Broadway is coming back! Just last week it was announced that Hadestown, which won the Tony Award for Best New Musical along with a Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album, will return to the Walter Kerr on September 2nd.
In the most creative way, the show Intertwines the myths of Orpheus and Eurydice and King Hades and Persephone. Anaïs Mitchell wrote Hadestown’s uplifting and soul-nourishing music, lyrics, and book, which was developed with director Rachel Chavkin. Using folk music and New Orleans jazz, Hadestown tells an ancient story and yet it is so relevant to our culture, especially now.
“I have desperately missed this show and our company over the past year. Hadestown is about rebirth and the deep need to tell old stories anew in fellowship together,” said Chavkin who won a Tony Award for her innovative direction. “Hadestown is also about a community coming together and calling for change. As we’ve seen demands for necessary change from across the country, in the fight for racial justice and economic justice and environmental justice, the show’s central theme of imagining how the world could be will ring out particularly loudly.”
One of the many forces behind the show is choreographer David Neumann. He first discovered the music of Hadestown purely by accident. His wife, actress Erica Sweany, happened to hear Anaïs Mitchell’s alluring tunes, based on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, in a coffee shop. Sweany loved the music so much she ended up downloading Mitchell’s concept album.
From there they often played the Hadestown soundtrack in their home. Neumann and Sweany talked about how the piece should be a show. “The juxtaposition of this ancient story with how it impacts our daily life right now and talks to our current culture was thrilling,” recalls Neumann who is an actor, choreographer and dancer.
Neumann and Sweany loved Mitchell’s music so much they even envisioned images of staging, costumes, and characters emerging from it. “I believe that is true for lots of people, maybe not even just theater nerds,” says Neumann. “I keep calling Hadestown an “American Epic Poem.” It evokes just enough to launch the listener’s imagination while still being rooted in our culture.” He saw the piece as poetry, opening the imagination to other possibilities.
So, imagine his surprise and elation when a year later he got a call to choreograph Hadestown featuring the music that he adored so much. The show would be directed with Rachel Chavkin. Neumann came on board and has been with the production before it debuted at New York Theatre Workshop. (Hadestown then went to Edmonton, Canada and was at the National Theatre in London until landing on Broadway.)
Neumann’s nuanced and deeply poetic choreography add even more layers to the rich story. It lures audiences and creates the world of the underground in a subtle way that is not overwrought. “I tried to do it in the most simple way possible. It doesn’t have to be too filigreed,” explains Neumann. “The music makes it swell in my heart, so I don’t want to get in the way.” He was also intent to lean into the metaphor of the piece. So, for example, mine workers do specific physical movements. But they are not literal to what an actual mine worker would do. Yet, it’s even more powerful.
Neumann made his Broadway debut choreographing Hadestown. Not only was he nominated for a Tony, he also won a Chita Rivera Award for Outstanding Choreography in a Broadway Show. "In the Hadestown process, I found myself working with a bunch of extremely talented artists," he shares. "They wanted to make something that mattered, something homemade, emotionally true and in conversation with our current cultural moment."
Jeryl Brunner: You have been called a "downtown" dancer. What is it like to work on Broadway?
David Neumann: I don’t see so much of a strict divide between what’s typically “uptown” and “downtown.” it is still a very different experience in some ways. In the not-for-profit world, there is much more permission, maybe even encouragement, to make work that is truly challenging, challenging to oneself, to an audience, to an art form. The work downtown is often led with a question or series of questions around an idea. And despite the clear differences in economics, in the Hadestown process, I found myself working with a bunch of extremely talented artists who wanted to make something that mattered, something homemade, emotionally true and in conversation with our current cultural moment. And that could be just as accurate a way to describe some of the intentions of the artists who work downtown, as well.
And speaking of all this downtown/uptown stuff, how interesting that a large group of traditionally downtown artists, myself included, are working on Broadway this season! Working on Broadway brings with it a certain cache. I don’t have to explain to anyone what “I’m working on a musical on Broadway” means. Most folks go “Oh! Like Hamilton?” and I say essentially, “Uh…yeah…like Hamilton.” Whereas when I’m describing my downtown work, it usually takes more exegesis to help the non-theatre person begin to create a picture of what it is I’m working on. Both are exciting for me and essential to our culture.
Jeryl Brunner: What was one of your earliest memories performing?
David Neumann: I was kind of a class clown growing up. My English teacher in the 7th grade put me in the school play which was a musical about a magician written by the music teacher. I was cast as the lead (the magician), and I couldn’t even shuffle a deck of cards very well. So, it was definitely a stretch. I remember creating really weirdly staged and disappointing magic tricks. They were mostly comprised of all the lead up and outro gestures — the before and after of a magic trick, with no actual trick. I remember enjoying the process of inventing the gestural language, even back then. I have a distinct memory of feeling very nervous. And then something clicked on stage I felt like I could do anything. I think I added 20 minutes to that performance.
Jeryl Brunner: Did other people in your family perform?
David Neumann: I come from a theatrical family. My parents were members of the experimental theatre group, Mabou Mines. And so I got to see some really fantastic, f#@k#d up dance and theater. It was the kind that doesn’t arrive at a neat ending, or give a moral lesson. It's more a type of experience that lives on after the performance is done and must be wrestled with, even days after the stage is dark and we’ve all gone home.