Hairspray
Music & Lyrics by Marc Shaiman & Scott Wittman
Book by Mark O'Donnell & Thomas Meehan
SALT Award
Director of the Year
Winner
SALT Award
Production of the Year
Winner
The Cape Playhouse 
Directed by Bill Fennelly
Scenic Design by Daniel Zimmerman
Costume Design by Annie J. Le
Lighting Design by Kat C. Zhou
Sound Design by Lawrence Schober
Featuring Alexis Michelle
Maltz Jupiter Theatre
Directed by Bill Fennelly
Music Directed by Helen Gregory
Choreographed by David Wanstreet
Set Design by Michael Schweikardt
Costume Design by Kathleen Geldard
Lighting Design by Kirk Bookman
Featuring Zane Phillips & Michael Kostroff
Syracuse Stage & Syracuse Drama
Directed by Bill Fennelly
Music Directed by Brian Cimmet
Choreographed by David Wanstreet
Set Design by Adam Koch
Costume Design by Aaron P. Mastin
Lighting Design by Thom Weaver
A Note from BillHairspray is a musical I have returned to again and again: Each time, I have found new urgency in its joyous, defiant insistence that the world can change.
I take the "white savior" critique of Hairspray seriously, and it has shaped how I stage the show. For me, Tracy Turnblad is not the savior of this story. She is a student. And so are we. The moral and spiritual center of Hairspray is Motormouth Maybelle, whose music, wisdom, history, and lived experience become a classroom in liberation.
For me, Maybelle stands at the center of the musical, channeling the extraordinary cultural force emerging from Black America in the early 1960s: the visionary spirit of Berry Gordy, the dignified elegance of Maxine Powell, the freedom of Cholly Atkins, and the sound of Motown, which invited a generation to move more freely, express themselves more fully, and love more openly.
Tracy's great act is not to lead that movement but to listen, to learn, and then to put herself in service of what she has learned. In Act II, a single point of light becomes the production's quiet turning point, and it grows into a powerful reminder that no one stands alone.
Hairspray asks all of us to become students in Maybelle's classroom: to listen across difference, to recognize whose voices have been excluded, and to decide what we will do with what we have learned. Beneath the exuberance, comedy, and irresistible score is a story about how one voice can awaken another, and another, until individual acts of courage become collective action.
That is the radical joy of Hairspray: protest can dance, resistance can sing, and we are invited not only to change the world but to become ourselves within it.
