On a sidewalk of New Haven, Kaitlin Kiyan is windblown. A breeze makes her long black hair dance behind her and exposes a small, red, beaded feather dangling from her left year. “Oh yea- this, Kaitlin says as she fingers the earring. “It’s part of my costume. I forgot to take it off last night.”
Katie, as she introduces herself, is twenty years old. The details of her day-to-day life are typical of an American girl her age; she drinks soy lattes and texts on a Blackberry, she skypes with friends and wants to travel the world. She owns many pairs of sunglasses, she can’t pick a favorite song and lives for her loved ones. She’s figuring out who she is just like the rest of her generation. Katie is a professional performer, currently appearing in the national tour of the 2009 Broadway revival of Hair.
A native of Hawaii, Katie moved to New York when she was fourteen after being accepted into the vocal program at LaGuardia High School. Her mother and she began putting a life together in the city while her father and siblings remained at home in Waipahu, Hawaii. Moving was hard, Katie said, “But I couldn’t imagine what my life would be if I hadn’t gone to LaGuardia. I certainly wouldn’t be here right now.” She gently taps the table we are sitting at in Starbucks, a gesture that could represent ’here’ meaning the current tour, the show itself, or possibly where she’s at and who she is as a person at this given moment.
Katie began her journey with Hair at LaGuardia, playing the character Crissy in a student production. “It was the first play at that school I was cast in. It was really exciting,” Katie said, “I loved the show and Crissy is so fun to play. She’s a kid at heart so you get to be silly, but there’s a lot of depth to her too.”
Katie then auditioned and was cast in The Public Theater’s 2007 concert celebrating the fortieth anniversary of the show. The performances only lasted a few days but were successful enough to prompt a full-scale, summer production in 2008 at Delacorte Theater in Central Park. After that the show transferred to Broadway. Katie followed, making her Broadway debut and performing in eight shows per week for the last year.
In these productions on Broadway Katie did not play Crissy, but was instead a part of ‘The Tribe;’ the group of counterculture-youth living, loving, experimenting and protesting the Vietnam War in the New York City of 1967; they were the creators of the noise that seemed to both fascinate and frighten conservative America, and functioned as the Greek chorus within the world of the play. Katie was the youngest cast member. “I was eighteen when we went to Broadway.”
In the Tribe Katie was singing effortless, birdlike harmonies between hits from a shared joint, and pleading along with the rest of the tribe to ‘Let the Sunshine’ in- all while conveying the joy and frustration of being young in a bright yellow top and long, shiny pigtails decorated with daisies.
Last March the same production opened in London and Katie spent six months in the UK. “It was kind of like summer camp,” said Katie.
The national tour, which kicked off this week in New Haven and features a cast strewn together from people involved in the first company from the Public Theater to the London tribe and even some new faces.
Katie has been promoted to playing the role of Crissy, the character she started out with in high school and understudied- performing occasionally over the last couple years in New York and London whenever the permanent actor of the role was out. After seeing several women play the role, Katie decided to give her own spin on Crissy. “If someone doesn’t like a decision I make with [Crissy] then, well, you can’t make everyone happy all the time.” Katie insists she’s a people-pleaser at heart.
James Rado co-wrote Hair in 1964 and starred in it when it was first produced in 1967. In person James is a little electric, a little prickly, he seems to radiate with so much to say that he is a little baffled about how to say it. “She’s not conforming, she’s inspiring others,” said Rado. “She especially is helping bring the meaning of Hair to her own generation. Something that’s really exciting for me.”
Katie will be traveling the country with Hair until summer of 2011. After that, “It’s weird to think of what comes after Hair,” Katie said, “since it’s been my life for the past three years.” She does plan on finishing college though, a venture that she put on hold at NYU’s Tisch School after being offered a part in the Broadway cast.
While walking towards the New Haven theater Katie says hello to a man whose face began to glow in her presence. He tells her to have some of the chocolate he left backstage for the cast; she thanks him, and chats a bit, clearly making his day.
Katie slips into the theater’s back door. An hour later the opening notes to the well-known ‘Aquarius’ begin and Katie run on stage, looks around and waves at the packed theater, like she’s greeting every single person individually. She’s Crissy now, wearing bellbottomed jeans, a delicate blue calico-print top and a silver peace sign hanging from her neck, along with the red feather, now making perfect sense with the rest of her costume. Katie is still there in her laugh and her spunk. To quote the show which has given Katie so much, ‘[she’s] got life. And she’s gonna spread it around the world.’
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