Exit to U.S. for Bosnia ‘Hair’ Troupe? : Theater: The Sarajevo production is due in Washington next week. But mixed signals from agencies keep it grounded.

A Sarajevo troupe’s adaptation of the 1968 anti-war musical “Hair” has survived a year of bombardment to become a symbol of this integrated city’s defiance of death and division. But the next show may not go on because of obstacles more formidable than artillery: the creaky bureaucracies of the U.S. government and the United Nations.

More than three months ago the U.S. Information Agency invited the 25-member Bosnian cast to stage a tour through America--including a stop in Los Angeles--and private backers have already arranged transport, lodging and visas for a three-week stay.

Yet with less than a week left before their scheduled Sept. 13 debut at Washington’s John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the actors and musicians eager to share the story of Sarajevo’s proud resistance remain stranded in this embattled capital because the State Department has not authorized the U.N. airlift to fly the performers out to an open city.

“What is happening with ‘Hair’ is just a little example of what is happening to our country in world politics,” lead guitarist Amir Beso said. “It’s the same story as with American intervention. . . . One promises and another says no.”

One U.S. government agency, USIA, has invited “Hair” to make the tour, and more than 50 U.S. Congress members have backed the project as a powerful vehicle for bringing home to Americans the plight of Sarajevo.

But it is another arm of the U.S. government, the State Department, that has so far failed to provide the diplomatic muscle needed to get the performers out of this besieged city.

“Clearly there is a division in the Administration and the State Department over what to do about Bosnia in macro terms, and my guess is that we are caught up in that rift,” said Phil Alden Robinson, a Hollywood director who has been trying to bring the production to the United States since he first saw it here last November. “There are people (in the U.S. government) who want more active involvement in Bosnia and would like to see this show happen, and there are people who don’t want to see this kind of attention on the Bosnian problem.”

Robinson returned to Sarajevo last week in hopes of breaking through the red tape that has stranded the performers here despite proclamations by all involved governments and agencies that they have no interest in standing in the cast’s way.

About a dozen Western cargo planes fly in and out of Sarajevo each day, delivering vital food and other relief goods for residents cut off from the rest of their country by rebel Serbian artillery lines. The planes, capable of seating about 30, usually depart empty save for a handful of journalists or U.N. soldiers headed to the Croatian port of Split on furlough.

The “Hair” performers are all Bosnian citizens and are therefore prohibited by U.N. policy from traveling on the airlift planes, said an officer with the U.N. Protection Force who spoke on condition he not be identified.

Exceptions to the rule barring Bosnians from leaving their capital city are “very difficult” because of the politics involved in operating the U.N. airlift, the officer said.

U.N. commanders capitulated more than a year ago to a rebel Serbian condition that the peacekeepers prevent Bosnians from escaping the capital in order to continue operating the airlift and feeding the trapped civilians.

Sarajevo is entirely surrounded by Serbian armed forces, with the U.N.-controlled airport forming the western part of the cordon.

While U.N. policy prevents Bosnians from leaving on the Western aircraft, any one of the individual countries participating in the relief mission can appeal to the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva for a waiver, the U.N. officer said.

“It is very clear to the State Department who they should ask,” he said, adding that no request had been made so far for special permission to let the performers depart in a U.S. Army aircraft.

An official with the refugee agency confirmed that, to his knowledge, no request for a waiver had been received from Washington. He also said he doubted there would be any resistance on his agency’s part.

“UNHCR wouldn’t actively interfere. This is really a matter for the Americans,” he said. “We just prefer that it be done on a bilateral basis (between the U.S. and Bosnian governments) so we are not seen to be setting any precedents.”

The Bosnian government, which often prohibits military-age men from leaving the country while it is under attack, granted the entire troupe permission to travel abroad shortly after the USIA invitation arrived June 2.

Robinson, who has been working with USIA on the privately funded project for months, said he had been told by contacts in the State Department that a possible request for a waiver was still under discussion. The State Department could not be reached for comment.

“If the United States government turns us down, I’ll be on the phone the next day with the French, the Canadians, the Germans and the British,” Robinson said, referring to other countries operating relief planes into Sarajevo. “I hope it doesn’t come to that. This is a project the United States should be proud to make happen.”

In addition to performances in Washington and Los Angeles, the troupe was expected in New York, where “Hair” was originally staged 25 years ago, and in Austin, Tex., as well as one other U.S. city yet to be selected. The site and date of the Los Angeles performance, to be the last in the series, have not yet been fixed, said Robinson, director of the movie “Field of Dreams.”

The original songs and story line have been retained in the Sarajevo production of “Hair,” while the central dilemma of the New York version--a young man’s struggle with Uncle Sam’s call to fight in Vietnam--is revised to reflect a Bosnian Serb’s debate over whether to resist being drafted into the nationalist Serbian army that is besieging Sarajevo.

The performers also plan to visit U.S. hospitals where wounded Bosnian children are being treated and to be guests on radio and television talk shows to raise awareness of their violence-plagued homeland.

Many in the cast, which includes some of the former Yugoslav federation’s best-known entertainers, believe exposure to U.S. audiences will further Americans’ understanding of the tragedy besetting Bosnia-Herzegovina, which is often portrayed by the nationalist attackers as an intractable ethnic war.

“There is no ethnic problem here and that message is our performance--so many religions and nationalities working together on this play,” said Srdjan (Gino) Jevdjevic, a Serb who plays the tormented draftee in the leading role.

“Very few people who have lived through the siege have been able to come to America and tell their stories,” said Robinson, who believes his compatriots are as much in need of hearing the uplifting stories of survival as the players are in need of relating them.