In the beginning of “Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical,” a group of long-haired New York City hippies sing about the Age of Aquarius, a time that would bring “harmony and understanding, sympathy and trust abounding.”

Yet, the years of 1968 to 1972, when the musical ran on Broadway, were filled with turmoil in America — and in Lawrence.

This summer — 40 years after Lawrence was thrown into a period of civil unrest that involved arsons, bombings, curfews and the death of two young men –the Lawrence Arts Center’s Summer Youth Theatre is presenting “Hair.”

The arts center has received a $2,600 grant from the Kansas Humanities Council to host “Myth and Magic: Lawrence in the Age of Change,” a series of lectures, panel discussions and interpretive exhibits that examine the events that shaped Lawrence during the late 1960s and early 1970s.

On July 6, 13 and 20, the arts center will host three presentations, which will be a mixture of round table discussions and student performances. Guests will include former black activists, a war veteran who became a war protester, former radicals, and a history professor who has studied the era.

The arts center also will exhibit the photography of John Gary Brown and Bill Snead and display art pieces students have done representing the period.

This spring, a series of stories in the Journal-World reminded the arts center staff of the situation in Lawrence during that year.

Ric Averill, Summer Youth Theatre artistic director, said he was shocked to learn just how similar the local events in the 1970s were to the musical the students will be performing.

Rick “Tiger” Dowdell, a 19-year-old black man, was shot and killed by a police officer just behind where the Lawrence Arts Center stands today at 940 N.H.

The musical, which centers on a young man’s decision to dodge the draft, tackles the Vietnam War, drugs, race and the sexual revolution. Those very same issues engulfed Lawrence then.

Blacks were angered by inequalities that persisted. On Oread Avenue just off Kansas University’s campus, protesters rallied against what they considered an unjust war, the draft and “the Establishment.” Added in were the emergence of recreational drug use and Lawrence as a stopping point for members of the counterculture who were traveling across the country.

“What happened to the people that went through that generation? What was the result of the choices they made?” Averill said. “Those are the kinds of things we can explore at the arts center and explore with the community at large.”

Mixing the arts with the world around them is common for the Summer Youth Theatre, Averill said. Last year when the group performed the musical “Rent,” the teenagers got involved with the Douglas County AIDS Project.

Averill described the productions as “political-change pieces that deal with social upheaval and social awareness.”