HADESTOWN More than a decade ago, folk singer/songwriter Anaïs Mitchell wrote the concept album Hadestown based on the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. After various reincarnations, Mitchell teamed up with Tony award- nominated director Rachel Chavkin to develop a Hadestown musical for the stage. After a very successful workshop production at New York Theatre Workshop in 2016, Mitchell, Chavkin, and a team of producers are bringing the musical to the Citadel Theatre to revamp it for a larger stage and a possible Broadway run. Chavkin, fresh off her Tony nomination for directing Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 on Broadway, spoke to us from New York’s Imperial Theatre about her collaboration with Mitchell and what Citadel audiences can expect from the Canadian premiere of Hadestown. Rachel Chavkin, director of Hadestown. Photo by Chad Batka. Citadel Theatre: When Anaïs Mitchell approached you about developing Hadestown into a musical, what was your initial reaction? Rachel Chavkin: I fell madly in love with the album. Anaïs and I met after she saw my production of Great Comet at Ars Nova, and a mutual friend introduced us. We slowly started talking from there. It was a slow courtship, but by spring of 2013 we were diving into story structure, what narrative was already in place, where there were holes, etc. But yes – mostly my initial reaction was ‘this music is glorious.’ CT: What is your working relationship with Anaïs like? What’s your collaboration process been like so far? RC: Anaïs and I have a very close collaborative process. Because she doesn’t come from a theatre background, I’m able to bring a background in story structure, along with our dramaturg Ken Cerniglia. And then Anaïs brings this extraordinary intuition about what’s emotional and what rhymes feel good – all of this stuff. It’s very symbiotic, I would say. We come at things from very diametrically opposed angles. I’m sort of all structure and bone and architecture, and she’s so heart and intuitive, and obviously we meet on many, many grounds.
CT: You convinced the New York Theatre Workshop to tear up their stage and auditorium to create a kind of theater in the round, with beat-up old chairs for Hadestown. What was the inspiration for that specific setting?
RC: Hadestown is a Greek myth at its core. And in thinking about the production, there were two initial images: swinging lights that would move with the choruses of Wait For Me, and the other was wanting it to feel like we had all gathered around a tree to hear an ancient story. And then our set designer, Rachel Hauk, had this other impulse, which was a Greek amphitheater. And so we arrived at this old-style, but Vermont Photograph by Joan Marcus. ©2016. Shaina Taub, Amber Gray, Damon barn – let’s all gather around a campfire Daunno, and Lulu Fall from the New York Theatre Workshop production and hear a story feeling to it. And New of the musical Hadestown. York Theatre Workshop has a long, long “It’s two incredible, interweaving history of radically transforming their love stories and the music is just space from show to show so this was totally in the pocket for them. lavishly beautiful.” - Rachel Chavkin
CT: Will the tempo or mood of the show change when it shifts to a larger proscenium theatre here at the Citadel? RC: I think the production at the Citadel is going to feel both quite different and also hopefully have that same liveness and intimacy in storytelling that we created at New York Theatre Workshop. But yes, figuring out how it feels in proscenium is our biggest question going into this run.
CT: You’ve been working on Hadestown for years now, along with several other shows, including the Tony award-winning Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812. Do you find working on each of your shows is a very different experience or are there similar elements to every show you work on? RT: My professional life’s defining characteristic is its eclecticism. I really love being challenged in different ways from show to show I don’t take a project unless I feel it very deeply in some part of my bones – that could be the politics, or the philosophy, or the emotional journey of a character. And I think I start the directing process for every show from thinking about, ‘OK, how do I help the audience feel that as vividly as I do?’ The path to that answer is different depending on whatever the show is because every show should feel different inherently. I’m not sure I’m the person to best identify what unites all my work but I can say that I am seeking this sort of visceral experience for the audience in everything I do. CT: Where do you find your inspiration and motivation to work on multiple shows at the same time? RC: I’m a very good multi-tasker. I have to be quite regimented about where my brain is at in any given hour of the day. My favourite thing to do is go to the picture collection at the NY Public Library, and do visual research for hours, if I can, just to think laterally. The picture collection is a massive room full of pictures. You go up to the nice librarian and you’re like, ‘I want a picture of Moscow in the 1830s, and also pictures of comets, and also can you show me pictures of trees and root structures?’ and maybe while you’re there, you’re like, ‘Can you also show me pictures of dirt and barns and whatever?’. So you don’t know where the inspiration is going to come from, and that’s what the picture collection is best for, in a way that I find Google – because it’s so good at what it does in terms of just feeding you what you put into it – is a much more limiting way of thinking while doing visual research for me because the algorithms are actually too good.
CT: If this production of Hadestown reaches Broadway, do you think people will have the urge to compare it to The Great Comet? RT: Of course, but comparisons are violence, says my friend Taylor Mac. Hadestown is its own beautiful beast. CT: You’ve been quoted as saying you “love chaos.” What role does chaos play in your creative process?
Photograph by Joan Marcus. ©2016. Shaina Taub, Amber Gray, Damon Daunno, and Lulu Fall from the New York Theatre Workshop RC: Chaos plays no role in my process. production of the musical Hadestown. Well, that’s actually a lie. I think, during my process, particularly in the rehearsal “I think the production at the Citadel room, I tend to say a lot of stuff to my is going to feel both quite different actors at the outset but then I’ll let us live in exploration pretty much up until tech – and also hopefully have that same and then I make sure everything is nailed liveness and intimacy in storytelling down. I think that’s the only way to really that we created at New York Theatre get that kind of vivid life going. So there’s room for uncertainty and mess, but also Workshop.” - Rachel Chavkin it’s within a rigorous frame.
Photograph by Joan Marcus. ©2016. Nabiyah Be and Damon Daunno from the New York Theatre Workshop production of the musical Hadestown. CT: Hadestown has been in the works for more than a decade, but its relevance today is stronger than ever, especially with the political climate in the U.S. What do you hope the Canadian audience will take away from seeing the show?
RC: I hope the audience will … you know, I can’t say that I know Canada or Canadians well enough to know how they’ll be different from U.S. audiences, but I can say that I hope that any audience is moved by the story. It’s two incredible, interweaving love stories and the music is just lavishly beautiful. So that, first and foremost. I think the play raises all these questions about stability and control versus chance and unpredictability in life, and authenticity that comes with unpredictability. We’ve worked very hard to make sure that no one is bad versus good in the story, because that would not be very interesting storytelling. For me, Hades is a victim of his own desire to control everything, and I think that’s quite sad. I hope the audience takes values about control versus vulnerability from seeing the show.
CT: Do you have a favourite song from the show? RC: I love so much of the music but Wait For Me was the first song I ever fell in love with.
Hadestown runs November 11 to December 3, 2017, at Citadel Theatre. For more information or to purchase tickets, call 780.425.1820 or visit www.citadeltheatre.com.