ALL ABOUT THE MUSICAL "HADESTOWN"
Winner of Eight 2019 Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Score and Best Orchestrations
Winner of Four 2019 Drama Desk Awards
Winner of Six 2019 Outer Critics Circle Awards, including Outstanding New Broadway Musical
Winner of 2019 Drama League Award for Outstanding Production of a Musical
Winner of 2020 Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album​
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This intriguing and beautiful folk opera delivers a deeply resonant and defiantly hopeful theatrical experience. Following two intertwining love stories – that of young dreamers Orpheus and Eurydice, and that of immortal King Hades and lady Persephone – Hadestown invites audiences on a hell-raising journey to the underworld and back. Inspired by traditions of classic American folk music and vintage New Orleans jazz, Mitchell’s beguiling sung-through musical pits industry against nature, doubt against faith, and fear against love.​​
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SETTING: The underworld (Hadestown) and aboveground.
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FEATURES: Expandable Casting
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DURATION: More than 120 minutes (2 hours)
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MUSICAL STYLE: Pop/Rock
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DANCE REQUIREMENTS: Easy
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VOCAL DEMANDS: Moderate
CASTING NOTE:
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On the West End, they implemented nonbinary language for Hermes. Along those lines, Hadestown can be diverse, and our production will be part of that discovery! These mythic characters are archetypal but also reimagined and open to interpretation by actors of all gender identities. It is important to the creators to reflect the diversity of the community in which the production is presented, while being mindful of the narrative implications of those choices.
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Generally, at ACT-1 we are open to gender-blind/re-gendered casting. Therefore, please audition for whatever roles you are attracted to! However, please try to choose the roles that best reflect your talents. Just because you like a role doesn't mean you are well-suited for it, and you'll want to have the strongest audition possible!
As you get to know the show and the music, please pay attention to the characters' vocal ranges and required skill sets. Sometimes we can slightly adjust the key of a character's solo song, but we do prefer to keep accompaniment close to the original key, as much as possible.
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Carefully read the character descriptions and requirements below, and let us know if you have any questions!
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ROLES/CHARACTER BREAKDOWNS​
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Hermes
Vocal range: Tenor/Bass, range: C3-B4
Character's Gender: Male
Character's Age: Adult
Character's Ethnicity: Any
Our charismatic guide and storyteller. Mentor to Orpheus.
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The character of HERMES has been played on Broadway by both male- and female-identifying performers. In the latter case, whenever HERMES is referred to as “Mister Hermes,” performers should use “Missus Hermes.” There is no alternate vocal score, but every HERMES should feel free to place lines or verses in a different octave if it feels or sounds better. ​
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Orpheus
Vocal range: Tenor with strong falsetto, range: D3-C5 (opt. Eb5)
Character's Gender: Male
Character's Age: Young Adult
Character's Ethnicity: Any
Lyre-playing poet, gifted and naive. In love with Eurydice.
Note: The character is male, but we are open to auditioning all genders for this role.
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Eurydice
Vocal range: Mezzo-Soprano, range: F#3-D5
Character's Gender: Female
Character's Age: Young Adult
Character's Ethnicity: Any
A runaway, tough and vulnerable. ​​Falls in love with Orpheus.
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Persephone
Vocal range: Mezzo-Soprano/Alto, range: F3-C5
Character's Gender: Female
Character's Age: Adult
Character's Ethnicity: Any
The queen of nature and the seasons. A heavy drinker. Wife of Hades.
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Hades
Vocal range: Bass, range F2-C#4
Character's Gender: Male
Character's Age: Adult
Character's Ethnicity: Any
A compulsive industrialist. The boss-king of Hadestown. ​
The Fates
Vocal range: Soprano, Mezzo-Soprano, Alto. Range: E3-D5 (Fate 1 up to Eb5)
Character's Gender: Female
Character's Age: Any
Character's Ethnicity: Any
Three sisters, vicious and delicious. Intoxicating voices in the head.
Special Skills: The Fates must be excellent at harmonizing.
Workers (Ensemble)
Vocal range: Any
Character's Gender: Any
Character's Age: Any
Character's Ethnicity: Any
The Spirits of labor and community, a physical and choral presence (SATB). ​
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In the Broadway production, the WORKERS were performed by five ensemble members. While the WORKERS in Hadestown Teen can accommodate any cast size, a minimum of six WORKERS is required.
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ADDITIONAL INFO
RESOURCES
Please watch these productions of Hadestown (on Broadway) and listen to the Original Broadway Soundtrack!
SHOW HISTORY
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GREEK ORIGINS ​​
In Greek mythology, the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice, concerns the pitiful love of Orpheus for his wife Eurydice. The subject is among the most frequently retold of all Greek myths.
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Apollo gave Orpheus a lyre and taught him how to play. It had been said that "nothing could resist Orpheus's beautiful melodies, neither enemies nor beasts." Orpheus fell in love with Eurydice, a woman of beauty and grace, whom he married and lived with happily for a short time, until Eurydice was dancing in the forest when she was bitten by a snake and died instantly.
Orpheus sang his grief with his lyre and affected everyone - both humans and gods - with his sorrow and grief.
Orpheus decided to descend to Hades by music to see his wife there. Any other mortal would have died, but Orpheus, being protected by the gods, arrived and presented himself in front of the god of the Greek underworld, Hades, and his wife, Persephone.
Orpheus played with his lyre a song so heartbreaking that even Hades himself was moved to compassion. The god told Orpheus that he could take Eurydice back with him, but under two conditions: she would have to walk behind him while walking out from the caves of the underworld, and he could not turn to look at her as they walked.
Thinking it a simple task for a patient man like himself, Orpheus was delighted; he thanked Hades and left to ascend back into the living world. Unable to hear Eurydice's footsteps, however, he began to fear the gods had fooled him. Only a few feet away from the exit, Orpheus lost his faith and turned to see Eurydice behind him, sending her back to be trapped in Hades's reign forever.
Orpheus tried to return to the underworld but was unable to, possibly because a person cannot enter the realm of Hades twice while alive. He played a mourning song with his lyre, calling for death so that he could be united with Eurydice forever. ​
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ORIGINS OF THE MUSICAL​​
Hadestown is a musical with music, lyrics, and a book by Anaïs Mitchell. Eurydice, a young girl looking for something to eat, goes to work in a hellish industrial version of the Greek underworld to escape poverty and the cold, and her poor singer-songwriter lover Orpheus comes to rescue her.
Writer Anaïs Mitchell said she was inspired by Les Misérables to write a musical that was about the power of both romance and politics: "It's a love story, but politics really is romantic."
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Director Rachel Chavkin said addressing climate change had always been central to the show: "As we thought more and more about shaping the world that Eurydice and Orpheus are living in — a world caused, in Greek mythological terms, by the decay of the ancient marriage between Hades and Persephone, a world that is out of balance, where it is either freezing or blazing hot, where food becomes scarcer and the idea of stability becomes harder to imagine, and a character, Eurydice, who has spent her life running – all of those things kind of crystallized while we were making the show." The show did a joint promotion with Natural Resources Defense Council to raise awareness and bring a greater sense of urgency to the push for action on the issue of climate change.
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US cultural commentator Bridget Read highlights the economic themes: "Orpheus and Eurydice's tragedy becomes, in the hands of Mitchell, an argument for collective bargaining...I don't think its untoward of me to hear the class politics in a musical in which the characters sing the word poverty more times than I've ever heard it before in the vicinity of Times Square."
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Todd Osborne comments on the self-conscious significance of the medium of song within the work: "It is a musical both about how art can save us and how, especially in an apocalyptic world, hope might be the only thing we have left."
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BROADWAY
The original sung-through version of the musical was performed in the town of Barre , Vermont, in 2006. Mitchell, unsure about the future of the musical, turned it into a concept album, released in 2010.
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In 2012, Mitchell met director Rachel Chavkin, and the two reworked the stage version, with additional songs and dialogue. The new version of the musical, directed by Chavkin, premiered off-Broadway at New York Theatre Workshop in 2016. The show premiered on Broadway in 2019. The Broadway production received critical acclaim. At the 73rd Tony Awards, Hadestown received 14 nominations (the most that year) and won eight, including Best Musical. On January 4, 2023, Hadestown became the longest-running show at the Walter Kerr Theatre with 918 performances.
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