Interview: HADESTOWN Producer and Greenville Native Sally Cade Holmes

Broadway is back at The Peace Center. And this time, a song could change your fate.

Welcome to HADESTOWN, winner of eight 2019 Tony Awards®, including Best Musical. With book, music & lyrics by celebrated singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell and innovative direction by Rachel Chavkin (Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812) HADESTOWN is a love story for today... and always.

Intertwining two mythic tales - that of young dreamers Orpheus and Eurydice, and that of King Hades and his wife Persephone - HADESTOWN offers a hell-raising journey to the underworld and back. Pitting industry against nature, doubt against faith, and fear against love, the show is a haunting and hopeful theatrical experience that grabs you and never lets go.

Greenville marks the very first stop on the show's North American Tour, and, according to producer Sally Cade Holmes, it's the perfect story for right now.

"I was at the invited dress rehearsal on Broadway and just every other line hits differently," she said in a recent telephone conversation, held a few weeks after HADESTOWN reopened. "It hits a different heart string and a different chord. And I think that's what great art does. You see it at one point in your life and you experience it as one thing, and then you go through stuff and when you experience it again, you take new details from the show."

Holmes grew up in Anderson and graduated from St. Joseph's Catholic School here in Greenville. She then attended a small liberal arts college in Evansville, IN, where she became what she calls a theatre generalist.

"I studied a little bit of everything," she said.

After college, Holmes moved to New York City. "I originally wanted to be an actor and then quickly realized that the auditioning life was not for me." It was when she started a theatre company with some friends that her own path became clear.

"We were doing a play," Holmes said, "and one of the co-founders was a scenic designer, one was a lighting designer, one was a costume designer, and then I was an actor. And my other co-founder friend was an actor and we were doing this play and there really wasn't a role for me. So I was like, well, y'all are doing everything on stage, I'll just do everything else. I'll make sure that the marketing materials are set up. I'll make sure the contracts are signed. I'll make sure we have butts in seats."

When the show opened, Holmes mused that she couldn't see anything on stage that she had directly been a part of. "My scenic designer friend was like, are you kidding me? You are the glue that made this thing happen. And I realized that maybe my superpower is moving things forward - through relationships, through making sure the business is in order - and at that point I decided I should probably learn how to do this producing thing."

Ultimately, Holmes began working with noted producer Tom Kirdahy, leading to her involvement in such Broadway productions as ANASTASIA, THE INHERITANCE, and FRANKIE AND JOHNNY AT THE CLAIRE DE LUNE.

But HADESTOWN is perhaps the show closest to her heart.

"Anais Mitchell put out a concept album in 2010," Holmes said. "And when I was in college, I was obsessed with it. Anais was going around in a van in Vermont doing pop-up community productions of this concept album."

Flash forward seven years - Holmes is working for Tom Kirdahy, who takes a meeting about bringing HADESTOWN to Broadway. "I was like, Oh my gosh, I've been obsessed with this music for years. So I was thrilled and immediately thought that whatever happens, I must figure out a way to be a part of it. And I ended up coming on board as a full producer. I raised money for it and just fell in love with it...It's been thrilling and, wow, a gift. It's been truly a gift."

For Holmes, it's a combination of elements that make HADESTOWN resonate so much with her.

"Anais' work is so specific and so different than anything I had heard on Broadway," she said. "She comes from the folk world and that is thrilling, and that's infused in this production. And then watching Rachel Chavkin, our director, seamlessly spin this story into this gorgeous production. Those elements that have come together - along with all of the production elements - have created something that I think is unlike anything else on Broadway."

As for the show's renewed relevance in our post-2020 world, Holmes quotes a lyric from the final song.

Some flowers bloom

Where the green grass grows

Our praise is not for them

But the ones who bloom in the bitter snow

We raise our cups to them

"This idea of perseverance, this idea that we have gotten through this together as a unit, as a family, as a cast, as a community. It's really beautiful," Holmes said.

"Our artwork is a flower blooming and that's a theme throughout the entire show. Orpheus sings a song to bring the world back into tune, and that just feels like the perfect story for right now."

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HADESTOWN runs Oct. 5-10, 2021, at the Peace Center in Greenville, SC.

For tickets and additional information visit peacecenter.org.