The Historian

She/her | hub for everything I do with Hadestown | asks open, hijinks encouraged

[hadestownhistory]

State of the project

Hey y’all! I know it’s been a hot minute since I put anything out properly for this project. My interests tend to wander, which can slow any progress I make. That, and I’ve gotten to the point where I’m learning stuff I can’t necessarily share out in the open. Of course, I’m keeping the account and I’ll still be around to chat about the show; I'm not going anywhere.

Anyways, that’s all! I’m still here, and I’ll still happily tell anyone I can about Cerberus and whatever is safe to share publicly.

[hadestownhistory]

Update as of Jan 6, 2025:

Got a plan, if legal rights work out y’all should hopefully see some original stuff on here come spring!

[optimistic-autistic]

tbh when i see someone talk about the '''original cast'''' of hadestown i always think they could mean literally anything by it. like who are we talking about??? the 2006 vermont cast? the first off-broadway (NYTW) cast???? the 2010 concept album cast?? the OBC??

it could be literally any of those lol

[nytw-hadestown-pics]

Hadestown (2016, NYTW) cast and crew at the Hadestown Cast Album Release Party in October 2017, sourced from Getty Images.

Photos © Santiago Felipe via Getty Images

[optimistic-autistic]

yayyy the hadestown proshot made more money than hamilton PUT IT IN LATIN AMERICA

[theimpossiblescheme]

Tired: "Orpheus turned around because he loved Eurydice, and that's a good thing"/"Orpheus turned around because he failed to trust her, the same way Hades fails to trust Persephone, and that's a bad thing."

Wired: "Hades knew damn well he was setting them up to fail, and the end of the story hinges around him setting those terms to begin with. The onus isn't on Orpheus and Eurydice to break the loop by getting out of the Underworld--it's on Hades to break it by swallowing his pride and letting them go unconditionally."

[onthenextsitcom]

(british fates in hadestown) what you gonna do when the crisps are down

[hadestownhistory]

One moment I think is under appreciated in discussions of Hadestown’s proshot’s cinematography is His Kiss, The Riot. When they directed that, they leaned ALL the way in to Page’s background as a Shakespearean actor, and it SHOWS. Beautiful

[unknownundertalefan64]

In a local production of hadestown that i saw, when it came time for orpheus to sing epic III, the fates didnt give him his guitar back. You see, up on the platform by hades' office door, a shiny black guitar has been mounted on the wall throughout the whole play. It is this guitar that orpheus is given to play epic III on: hades' guitar. He once sang a song of love like orpheus, you know.

[inevitablestars]

can't believe that the turning around story ended with him turning around again i'm so upset

[future-crab]

Imagine being Anais Mitchell and writing a song about the rhetoric of fascism so incisive and prescient that 10 years later an actual fascist would use that exact rhetoric down to the highly-specific phrasing in his presidential campaign. But also it took 10 years for the project you wrote that song for to move from living room shows to concept album to theater workshop to off-Broadway to Broadway, and its Broadway debut ended up coinciding with said fascist's successful bid for the presidency, and now it looks like your song that you wrote in 2005 is a super unsubtle reference to that one particular and highly-topical politician.

Frankly if I were her I would have started killing.

[optimistic-autistic]

yayyy the hadestown proshot made more money than hamilton PUT IT IN LATIN AMERICA

[movieswithtrains]

Yes, (it is heavily implied) that Hadestown (2026) has a train in it

[disclaimeriamaloser]

NYTW Orpheus and Eurydice you are so dear to me

[argyropoeiaa]

yknow

if we gotta do replica hadestown productions can we at least replicate older versions

give me canadian tux orpheus or steampunk twink hermes or a middle aged man’s attempt at goth fates or give me DEATH

[hadestownhistory]

Wait is steampunk twink Hermes Vermont Hermes? Please tell me you mean Vermont Hermes

[argyropoeiaa]

yknow

if we gotta do replica hadestown productions can we at least replicate older versions

give me canadian tux orpheus or steampunk twink hermes or a middle aged man’s attempt at goth fates or give me DEATH

[orpheuslament]

cause heres the thing to know how it ends & still begin to sing it again as if it might turn out this time

[countdown-to-the-hadestown-movie]

Today is July 3rd 2026!

Hadestown comes to theaters in:

21 Days!

That's exactly 3 weeks!!!

Trivia of the day: There's no news today so we're back on the cut lyrics train! In the Edmonton and London productions, Orpheus and Eurydice were introduced like this:

"On the railroad line on the road to hell / There was a poor boy working on a song / Poor boy singin' to himself / Waiting for someone to come along / On the railroad line on the road to hell / Like this young girl looking for something to eat / And brother thus begins the tale of Orpheus / And Eurydice!"

This verse added some more depth to Orpheus and Eurydice, which allowed it to stick for longer. But during the London production, the show was still being criticized for Orpheus feeling unsympathetic and undefined as a character. So his intro was rewritten to the one which currently exists on Broadway to more clearly center Orpheus's new (at that point, it was new), softer personality.