OUR LADY of the UNDERGROUND Anaïs Mitchell Wants to Change the World with a Song

OUR LADY OF THE UNDERGROUND Anaïs Mitchell wants to change the world with a song

A lot has changed for Anaïs Mitchell the past few years. The singer/songwriter moved from Vermont to Brooklyn, for one thing. And, she became a mother to Ramona, who’s now three. But, the biggest change of all has been collaborating with Tony award -nominated director Rachel Chavkin on the musical Hadestown. What started as a small theatre project and popular concept album has catapulted Mitchell into the bright lights of New York theatre in a weird, cosmic, pinch-me-I’m-dreaming journey of a lifetime. But, ultimately, she’s still a singer-songwriter with a guitar and a desire to write a song that could change the world. “Spoiler alert — it’s a tragic ending.” - Anaïs Mitchell Anaïs Mitchell, the creative force behind Hadestown. Photograph by Jay Sansone.

The first thing that strikes me about Anaïs Mitchell is that she appears a little bit softer in person. Her rock-and-roll, slightly shaggy haircut is the same, and her style — a ripped pink tank top layered under a pale blush crop top, black skinny jeans and scuffed lace-up boots — still exudes a little bit of punk vibe. But her face itself appears softer, more youthful than it does in photos. She’s come to Edmonton for auditions for her hit Off-Broadway musical, Hadestown, which will have its Canadian Premiere at the Citadel Theatre in the fall of 2017.

Before she became a part of the theatre world, she had already firmly established herself in the musical one. Mitchell recorded several albums on Ani Difranco’s label, Righteous Babe Records, before switching to her own Wilderland Records, in 2012, and releasing three albums. Her most recent work is 2014’s xoa. Since then, she has temporarily put aside her songwriting for a Very Important Project: Hadestown.

What is Hadestown, you may ask? What isn’t Hadestown is more like it. It’s existed in almost every art form possible. First, it was a Do-It-Yourself theatre project, started in 2006 by (continued on page 2)

Mitchell and her collaborators: Bread & Puppet veteran Ben t. Matchstick and primary orchestrator-arranger Michael Chorney. Featuring friends from Vermont bands in the various roles, it was simple, but it was sufficiently special to spark something in Mitchell’s being — she loved it enough to want to keep working on it. From there, it evolved into a folk opera album, produced by Todd Sickafoose and

Photograph by Joan Marcus. ©2016. Shaina Taub, Amber Gray, Damon sung by such collaborators as Daunno, and Lulu Fall from the New York Theatre Workshop production of the musical Hadestown. Difranco, folk legend Greg Brown, and Justin Vernon (the front man for Bon Iver). The album caught the attention of the international press, receiving sensational reviews and finding its way onto many ‘Best of’ lists the year it was released. Mitchell took it on tour, featuring local artists in each city to sing the parts in the Greek myth: Hades, Hermes, Persephone, Orpheus, Eurydice, and the Fates.

Yes, the Greek myth. The idea for Hadestown sprang from Mitchell’s brain (much like the goddess Athena sprang from Zeus’ head) based on her love of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, which she first read in an illustrated book as a child. Anaïs Mitchell: The original myth is that Orpheus, the great musician, is in love with Eurydice, who is a wood nymph, and they fall in love. On the day of their wedding, she is bitten by a snake, and she dies and goes to the Underworld. Orpheus is so distraught, so he does what no mortal has done — he goes down to the Underworld to try to get her back from Hades. He sings his sad songs and he moves the heart of Persephone, the wife of Hades. Persephone appeals to Hades on Orpheus’ behalf and Hades says he can have Eurydice back if he can walk out of the Underworld without turning around to make sure she’s behind him. So she walks behind him and, at the very last minute, he loses faith and he turns around to make sure she is there and then he loses her forever. Spoiler alert — it’s a tragic ending.

Hadestown is a retelling of that story. All the characters have the same names. But in this version of the story, it takes place in a kind of dream-like Depression Era-esque landscape, where the above ground world is sort of post-Apocalyptic, and the below ground world is this sort-of nation state, a place of relative security. Hades, who is the boss or the king of that land, is building a wall all around his nation state to keep out the unpredictable forces of nature and poverty. Eurydice, in this version of the story, actually chooses to go to Hadestown because there is security there, there’s safety. Her life with her lover above ground is very unpredictable. It’s a political dreamscape version of the original Greek myth. When Mitchell became a songwriter after college, she found herself relating more and more to Orpheus, the mythological hero of song writers. “In Hadestown, he’s a character who believes that if he could just write something good enough, he could change the world, he could change the way things are,” says Mitchell. “I think I’ve had that feeling and many of us have. To tell that story in a new way felt exciting.” But as time has gone on —10 years of careful reshaping, reworking, rewriting — Mitchell finds herself understanding other characters, like Eurydice and Hermes, more than Orpheus the dreamer. Hermes is, after all, a story-teller, just like Mitchell.

In 2013, Mitchell moved from Vermont, where her parents still live, to Brooklyn. She saw a variety of shows, as one does when living in New York, and came across an early, Off-Broadway version of Dave Malloy’s Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812, directed by Rachel Chavkin. Mitchell was blown away. “I just fell in love with that piece and her direction of it,” she says. “I sort of sensed in her a collaborator that could take the thing further without breaking what was working about it as more of a Fringe piece.”

“It feels really great for us to be able to take this show somewhere far from New York and work on it in a way that feels sort of protected from that very critical world of theatre and be able to take some changes and explore up here.” - Anaïs Mitchell

With Chavkin by her side, Mitchell started workshopping the piece at New York Theatre Workshop. Dale Franzen and Mara Isaacs came on board as lead producers. Fast-forward to May 2016, and a musical version of Hadestown plays to sold-out audiences at New York Theatre Workshop. In June, a live studio recording with the cast follows. The show was a success and Broadway now seems like a very real possibility for Hadestown, especially with Chavkin’s Broadway production of Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 receiving rave reviews. To date, it is leading the pack of Tony nominations with 12 nods (including one for Chavkin, for Best Direction of a Musical). But it’s New York, and there are steps to be taken to get to the bright lights of Broadway.

That’s where the Citadel Theatre comes in. In February 2017, Daryl Cloran, Artistic Director of the Citadel, announced that the next production of Hadestown — the step just before Broadway — would take place not in Chicago or in London, England’s West End, but in Canada. And, not in Toronto, but in Edmonton, Alberta, at Canada’s third-largest regional theatre. Cloran, who started as the Artistic Director of the Citadel in September 2016, convinced the producers that the theatre — and Edmonton — would be the ideal place to shape Hadestown from a theatre-in- the-round piece to something that would work on the proscenium stages found in 99 per cent of theatres on Broadway. “I called the producers and told them about the Citadel and everything that was possible here,” says Cloran. “And, at first, I think they weren’t sure. But the more that we talked about the great production resources that we have here at the Citadel and the kinds of productions that we’ve done here in the past, the more excited the producers got about the potential of coming here to work with us.”

“… It takes place in a kind of dream-like Depression Era-esque landscape, where the above ground world is sort of post- Apocalyptic, and the below ground world is this sort-of nation state, a place of relative security.” - Anaïs Mitchell

Photograph by Joan Marcus. ©2016. Shaina Taub, Lulu Fall, Damon Daunno, Nabiyah Be, Amber Gray, Chris Sullivan, and Jessie Shelton from the New York Theatre Workshop production of the musical Hadestown.

In May 2017, Mitchell, Chavkin and several others from the creative team travelled to Canada for auditions in Edmonton and Toronto to find some Canadian actors for the cast — something Cloran insisted be a part of the deal. “It’s an amazing opportunity, not only for Edmonton audiences to see this production before it goes to Broadway but for Canadian artists to have the chance to work on this production here and to have the chance to work with a fantastic director like Rachel Chavkin,” explains Cloran. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that we’re able to provide.” Mitchell, for her part, is happy to leave behind the scrutiny of the Big Apple and the Broadway world to work on Hadestown in peace. “It feels really great for us to be able to take this show somewhere far from New York and work on it in a way that feels sort of protected from that very critical world of theatre and be able to take some changes and explore up here,” she says. “That feels like a new period for us.”

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.