The cast of Hadestown stopped by CBS This Morning to perform two songs from the Broadway show ahead of the Tony Awards on June 9th, where the musical is nominated for 14 awards.
The cast, featuring Fates Jewelle Blackman, Yvette Gonzalez-Nacer, and Kay Trinidad, sang a funky rendition of “When The Chips Are Down” from the Anaïs Mitchell score. Actors Amber Gray, André De Shields, and Reeve Carney also performed a striking version of “Wait For Me” during their time on the show.
Hadestown is nominated for awards including Best Musical, Best Original Score and Best Choreography, and has garnered the most Tony nominations this year. The duo behind the Broadway musical, creator Mitchell and director Rachel Chavkin, also sat down with CBS This Morning to discuss Hadestown‘s journey to success.
Set in hell and the world above it, Hadestown chronicles the Greek-myth of Hades and his wife Persephone while narrating the journey of Orpheus and his ill-fated lover Eurydice. “I started writing [Hadestown] in 2006. The piece began as a DIY community theater project in Vermont where I used to live. We rolled around in a school bus that was painted silver, so we would tour around and present it as a concert,” Mitchell recalls.
Mitchell first recorded Hadestown with Ani DiFranco and Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon in 2010. “Broadway was not in my sights at the time…I didn’t know how badly I wanted it until it happened,” she said.
But Mitchell always saw herself more as “a writer than a performer.” “I love that idea of writing a song for someone else to make famous or writing a song so good that no one knew who wrote it, but everyone knows it,” she told Rolling Stone.
