The American Theatre Guild will present HADESTOWN, the winner of eight 2019 Tony Awards including Best New Musical and the 2020 Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album. This production is part of the 25–26 BROADWAY IN SANTA BARBARA Series and will take The Granada Theatre stage.
HADESTOWN is the most honored show of the 2018-2019 Broadway season. In addition to the show’s eight Tony Awards®, it has been honored with four Drama Desk Awards, six Outer Critics Circle Awards, including Outstanding New Broadway Musical, and the Drama League Award for Outstanding Production of a Musical.
The acclaimed new musical is by celebrated singer-songwriter and Tony Award® winner Anaïs Mitchell and developed with original director and Tony Award® winner Rachel Chavkin. HADESTOWN marks the first time in over a decade that a woman has been the solo author of a musical: writing the music, lyrics, and book, and is the fourth time in Broadway history a woman has accomplished this creative feat.
The show opened at the Walter Kerr Theatre on Broadway (219 West 48th Street, New York) on April 17, 2019, where it played sold out houses nightly before performances were suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic. HADESTOWN resumed performances September 2, 2021 as one of the first musicals to reopen on Broadway where it continues to play today.
The show originated as Mitchell’s indie theater project that toured Vermont which she then turned into an acclaimed album. With Chavkin, her artistic collaborator, HADESTOWN has been transformed into a genre-defying new musical that blends modern American folk music with New Orleans-inspired jazz to reimagine a sweeping ancient tale.
Following two intertwining love stories — that of young dreamers Orpheus and Eurydice, and that of King Hades and his wife Persephone — HADESTOWN invites audiences on a hell-raising journey to the underworld and back. Mitchell’s beguiling melodies and Chavkin’s poetic imagination pit industry against nature, doubt against faith, and fear against love. Performed by a vibrant ensemble of actors, dancers, and singers, HADESTOWN delivers a deeply resonant and defiantly hopeful theatrical experience.
HADESTOWN electrified audiences with its 2016 world premiere at New York Theatre Workshop, which is the longest-running show in that celebrated theater’s 40-year history. The production then received its Canadian premiere at Edmonton’s Citadel Theatre in 2017 and then a 2018 sold-out engagement at the London’s National Theatre. HADESTOWN was developed with funding from the Eli and Edythe Broad Stage at the Santa Monica College Performing Arts Center and was further developed by The Ground Floor at Berkeley Repertory Theatre. HADESTOWN was co-conceived by Ben t. Matchstick.
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