Debut of the Month: Kurt Elling on His HADESTOWN Experience: 'My Heart is Wide Open'

Kurt Elling is a renowned jazz vocalist and two-time Grammy Award winner, who is now making his Broadway debut as Hermes in Hadestown! BroadwayWorld spoke with Elling about the timeliness of Hadestown, what it's like working alongside his fellow cast members, and much more. Read the full interview, and see photography by BroadwayWorld's Jennifer Broski here!

You’ve built an extraordinary career as a jazz singer and performer. Why was now the time to make your Broadway debut, and what drew you to Hadestown and to the role of Hermes?  

In the largest sense, I have to trust the hidden hand. I haven’t been in a proper theatrical production since I was in high school. When the offer first came through, my wife said, “Oh my goodness, did you ever dream?” And I said, “Yeah, but 30 years I’ve been waiting on this call!” I’m so grateful to have a seat the jazz table, and to sing that music, and to be trusted by audiences in that realm night after night, and to have toured the world time and again. I really try to add as much value as I can to that tradition, and to embrace it, and to feed the audiences whatever I can possibly think of to feed them of high quality. And the Broadway world is a similarly hallowed, important genre of beauty, and creativity, and thrills, and ingenuity.

And so, now to have such a beautiful role in such a gorgeous show at this really remarkably difficult and awful time in American history, and in world history, it’s a great, great gift to me. It’s an enormous gift that Rachel [Chavkin, director] and Anaïs [Mitchell, music, lyrics, and book] have trusted me with this role just now. And I really feel that it’s so important, this show is so important, it’s so timely, and it’s so real, and dear, and honest, and it’s not frivolous. This is not a frivolous show. And so, when you ask, ‘What does it mean to me to step into this role?’ the show is so extraordinary. And I feel like I maybe have been preparing my whole career to have this moment. I talk to the audiences all the time; there is never a fourth wall for me.

This is an iconic Broadway role. How did you approach finding your own interpretation of Hermes?

My biggest challenge was just remembering the blocking! That part of my brain has not been exercised for decades. As I read the piece over and over again, as I read the script and as I interacted, and then as the rest of the cast came into the room, to have Jack Wolfe and Rebecca Naomi Jones, and Morgan Dudley, it just really fell into place what my trajectory was going to be. And then it was a very straightforward move for me, and it was much more a matter of hoping that Rachel and the associate directors would let me do as much as I want to do with it. And I’m so grateful that they’re letting me have my way. I’m not trying to draw focus, I’m not trying to upend anything, but I can’t imagine playing this role in a different way than the way I’m trying to.

I’ve got to have Orpheus make it one of these times! I’ve got to have him make it for himself, I’ve got to have him make it for Persephone, my girl. It’s a very meta role because I may be the only character in the play who knows what’s going on in the fullest sense. And yet, I have to dive in and I have to inhabit a path within the story. So I’m telling the story, and I’m within the story, and there are times when I cannot do anything to help my boy, and there are times when I cannot do anything to help Eurydice—I’ve got to stand aside. Otherwise, how will the hero be the hero, if he or she doesn’t go through the darkest possible night and come out on the other side on their own? And it just breaks my heart.

How did it feel stepping out on stage for your first performance in Hadestown? What moments from that night have stayed with you the most?

Because it’s been so long, I really could have used another several weeks of just running the blocking before I could really fall into it. I was just on hyper-vigilance not to mess up. One of the first nights my mind went somewhere and I didn’t say the most important thing I was supposed to say in the second act when I have to tell Orpheus and Eurydice what the rules are, “You have to walk in front and she has to walk in back, and if you turn around to make sure she’s coming…” I didn’t articulate the contract right—oh man, I was mad at myself!  Every show, and every jazz event as well, we all depend upon each other, and for me to mess up this critical moment in the show—thankfully I didn’t do it on the first night—I was so angry at myself! That means I even let down the security team. I definitely let down the audience that night.

I try not to be too hard on myself after all these years, because I know that I’m giving it the best thing that I have to give, but that first night... I wish I could have had a whole week of performances before the first night! That’s the chief feeling that I had. I just really was hyper-vigilant, and that means that the performance wasn’t everything that I would like it to be. You have to relax into it, and everybody has to have the rhythm together. It's such an endearing experience.

It's funny, nobody in this cast, I have not heard a single complaint of any kind about, “Oh, two show day, everybody get ready!” It was Ernie Banks, the baseball player, they’re like, “Man, you’ve got a double header today, and his response was, “Let’s play three!” I’m with that. Let’s do this as often as we can.

Hadestown has been running for a very long time, but this is the first time we’ve had a full cast changeover since the show began. How has it been working alongside your fellow cast members?

I have to lead with gratitude. To have this particular opportunity, with a show that means so much, with people who are as beautifully talented, and skillful, and dedicated... We all pull together. I made a point when we were in rehearsals, I took each one of them out to dinner individually as soon as I could, because I know how we need to depend on each other. And I’m intent on making friends in the deepest possible way with the limited amount of time that we’ve got.

Every creative time, whether it’s this show, whether it’s one of the bands I’ve put together over 30 years, there’s a time when it happens, and the dates are set, and you’ve got to live fully, and fully in love, and fully listening, and fully giving to one another, for the precious time that you have together. And that’s the only way forward to go. And thankfully, oh my goodness, my beautiful Hadestown family, I’m in love every night. And I have the best seat in the house! Because I get to hear them sing from 10 feet away! It’s thrilling, my heart is wide open. I’m beyond any words of gratitude I could say.

Do you have a favorite song or moment in the show?

Oh man, I have so many favorites. I love it when I get to have actual dialogue [laughs] as opposed to just the monologue parts—which are beautiful, and I love addressing the audience, but I really love getting into it with the other actors.

I really love so many things, I love when Rebecca gets to sing the entr’acte, she’s so brilliant, and so gorgeous, and so thrilling to get to watch and listen to. I love it when Jack gets to sing 'If It’s True,' I really feel like that’s as much the awakening that I think my Hermes is hoping for, when Hades gets the flower. Because here is his guy, his little son figure, and the son is waking up to the power of the message. The son is waking up to the overthrow of oppression, and giving the workers their dignity back, and reminding them of it, and all of the most germane questions, and I just want to cheer every night as loud as I can. I want to put my fist in the air and say, “My boy! Keep talking!” It’s so beautifully written. Annais has made something that’s just so valuable.

When Persephone gets her love back, and she puts on that little girl face, and she gets to just run and be free again, and not in pain, ugh God, it’s so beautiful! I love it when Paulo, he’s got this mighty arm—God he’s so frickin handsome!— and then he puts that arm up, and it’s the most evil moment, and doubt comes! And Morgan, she’s so endearing. I’m not even sure how old she is, but holy moly she’s a professional! She brings that shit every night! She knows the task, and she’s done it now with a couple different Orpheuses, and I’ve just been like, ‘Woah, sister! You are spot on, it doesn’t matter who shows up, you are going to show that, you are going to sing like that!’ I am impressed; she is a very lovely young person.

I just have so much hope, and I get to cry for the world that we actually live in every night. And that’s part of the message I’m trying to send out. Because when Hades is talking about the wall, and I can just make stank faces about it, and try to not pull focus, but react with my heart, that hideous message, and try to be present with that, with everything going on in the world…

Here is my real hope: That every night our performance of this beautiful script moves people to remember what we’re up against, and to remember their strength, and our collective strength. Because this is so much more than a love story gone sad, it’s about the number of times we as a people have to rise up and stake a claim for ourselves, and be brave, and do it again, in spite of the fact that it might not turn out—but it might. It might turn out this time. We’ve got to keep going. We’ve got to keep standing up. We’ve got to keep overthrowing the power that wants to keep every body down and keep your head low. It’s so timely, and I just pray every night that some of the people walk out understanding what’s going on, and feeling that they have a family, and that they are not alone, and we’re all going to stand up. Because I’ll see them on the picket lines.

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