As all GHAA students know (I hope), our current school show is Hadestown: Teen Edition. From the countless rehearsals I’ve watched, it’s gonna be good. Like, yeah, it’s a school play, but this is GHAA; our school productions are crazy good. Because this show is rehearsed during the school day, many more students have the opportunity to be involved. The story and soundtrack are amazing, but it’s the cast that really makes this production stand out.
From a student perspective, we know these kids. We know rumors and drama, and we let it represent them. Especially if you’re a senior, as many of the named characters’ actors are, it’s hard to look past the person you know in real life and become enveloped in the story.
Orpheus and Eurydice. Eurydice and Orpheus. They’re in love. Eurydice dies, and they’re still in love. What can be done? A lot, actually. Orpheus travels to the underworld to find her, hoping to bring her home. Hades refuses, but their love warms Persephone’s heart. They’re given a chance; they may walk out together, back to the world of the living, but he may not see her. He will not hear her, feel her, sense her. He just has to keep walking, and believe that she’s right behind him. If he turns back to look at her, they’re both done for. Can he do it? Can they make it out? Maybe this time it’ll turn out differently. Maybe not.
This is serious. This is gruesome, heartbreaking, tragic. So, Jari and Norman? I love them, but this scares me. Or, more aptly, them being paired together scares me. They’re both very silly people. Put together, they’re unstoppable in their inability to take things seriously – and this story is a tragedy. There’s no doubt in my mind that they’re both committed, that they love their craft and love having fun with it, but can they perform well enough to not laugh as they’re being tricked and abused by the gods?
The director of Hadestown: Teen Edition, Thomas Beebe, is working hard to shape them up. He steals them away from their beds (classes) while they’re sleeping (not doing anything) in the dead of night (stunch), and makes them toil until the sun comes up (when school gets out at 2:11). If you saw the preview of the show at GHAA’s Works In Progress night, you saw Jari sing exactly one line: Eurydice’s line in When the Chips are Down. Her voice is incredibly soulful, the vocal strategies increasing the impact of the lyrics sung. Through this one line, you see her distress, her dilemma, and her love for Orpheus. Through one line. Once you split the couple up, they are amazing actors and inhabit their characters earnestly. If you’ve seen Norman in any other GHAA production, especially Peter and the Starcatcher, you know he’s typically cast as an innocent little boy. Pre-Eurydice Orpheus might fit this description, but through the course of the story, he grows up. He gains a reason to finish his song, the epic that will fix everything wrong in the world. Norman sings the low parts naturally, relaxing into his deeper register as Orpheus is comforted by his love for Eurydice. He’s very boyfriend. I wasn’t sure Norman and Jari would be a good match; not because they’re too different, but because they’re too alike. Eurydice needs to ground Orpheus, to remind him what he’s fighting for. Orpheus needs to feel the pressure of the entire world relying on him, and feel free from it when he’s with her. Just hearing the feeling in their voices, I know they can. But when it comes to facing each other and bringing those emotions to life, they’ll have to set aside the comics they’ve always been and get okay being vulnerable.
Despite Max and Nohelys being newer to GHAA’s musical theater scene, these concerns can’t touch them. Is it possible for a show to be too vulnerable? Knowing Max’s affinity for… antics… this surprises me, but they completely transform when they get into character. Anyone who knows Max and Nohelys knows they’re good friends. In the show, Orpheus is so deeply in love with Eurydice he proclaims to Hermes, “Wherever she is, is where I’ll go,” AND THEN FOLLOWS THROUGH AND ACTUALLY GOES TO HADESTOWN TO FIND HER. I would say, “If he wanted to, he would,” but it didn’t turn out too well for them, so… Anyway, the trust and closeness between these actors in real life immediately reflects when they’re playing their characters. They sing to each other, not the audience. They naturally sit hip to hip on the makeshift stage as they do throughout the school day.
I’ve seen them grow over these past few months, gaining confidence and comfort in their roles. They already have the emotion, they simply twist it into Orpheus and Eurydice’s emotion. For them, it’s real. I can foresee Norman’s Orpheus being gullible and easily suggestable, but I know Max’s Orpheus will be acting out of love. He truly will not be able to live without her. When he turns around, I will believe he had to.
Beyond Orpheus and Eurydice, Hadestown: Teen Edition also focuses on another couple: Hades and Persephone. Ironically, Hades isn’t actually in much of the show. Persephone, however… I have a lot to say about Persephone.
The first rehearsal I had the pleasure of attending, V Perez lost a shoe, struggled to pull palettes, and accidentally flashed both Orpheuses and Eurydices. Very method. But seriously, the powerful singing I heard only a month into this show made me so proud and excited; V and I have known each other since when we were both sucky musicians in 6th grade, and every time I watch them perform, it reminds me of how far we’ve come. Listening to the professional recording, Persephone has a very unique and distinct voice. V is a very unique and distinct person. There’s a specific type of zhuzh when they sing as Persephone, and I know they just do it naturally, because they know Persephone. If you’ve ever listened to a female jazz singer and gotten chills, you might know what I’m talking about.
Practically the entirety of Persephone’s singing sounds like this, as it is most commonly found in the folk-jazz-blues bases of Hadestown. She’s also just cool like that. A bit of a growl tinges the voice, and it’s up in your face about it. Without a mic, this voice still penetrates. It crosses the room and bites. It singles you out in the audience, makes eye contact, and licks its lips. It says, “What’s my name?” and you are compelled to respond. And then its foot spontaneously pops out of its heeled crocs and it becomes clear why one might have been casted for this particular role. Said with love.
We also have another actress playing Persephone: Sofia Hernandez Fereira. Sofia has incredible physicality, stemming from her talent as a dancer. In Livin’ It Up On Top, her position on a platform in the middle of the cast gives a perfect view of her Persephone. She really is living it up on top – Sofia’s Persephone is having the time of her life, and there’s no way anyone in the audience could watch her and think, “That was cool, but it’s time to go back to Hades now.” The way the professional version and V’s version rely on alcohol for escapism, Sofia’s relies on club culture. She doesn’t fall into a “dancer first” imbalance, though, as her singing is also remarkable. Her belting is punchy. It’s easy to believe that she’s commanding the cast, that she’s the queen of the underworld. Marc-Anthony Gonzolez will be playing Hades parallel to Sofia’s Persephone, and their shared backgrounds in dance will make their version of the show extremely fun to watch, as well as enhancing their chemistry.
For more behind the scenes content, follow V Perez on Instagram @_yuck_its_v_!
Because this show is based on a Greek myth, musical theater teacher/director Thomas Beebe decided to team up with Miss Kylie and her mythology class to brainstorm creative and true-to-myth changes to bring to GHAA’s version of the show. Students in Kylie’s class are paired up with actors in the show. We give advice on how to embody not just the character, but the god (or demigod, or nymph, or whatever). They’re the experts on the show, but we’re the experts on the myth. From costumes to complete personality changes in some of our characters, we hope you enjoy our take on it.
Just like us being faced with this option, you probably have no idea what this means. In literal terms, what are we doing? Oh boy, am I glad you asked. More talking about V! Yay! My partner for this project is V, playing Persephone. Personally, I’ve consumed a lot of Greek-myth-inspired media, and when it comes to Persephone, it’s kind of a free-for-all. Some want to be accurate, some want to make it romantic, some want to make her more feminist, I guess, and have her favor the underworld over the mortal world. She is Queen, but in making her so, she forgets her own life to adopt Hades’s.
Going into this, I asked V, “What is Persephone like in this show.” I’m taking inspiration from the myth, but this is Hadestown (Teen Edition). It has to be able to still be Hadestown (Teen Edition). Persephone is hot, she’s hilarious, she’s fun-loving, but on top of that, she has the power to influence Hades’s actions and the common sense to tell him off for them. I love to joke, but when V’s shoe fell off, that was Persephone. She’s real. When we look at her story, we see things that happen to real people: raised by her mother, abandoned by her father, married to an older man, her life controlled by her intense family. The pomegranate seeds she ate unwittingly are eerily reminiscent of stories in which gods trick humans.
In my opinion, Persephone is one of the most human of the gods, and this production reflects that. In most, if not all, tellings of Orpheus and Eurydice’s story, Persephone is the one to get Hades to let them go. In Hadestown: Teen Edition, she’s even more humanized, going so far as to make Hades and Persephone parallel Orpheus and Eurydice – allowing them to have human flaws. They’re having issues in their relationship, and it’s affecting her; this version of the myth paints Persephone as an alcoholic, showing how heavily her disconnect with Hades is weighing on her. Persephone doesn’t want to go back to Hades, because in the living world, she can be uninhibited. In our production, I want V to lean into this, and really emphasize all of the one-liners and body language that hint at her humanity. This background for Persephone makes her actions make perfect sense, beyond her seeing her own relationship in Orpheus and Eurydice’s. She wants something to happen. She wants something good to happen. And what she usually does isn’t working anymore.
This show is big. This show is intense. This show is extraordinary (again, entirely speculation, but just trust me). We’ve had comedy after comedy for the past few years, and seeing my friends in a more serious production reflects how much they’ve all grown, both as actors and as people. I’m not a theater kid; why am I so obsessed with this show? Maybe, just maybe, the show’s art-imitates-life thing spreads beyond our political landscape. Maybe I’d turn around. Maybe everyone would. You could just as easily ask why the entire world since ancient Greece has been obsessed with this myth. It’s love, right? Yeah, it’s love.
Purchase your tickets for Hadestown: Teen Edition now on Ticketleap, or buy student tickets from Ms. Hart for $5 and get your money back at the show. See Norman Eason as Orpheus, Jariana Mojica as Eurydice, Marc-Anthony Gonzolez as Hades, Sofia Hernandez Fereira as Persephone, and Adela Furman as Hermes on January 31st at 7 pm and February 1st at 2 pm. See Max Acevedo as Orpheus, Nohelys Ortega as Eurydice, Bruin Kusmeskuz as Hades, V Perez as Persephone, and Shammia Martin as Hermes on February 1st at 7 pm and February 2nd at 2 pm. For more information, check out our official Hadestown: Teen Edition article.
