' at age 12."Tom O'Horgan, 84, Director of ''Hair'', Is Dead"
by Douglas Martin, January 13, 2009, ''The New York Times''

O'Horgan received his degree from DePaul University where he learned to play dozens of musical instruments. After graduating he worked in Chicago as a harpist and also performed with the Second City, the Chicago improvisational theater company. He moved to New York City and began acting downtown at places like Judson Memorial Church. During this time he developed a night club act where he performed improvisational humor as he accompanied himself on the harp.

Career

O'Horgan thought of his work as "kinetic sculpture" and said that his goal was to be "able to blend all aspects of the theatre without letting any part become secondary to the others". Of contemporary commercial theater, he believed that people are "hung up on chandeliers because they insist that the one-dimensional, verbal Ibsenite theater is the only theater. But this is an aberration of the 19th century. If the ideas are the primary thing, it's not theater. Theater has always meant music, dance, art. That's what the Greek theater was." Shortly after ''Hair'' opened on Broadway, Eleanore Lester wrote in ''The New York Times'': "O'Horgan, a veteran of many years of experimentation and frustration in his search for The Way in theater, successfully incorporates a number of strands coming on strong in the rapidly evolving post-Miller-Williams-Albee and post-absurdist theater. Those trends, growing partly out of the intimate Off Off Broadway movement and partly out of the visceral political drama of be-ins, sit-ins and demonstrations, include the use of improvisational techniques, vigorous ensemble playing, a more physical style of acting, greater use of dance, music, and puppets, and Pop-camp comedy – plus the Total Theater concept in which the audience becomes more closely involved in the work."

O'Horgan said that an element of his artistic gratification is "just getting the vicarious joy of turning people on, making them respond, turning them on to their own sensual powers that are buried under layers of cement. When you see how people in the streets will run to see a fire or an accident or a fight, hoping against hope to see something really happen, something that will prove that the people walking beside them are more than mere mannequins, you realize how much they want to break out of all their emotional rigidity." Though he would become well known for his Broadway work, he was more comfortable in the Off-Broadway world. As he told Lester in 1968, "Sure, I've been sent scripts from Broadway offices, but so far I haven't seen anything that I could possibly be interested in. Of course, I'll continue working with La MaMa. Where else can you work things out? Certainly not on Broadway where the meter is always running."

Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway

Most of his early career work was in Off-Off-Broadway experimental theatre productions. One of his earliest projects was ''Love and Vexations'' at the Caffe Cino in September, 1963. Soon thereafter, his friend James Wigfall introduced him to Ellen Stewart (founder of La MaMa, E.T.C.), who would go on to become one of his staunchest supporters. The first play he directed there was '' The Maids'' by Jean Genet in 1964,Of Course, There Were Some Limits
Eleanore Lester, O'Horgan feature article in the NY Times, May 19, 1968, michaelbutler.com and he later led a La MaMa troupe that went to Denmark to showcase early plays by Sam Shepard and Lanford Wilson. He directed some 50 productions at La MaMa including ''The Architect and the Emperor of Assyria'' by Fernando Arrabal, a surrealist play about two men on an island, and ''Tom Paine'' by Paul Foster, a recounting of the life of the US Revolutionary War figure.

O'Horgan directed and also composed music for the Rochelle Owens play ''Futz!''. He first directed the play off-off-Broadway for La MaMa in March 1967 and later took it to the Edinburgh Festival and then to New York's Theater de Lys, an off-Broadway venue in June 1968."Futz!" Opens at the de Lys
Clive Barnes, New York Times, June 14, 1968, orlok.com O'Horgan also directed a film version of ''Futz!'' that was released in 1969. ''Futz!'' tells the story of the difficulties a farm boy encounters with the people of the town when he falls in love with his pig. Clive Barnes wrote in ''The New York Times'', "Mr. O'Horgan ... has visualized ''Futz!'' as some kind of Dionysiac dance, wild and fevered. He sends his actors mugging and careening across the stage in great joyous surges of energy." ''Hair'' authors James Rado and Gerome Ragni attended the La MaMa production of ''Futz!'' and it influenced them to choose O'Horgan to direct ''Hair'' on Broadway.

In November 1974, he conceived and directed a stage adaptation of The Beatles' classic recording ''Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band''. The show, entitled ''Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band on the Road

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