Hadestown: Anais Mitchell - Writer
Trae Holiday and Besa Gordon got the opportunity to interview Anais Mitchell, the writer of the eight-time Tony award-winning musical Hadestown, at its Los Angeles red carpet premiere.
Hadestown is widely considered as musical theater royalty. The show first started in 2006, but it didn’t debut on Broadway until 2019, almost 13 years after its conception. Now, in 2022 Hadestown has finally made its way to a national tour.
During the conception of Hadestown, Mitchell says that at the beginning of her career she saw herself as an idealist. Orpheus, the main character of Hadestown, embodies this trait from Mitchell, “he’s this idealist, this dreamer, and he comes face to face with the rules of the world,” said Mitchell.
A younger Mitchell may have seen herself as a dream, but today, she is most definitely living the dream. In 2019 during the 73rd Tony Awards, Hadestown won best musical along with seven other awards. Mitchell says that when she was writing the play, she was not in it for the awards, “it was moment to moment just enjoying the process of making art,” said Mitchell.
Mitchell’s advice to new creatives getting started in the industry is simple, “You’ve got to be able to put out mistakes.” What she means by this is that there is always something to improve within your work, “you’re not going to get it on the first try,” said Mitchell.
Mitchell specifically chose to use Greek mythology because it was already powerful within the societal consciousness. She fell in love with the optimist that was Orpheus and the dichotomy that was the love between Hades, the wealthiest of all the gods, and Persephone, the god of spring. Mitchell used the characters present within Hadestown to continue to unearth archetypes that already exist.
Mitchell sees musical theater as a transformative type of art, “it’s about the power of music to transform us as a community and a world,” said Mitchell. Now, with the pandemic seemingly coming to a close, Mitchell wants everyone to go to theaters again because she wants everyone to experience the spectacle that is musical theater.
Hadestown begins its run at the Paramount Theatre on July 12th and concludes on the 17th. You can purchase tickets here
For more information about the show, click here
