Episode Description
To really understand the smash musical Hadestown, you have to understand…mines. Hear me out.
Hadestown isn’t just a re-telling of the ancient Orpheus tale, as the name suggest it’s a story that focuses on a particular location…the underworld.
And there is obviously a conscious choice to make the underworld much different than the Greeks imagined it, and much more like the company towns associated with the early industrial era. And not just any company towns, but mining towns. What you can’t really miss about the show is that it’s focused on Hades and it’s a mining town.
The other thing you can’t miss is that it’s about environmental destruction and oppression – Eurydice has to make a deal with Hades because she can’t find food and shelter on the surface, and Orpheus can’t provide it. The only one with control over resources is Hades, and he is obviously mostly interested in keeping himself at the top of the food chain. The show is an invitation to think about the themes in the Orpheus myth, but do so in the context of a real world threatened by growing levels of corporate control and ever-greater threats to the natural environment.
And it’s all centered around…mines. So what is it about mines that is so important to the central themes of the show? Grab your pickaxe, put a canary in a cage, strap on your hard hat, and let’s go into the tunnels together on this episode of THM.
Climate myth citations
https://www.nrdc.org/stories/hadestown-coal-fired-lights-are-bright-broadway
https://www.history.com/articles/industrial-revolution
https://www.weforum.org/stories/2023/06/too-late-climate-crisis-myth/
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-battle-of-blair-mountain/
https://www.teenvogue.com/story/workers-rights-won-by-unions
https://energyhistory.yale.edu/coal-mining-and-labor-conflict/