Why we tell the story: Bay Port students perform in ‘Hadestown’

Audiences will be invited to “come and see how the world could be” at Bay Port’s production of Hadestown: Teen Edition, taking place through May 2. The show, which premiered on Broadway in 2019, follows the tragic tale of Orpheus and Eurydice alongside that of Hades and Persephone

“Hadestown follows the story of two young lovers,” said Jaclyn Beattie, the show’s director. “We have Orpheus, who is a young boy and a songwriter. He is the son of a muse, a songwriter and a signer and he is hoping to change the world. He falls in love with a young girl named Eurydice, and Eurydice has been through it. She has seen suffering and she has sacrificed a lot, so she has a little bit more of a jaded outlook on life. But [Orpheus] decides he’s going to write this song and it’s going to change the world because currently their conditions are not very good. Everybody’s cold, everybody’s hungry and nobody has anything and so he decides that he’s going to do it.”

But while Orpheus is working on his song, tragedy strikes.
“He gets so into writing the song that he can’t see things around him and things get really bad,” Beattie said. “Eurydice becomes incredibly desperate and unfortunately Hades, king of the underworld, takes advantage of that. He offers her a deal to come down to Hadestown and never have a life of suffering anymore… She calls out for Orpheus one more time, but he doesn’t hear her so she signs the deal and she goes down to Hadestown.
“Once Orpheus is done writing the song, he realizes she’s not there… He decides to take the journey down there to try to rescue her,” Beattie said. “It’s a very long journey and it’s perilous, but he makes it down there and he has to convince Hades to let her go.”

Even among the students involved in the show, not everyone had heard of Hadestown before, “But once kids who had never heard of it started listening to the music and understanding the story, they also automatically fell in love with it because it’s such good music and such a good story,” Beattie said.

The story is what initially drew Beattie to the show.

“It is not a happy show,” she said. “It is a sad tale. In fact, that’s one of the lyrics from the show — ‘It’s a sad tale’ — but right after that statement, there’s another line that says, ‘But we tell it anyway.’... It’s about having doubt, but still having hope that things are going to work out and things are going to turn out. That’s one of the things that made me fall in love with it.”

And she hopes audiences fall in love with the story as well.

“The message of this story is incredible…” Beattie said. “The end is one of those moments where I think the audience will be shocked. As we go past the climax of the show and into the end and the resolution of the show, you’ll understand why we do it, why we tell this story and why the story is so important.”

Beyond the story, Hadestown has proven to be a challenging show.

“There’s a lot of really cool technical things that I hope people can see and understand in the show. And the music is incredible,” Beattie said. “It’s a fully sung show so it’s not a typical musical where you may have a number and then you have some dialogue between characters and then you have another number. It is fully sung, which is another huge challenge for our students.”

But Beattie’s students have tackled the challenge head-on.

“They are what I am most proud of,” Beattie said. “There are so many challenging parts… My actors have taken on this role of singing the entire show and they’ve done it so well… Our ensemble has knocked it out of the park with the choreo. And our painters, our set designers, our crew people — there are so many facets to the show that have to work together and the students do it all. The pit band, the music, the costumes — they’ve all come together and created this magical show.”

More information about Bay Port’s production of Hadestown and tickets can be found at vancoevents.com/us/events/landing/64133.