#anais mitchell

[polartss]

Suddenly I'm holding the world in my arms

[leosdooley]

YOU WANNA WALK WITH ME A WHILE?

the long walk (2025) // hadestown, anaïs mitchell // orpheus and eurydice, edward john poynter // a word to orphuists, kazimierz wierzyński

[aquitainequeen]

If Hadestown has a moral, she says, then it’s “you have to try, you have to have hope, not because success is a given – it’s not. Orpheus fails. We heroicise” – here she breaks off to apologise that jet lag has led to her making up words – “we heroicise Orpheus not because he succeeds but because he tries, and that endeavour alone is worthwhile. How to live, and not merely survive, is to believe things could change.”

Anaïs Mitchell on her musical Hadestown: 'I worked on it so long I was afraid I'd never make another record'

[future-crab]

One of my favorite parts of Hadestown is the way Hermes slips so seamlessly between participant and narrator. The fact that he knows from the beginning how the story is going to go, but still plays his part, surrounded by people who don’t know they’re characters in a tragedy. And he plays his part well. Every night, he tells Orpheus, “You want to talk to her? Go on," and every night, he asks, “Just how far would you go for her?” Every night, Orpheus asks him, “ It’s not a trick?” and he tells him, “No, it’s a test.” And every night, when the cycle starts again, when his voice is so broken with grief that he can barely get the words out to tell the audience - the audience that he and no one else has known was there the whole time - “Don’t ask why, brother, don’t ask how he could have come so close. The song was written long ago, and that is how it goes,” when Eurydice appears - fresh-faced and alive, with no memory of what has just happened - to ask, “anybody got a match?” he wordlessly extends his matchbook to her, and lets the story start anew. Someone’s got to tell the tale, whether or not it turns out well.

And still - AND STILL - every night, at the very beginning, he says, “Maybe it will turn out this time, on the road to hell, on the railroad line.”

[bioluminescentbladeschild]

I love Hadestown so much because in the original myth Eurydice very explicitly dies and that’s why she’s in the underworld. The musical takes a much more metaphorical approach. And what does the love of my life, Anais Mitchell, choose to use as an allegory for death?? Getting a shitty job. And that’s honestly so real of her

[uji-milumi]

Morydice and wolfeus they could never make me hate you 💔

(Alt captions and full image under the cut 👅)

[wekiaam]

Hadestown sketch from me in 2025 how is that possible

[goldenpiginthecage]

i can’t get over the fact that some people don’t like If It’s True from Hadestown?? i understand that some people dont like Reeve’s voice (personally i love it but not the point) but besides that, the LYRICS are beautiful and mean so much in the context of the musical, especially following Nothing Changes?

like the entire section of “the ones who tell the lies/Are the solemnest to swear/And the ones who load the dice/ Always say the toss is fair” and the rest of the song is heartbreaking

And even if you don’t like Reeve’s version, Jack’s was BRILLIANT and brought such a different dynamic to the song that still fit so well.

I NEED PEOPLE TO APPRECIATE IT MORE PLEASE AND THANK YOU