Your Playlist: Hadestown

In a shocking moment of self care, I bought myself a ticket to see my local theater’s teen production of Hadestown this weekend. I’d never managed to catch the Broadway show, and I do love a musical. I went into the show totally unaware of the plot or score. As a result, my little immprof heart was shocked when this song began:

I found this interview with the composer Anaïs Mitchell. Here is what she said about the number:

I wrote that song in 2006, and it’s one of the few songs that I wrote very quickly, all in one sitting, almost before I understood what it meant. But I do remember what I was thinking about at the time, and that was this: I was imagining a climate in crisis, a world in which many places had become uninhabitable and there were large populations of migrants knocking at the gates of the places of relative wealth and security. And the thought that popped into my head was, “when that happens, who among us is not going to want to be behind some kind of wall?” Leaders (like Hades in Hadestown) have found it effective to use the language of the wall because it speaks loudly to a scared citizenry. The next thought that crossed my mind was the way walling others out has the equal and unintended effect of walling ourselves in.

This one is definitely making it into my class playlist!

-KitJ