Losing Eurydice: Looking Back At A Week Of Hadestown

If you haven’t stumbled upon this tragic folk-opera...

Welcome to a new week Word Nerds!

I’ll update soon and keep my chin up as much as I can manage- but am always and forever grateful for you, your time, your support, and your eyeballs.

Here is the usual schpeal I say at the beginning of each week:

Skip ahead to the new words down below, if you’ve read this Monday Hello before

My Substack is where I am able to express myself creatively, share on all sorts of topics (not exclusively sickness) and it helps me to archive this “ongoing legacy” that I HOPE is the continual memoir project I’ve started.

I’m now trying to find balance in this ongoing archive while continuing to pour worthwhile work in.

And therefor aim to find a mix of posting brand new, only-on-Stack full length pieces + as well as un-chopped pieces = to make it still feel like a full space here, and not like anyone is being shortchanged.

Thank you for a beautiful incoming week together!

Yours,

B

I have been jonesing to talk about the artistic experience we wrapped a couple of weeks ago!

I don’t know if writing about a show you’ll never get to see is a disorienting or isolating experience for you, the reader …

But since I consider you my friends I am going to share a proper Virginia (Wolfe) and dole out giddy enthusiasm diary style. [I feel there is a Diary-ah joke in there somewhere?]

I’ll be writing about art in a very unartistic way.

First, here is an update that you didn’t technically ask for (please forgive me), as writing “This Week” pieces as of late has felt like a really tragicomic way of honoring the privilege of still being alive, and remembering just how much can happen in a 7-day week.

Just in case these “This Week” pieces are feeling like a piecemeal annoyance, let me know if you like this occasional style of chronic chronicles? (Or, as my husband calls it, “ADHD smatterings”.)

This Week:

We had stage week for the show I had the privilege of choreographing, called Hadestown (if you don’t know Hadestown yet, it is a musical that is very dear to our family’s heart).

It was an incredible experience to be able to live within this world through dance. (If you haven’t stumbled upon this tragic folk-opera, it’s definitely worth your time … because I love tragic sh*t?)

Stage weeks often mean late nights, later dinners, and even though every millisecond was worth it, and I don’t want to complain in this official creative log book, I cannot emphasize enough how arduous it has been to be dealing with a cervical spine kerfuffle at the same time.

Little did I know that stage week and a 3-day-show-weekend would roll immediately into a brand new job that arose because a local high school needed a last second teacher touchstone! [So yes, I will end up working for 14 days straight]

Even though I am stoked to be working with a different set of high schoolers all-day every-day for the rest of the school year, I am not giving up on the arts program that Hadestown introduced me to and will continue vying for the chance to cherish those performers into the future.

I have been making curriculum, prepping for a collegiate arts symposium, talking to local theater programs, have an obscene amount of doctor visits I’m neglecting, and so much motherhood and more… but overall I have felt like a massive failure in almost every area because there’s not enough time in the day for what is being asked of me. I am feeling very very… small.

Despite feeling a failure at far too many things, it behooves us to enshrine the shrapnel of the more saccharine and soft syllables of the last couple of weeks.

So here are some of the positive pieces that I’d documented about the show along the way as a way of saying goodbye (for now):

One thing my partner noticed and commented on that really struck him, coming in without having seen anything in advance - was how our director, Mister Andrew, showed the slow devolvement of Hades through the obstruction of his eyes.

He has no glasses as a young man falling in love… then clear lenses as he begins to grow more mistrusting of the world… and finally full ownership of his capitalism with shades. (The bright side? He takes them off when Orpheus’ song reminds him of falling in love with Persephone. So maybe he will change in the future?)

We chose to show an “origin story” in our version, because many people who’d seen and loved H.Town still felt a little confused without previous mythological knowledge [going in].

Knowing this was said, and with Mister Andrew, David and Michael focusing on access = we were able to really lean into a lot of the simmering darkness in this folk opera and spell out what’s often only implied.

One of the things I was most grateful for was the generosity and risk our artistic team took by allowing someone brand new to them [me] to create alongside; Not just copy/paste the show “as is” from B.Way. They so easily could have mansplained or ignored what I wanted to take on, but always let me feel like it was okay to speak up. [In the arts, this is pretty much unheard of]

(Warming up as a group with Follin dancing beautifully alongside, and watching her have sleepovers and make fast friends was definitely the highlight of it all as a Mom, it probably should be sneaky, happy stated too.)

The words “attention to detail” are definitely defined by our costume designer, Miss Caroline. She knows myths inside and out!

I was especially excited about the way we imagined a brand new Persephone- which was something we should do, considering it’s a teen show [and the lush lifestyle is not one we condone].

So, thankfully, with support of our Drama-dudes team of anti-mansplainers, I was able to lean into the “above ground” concept of someone who represents Spring and literal levity, and use the gifts of our dancer Imogen and make a Persephone that is a dainty, glittering, Queen-Tatiana-like midsummer night.

Her balletic nature felt so kismet and contrasting to the heavy, sharp edge of Hades that now I’ll be hard pressed to imagine that role any other way; The dichotomy of the pair felt so meant-to-be.

I wish everyone could see our very sober, vulnerable version of Persephone because it shatters the heart to see her stripped of agency and identify in this way.

Oh, by the way: that’s also why we added a thread of Hades removing her pointe shoes against her will in the middle of the show! = A symbol of the way many young women lose what makes them “them” by staying with the wrong person.

Eventually, we even created a moment of potential forgiveness when he finally returns her pointe shoes to her near the end.

This is all definitely left up to the audience but… I like that we have fragments of past, present and future in our quilt of a show? Whether implied depth (and maybe even eventual redemption): No one is all good or all evil.

But this show has so many stories baked within and I wish I could share them all.

Every actor deserves to be seen (I’ll do my best with better footage soon!) - not just the gods and goddesses.

My friends who came to the show (and surprised Follin) were so generous to astutely say, “This did not feel like a high school theatre production. The way the story was told through body language, or the way their voices were so much more mature and raw and real than the typical Musical Theater filter…. It just felt so different.”

I wish you could see the way each dancer put life into their roles- There were so many details and gestures to be found!

One thing, for example, that I dug [in all its dorky abstractness] was the use of black-tulle-like funeral veils to control citizens in Hadestown, and black fabric in general to represent the looming presence of death and the shadows inside all of us.

I like for audiences to glean what they need from shows and not have everything spelled out, per se- but I hope a few little chirpy details isn’t too annoying!

I’m going to be very honest… Because of how hard these storymakers work and the pure, undiluted respect and kindness they bring to their peers and teachers (not blowing smoke!) =

This show felt like a live Disney creation or something, by the end.

Watching the kids in the audience watch this felt like that level; as if the kids were watching new heroes through wide eyes.

Gasping, laughing, swooning - all the while, seeing examples of students just like them.

I wish I could show you the faces of the kiddos witnessing this show that weekend because you never know what type of shows will hit different ages and which won’t… And this show had all the makings of abstraction that won’t resonate with younger crowds.

I’m so proud they were able to tell a story with body language, acting and deep attention to detail that lit up the faces of a next generation in a way that completely shocked me.

(Imagine their perfect faces with me?)

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