2025 Show

Our 2025 Show will be based on the incredible Broadway smash hit, Hadestown! This show tells the story of the tragic ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, but it does so through the lens of a Great Depression era mining town. Unlike most marching band shows based on Broadway shows, we won’t just be doing “songs from Hadestown.” We’re actually going to present the story…albeit a 10 minute version of a 2 hour show, so it’ll be cut down to just a few important scenes. The point is, what we’re doing this fall will be a combination of marching band and musical theater. We’ll be playing, marching, acting, dancing, and telling a story. First, some background:

Some Background

The Full Hadestown Show

So with all that, you should probably see the show! Unfortunately there isn’t a “Pro-Shot” official video of this show. The best you can get is a crummy cell phone video that someone illegally took from the audience. However, it’s still running on broadway if you want to get down to NYC and see it live. In the meantime, here’s one of those cell phone videos. Also it’s a “through-sung” show, which means all of the dialogue is built into the songs. You can listen to the soundtrack and get a good feel for it, because you hear every word spoken through the show as part of the music.

Our Version

We are going to ignore the entire plotlines about Hades and Persephone, and we’re also going to skip the plotline with the mine workers. We’re going to focus specifically on Orpheus and Eurydice. We will be auditioning actors for the roles of:

• Hermes, the silver suited Herald of the Gods and narrator of the show
• Orpheus, the naive but optimistic musician
• Eurydice, the world-weary young lady
• Hades, the Robber-Baron King of the Underworld.

Initial auditions will be done with video submissions due May 23rd. Callbacks in person to be scheduled individually. Here’s a link to the details for anyone interested in auditioning.

• The color guard will be the “Fates.”
• The hornline humans of the world above and below.
• The pit will be the house band from the imaginary New Orleans club

The field will be laid out with the pit across the back, a few steps behind the hash. They will be intermixed with the tall props depicting the scenery of the world. The front of the field will have 6 of those shorter panels (the ones we used to make the “bar” last year) across the front depicting a railroad track from the “above world” on the right side of the field to the “underworld” on the left side of the field. And to finally answer the question…no this isn’t a “train show.” But the idea of train tracks is used as a metaphor for the path the the underworld in this show, so it comes up a lot.

For the story, the show will be broken into 5 “Scenes.” I’ve included some source audio, but this is a very rough cut. Obviously what’s here is way too long. There will be a lot of trimming and combining of ideas to shorten it down to 10 minutes.

Scene 1 – The Overture

This is basically our “Opener” as far as a traditional marching band show goes. In this song, Hermes sings and introduces all the relevant characters. It sets the musical tone for the show as being a New Orleans Jazz feel, and gets the audience comfortable with dialogue being delivered as poetry. Here’s a rough cut of what we’ll be playing.

Scene 2 – Orpheus Meets Eurydice

This is the scene where they meet and fall for each other. We also discover Orpheus has a magic song he’s writing.

Scene 3 – Eurydice dies, and Orpheus travels to Hadestown

This scene is going to be musically very complex. The part where she dies is going to draw musical ideas from a lot of different songs, so I can’t really give a good audio preview like the other scenes. But the big second half will mostly be “Wait for Me” as Orpheus travels travels from the above world (the right side of the field) to the underworld (the left side of the field).

Scene 4 – Meeting Hades and the long road back.

This scene starts with a VERY condensed version of Oprheus’s magical song, which impresses Hades so much that he allows Oprheus and Eurydice to travel back to the world of the living. But only under one very harsh condition. The scene follows them on the long road, as Orpheus’s doubts tear at his mind. Until he can’t help but turn back at the last moment, dooming Eurydice to the underworld.

Scene 5 – Epilogue

Hermes explains that this tragic ending is simply how the story goes. But that seeing the world in an optimistic way, even if you know it will turn out tragic, is what he learned from Orpheus. So even though it’s a sad story, we tell it anyway and we see our characters start to tell it again from the beginning. This will be the first time in a long time that our show has a “quiet” ending rather than a big loud one. And if we do it right, it will be an EXTREMELY emotionally impactful one.