![]() ![]() There is also a story about these two seasons that concerns Persephone as the queen of the Underworld. While she is with Hades, the earth feels Demeter’s lament during autumn and winter. The earth experiences spring and summer while Persephone and Demeter are together. When Hermes guides her out of the underworld and back to her mother, the earth begins to thaw. They each get six months of the year with her. He decrees that Persephone must be returned to Demeter for everyone’s sake, and that she and Hades must share their time with her. But it this instance, he has to consider the fate of the world. Zeus is usually a stickler for the rules, unless it restricts him from getting something that he truly wants. Supposedly unbeknownst to Hades, Persephone had swallowed several pomegranate seeds. The underworld has many rules, one of which is that should a mortal consume anything while in the underworld, that mortal cannot leave it. Zeus appeals to Hades, but finds out that the problem is a lot more complicated than just asking for her release. Crops die, animals become barren, and the land becomes cold and lifeless. However, when Demeter’s horrible sadness causes her to neglect her duties as a goddess, the earth begins to suffer. At first Zeus does not see a need to seek out Hades and confront him about the abduction of Persephone. He sweeps her away to the depths of the kingdom of the dead.ĭemeter looks everywhere for her child, causing mayhem and destruction as she goes. From the chasm, Hades bears upon her riding his monstrous chariot pulled by magnificent black stallions. As she attempts to gather them, a great chasm opens in the earth. While picking flowers with her companions, Persephone is lured away from the group by the most interesting, beautiful, and sweet-smelling blooms she has ever encountered. Persephone is a living example of youth, beauty, and life, and draws the attention of the king of the dead (Not to be confused with death itself, who is Thanatos). Her mother is also affectionately known as Mother Nature. Persephone is a true nature child, being the daughter of the goddess of the harvest. The young goddess is also the daughter and niece of Zeus, and the wife and niece of Hades when she becomes the queen of the Underworld. It’s about repression and explosion-again taken from Amber as she developed her performance-and those mad asymmetrical sleeves shot out of my pencil as I drew her.Persephone’s story actually focuses more on her mother, Demeter, and what happens when Persephone disappears. Amber reveled in that instant change and the dress became the oddest combination of a ’40s band singer and Dolly in the ’80s and maybe today’s Real Housewives. That idea gave birth to the idea of a bar, of Hades as a thug. Then, in previews, Rachel sidled up to me and said “Um, I think she’s Dolly Parton,” and our world cracked open to allow the fun and even trashy energy of Persephone to enter. There was a point in Canada where we tried a Grecian gown of sorts, with a metallic corset of vines worn on the outside. But the dress has changed as we developed the world of Hadestown. She is spring and summer as we begin, and brings life and energy and hope to the world and to those we meet in the bar. “In every iteration of this costume, Persephone (always Amber Gray) has been in this shade of green. Feathers are a motif throughout the show-a thought that came from our writer Anaïs-Eurydice’s is the most simple, pure, prosaic.” Ashe wears a small worn white feather in her hair. I’m hoping that she’s recognizable to us from our own travels. Her boots are bulky and practical and worn and strong. Eurydice’s textured and worn coat and other clothing-a slip and vest-try to tell the story of an inventive impoverished girl with style and humor, perhaps a dumpster-diver. I showed Rachel the Amy Arbus photo of a young Madonna early on, and we have clung to it. So her overcoat and bag and scarf are to hide her and protect her, to give her a shell that can be removed as she warms to the world she enters, and to Orpheus. ![]() “Eurydice is an outsider, maybe a runaway. And the fact is, I knew Rachel as my student at NYU when she was 18, so we had a communal past to draw from. “I think our director Rachel Chavkin won’t mind me saying that, as Hadesetown has developed, she has most particularly related to Eurydice, and so her input here was especially strong and wonderfully personal, even recalling clothing she herself wore or wished to wear as a young woman. ![]()
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