Tom O'Horgan

Tom O'Horgan (May 3, 1924 – January 11, 2009) was an American director, composer, actor, and musician born in Chicago, Illinois. He is best known for directing the Broadway musicals Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar. The New York Times described his approach to theater as "wittily physical," and he earned the informal designation "Busby Berkeley of the acid set" for his distinctive staging style. O'Horgan characterized his own work as "kinetic sculpture" and pursued what he called "total theater," a form in which music, dance, and visual art carried equal weight alongside text.

O'Horgan's father, a newspaper owner and occasional actor, introduced him to theater from an early age, taking him to shows and constructing footlights and a wind machine for him at home. As a child, O'Horgan sang in churches and composed operas, including one titled Doom of the Earth, which he wrote at age twelve. He went on to earn a degree from DePaul University, where he learned to play dozens of musical instruments. After graduating, he worked in Chicago as a harpist and performed with Second City, the city's improvisational theater company. He subsequently moved to New York City, where he began acting at venues including Judson Memorial Church and developed a nightclub act in which he performed improvisational humor while accompanying himself on the harp.

Much of O'Horgan's early career unfolded in Off-Off-Broadway experimental theater. One of his earliest projects was Love and Vexations at the Caffe Cino in September 1963. Around that time, his friend James Wigfall introduced him to Ellen Stewart, founder of La MaMa, E.T.C., who became one of his most consistent supporters. The first production he directed at La MaMa was Jean Genet's The Maids in 1964. Over the course of his association with the company, he directed approximately fifty productions there, including The Architect and the Emperor of Assyria by Fernando Arrabal and Tom Paine by Paul Foster. He also led a La MaMa troupe to Denmark to present early plays by Sam Shepard and Lanford Wilson.

A pivotal Off-Off-Broadway credit was Rochelle Owens's Futz!, which O'Horgan both directed and scored. He first staged the play for La MaMa in March 1967, then brought it to the Edinburgh Festival, and subsequently directed it at New York's Theater de Lys in June 1968. He also directed a film adaptation of Futz! released in 1969. Clive Barnes wrote in The New York Times that O'Horgan had "visualized Futz! as some kind of Dionysiac dance, wild and fevered." Hair authors James Rado and Gerome Ragni attended the La MaMa production and credited it with influencing their decision to seek O'Horgan as director for the Broadway transfer of their show. Among his other Off-Broadway credits as composer were the Second City revues To the Water Tower, When the Owl Screams, and The Wrecking Ball, all performed at the Village East. He also directed Masked Men at the Westbeth Theatre and Birdbath.

O'Horgan made his Broadway directorial debut in April 1968 with Hair. Rado and Ragni had originally sought him for the Off-Broadway production at The Public Theater in the fall of 1967, but he was working in Europe at the time and could not accept. When the show moved to Broadway, he was approached again and agreed to direct. The Broadway production underwent substantial revision from its downtown version: the already spare plot was loosened further, and thirteen new songs were added. In rehearsals, O'Horgan drew on improvisational techniques associated with Viola Spolin and Paul Sills, incorporating games and role-playing exercises that encouraged spontaneity, many of which were folded into the final script. He had also used nudity in numerous prior productions and helped integrate it into the fabric of Hair. The 2009 Broadway revival's Playbill credited O'Horgan and choreographer Julie Arenal with introducing "an organic, expansive style of staging" that had not previously been seen on Broadway. His work on Hair earned him the Drama Desk Vernon Rice–Drama Desk Award in 1968.

O'Horgan followed Hair with additional Broadway directing work, receiving the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Director in both 1969 and 1971. Among his Broadway credits as a composer is the musical Senator Joe. He also directed the Broadway production of Jesus Christ Superstar, which became another major commercial success and further established his reputation as a director capable of bringing large-scale, unconventional musicals to mainstream audiences.

In November 1974, O'Horgan conceived and directed a stage adaptation of the Beatles album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Titled Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band on the Road, the production played at the Beacon Theatre on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Developed in collaboration with Hair set designer Robin Wagner, the show featured thirty-four actors performing twenty-nine Beatles songs with elaborate scenery, special effects, and costumes. Critics received it poorly, and it closed in January 1975 after sixty-six performances.

O'Horgan articulated his philosophy of theater in terms of breaking down what he saw as the dominance of text-centered drama. He argued that insistence on "the one-dimensional, verbal Ibsenite theater" represented "an aberration of the 19th century" and that theater had historically encompassed music, dance, and visual art, as in ancient Greek performance. He described part of his artistic motivation as "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." Despite his Broadway successes, O'Horgan stated that he was more comfortable in the Off-Broadway world, where, as he told the Times in 1968, he could "work things out" without the financial pressures of commercial production. Tom O'Horgan died on January 11, 2009.