Junior Players is technically performing the teen edition of the hit Broadway musical Hadestown, which offers the option to cut scenes and songs that could be considered inappropriate for a youth production, including references to alcohol, drugs and sex. Sasha Maya Ada says the version she’s directing sticks pretty closely to the original.
Take the character of Persephone. In the song, “Way Down Hadestown,” the Greek goddess and queen of the underworld mentions the substances she’ll be taking with her to get through the part of the year she spends with Hades below ground. Those references are not being cut for the Junior Players production.
“Persephone is synonymous with drinking, flask in the hand. Any actor or director diving into the story has to figure out why it’s important for her. Why is that the thing that she's finding solace in? And then you reverse engineer it with the kids,” Ada explains. “They have TikTok, they have Instagram. They are aware that this is part of the story we’re telling. It’s cooked into the characters, so you can't really ignore it.”
Because Junior Players is a Dallas nonprofit and not part of a school system, it’s easier for the group to make these kinds of choices. They’re also well established, having been around since 1955. The cast of 22 students, who had to audition for the roles, are made up of 8th- to 12th-graders.
“This is one of the longest running contemporary shows on Broadway,” Ada says. “It's clear that it’ll be rolled into the American canon. How the characters operate, why they act the way they do, is integral to the piece. And it's a good warning … Shakespeare says some wild things. They’re learning about the Trail of Tears and World War II in school, right? Why can't we, in a safe and a supervised experience, be able to explore characters that also deal with messy things?”
Hadestown intertwines Greek myths involving two couples: Persephone and Hades and the young lovers Orpheus and Eurydice. The composer, Anais Mitchell, a little-known folk singer at the time, brilliantly adapted the myths around contemporary issues like climate change and the effects of capitalism on the masses.
The god Hermes tells the audience early on that the story doesn’t end well, but he’s going to tell it anyway, implying the hope that it could change this time, wink wink. The nonstop music is roots-y, including a heavy dose of New Orleans-style jazz. It’s complicated and difficult to sing and stage. “It’s a whopper,” Ada says, “like an opera.”
Despite those challenges, even the trickier numbers that the teen edition offers as optional cuts — like the Fates’ a cappella “Nothing Changes” — remain in the Junior Players production. Ada credits the talent of a competitive cast, which also has made it possible to perform the songs without adjusting them for younger voices.
“We’ve got a kid in the room who's so new to it, when we first played a few bars of the song by the workers, he asked, ‘How do you sing that?’ There’s something so pure about not knowing,” Ada says. “Then you get the kids who have been doing it since they were 6. It's a nice way for me as an artist to get back to the fundamentals. How do I make sure that everyone in the room is getting the information they need? They are a bunch of energy, and when they hone that energy it's pretty incredible. You never know what's going to happen.
“I think 99 percent of the time, the kids leave feeling better than they did when they walked into the room. That is priority No. 1 for me. I want them to make sure that this very intense thing we're doing is fulfilling for them.”
Details
Jan. 8-11 at Moody Performance Hall, 2520 Flora St., Dallas. $10-$15. juniorplayers.org.
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