Love in the underworld: Cardboard Playhouse presents teen edition of award-winning musical 'Hadestown'

“Hadestown: Teen Edition” reimagines the story of the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice for a younger cast.

Based on the thought-provoking musical “Hadestown,” which explores love, loss and the human condition, the teen version features a talented cast of young performers from the Cardboard Playhouse Theatre Company from Friday, Jan. 24, through Feb. 9.

Love in the underworld: Cardboard Playhouse presents teen edition of award-winning musical 'Hadestown'

“Concord Theatricals, who has the licensing rights for ‘Hadestown,’ worked with the creators to make a teen edition,” said Kristin K. Berg, co-artistic director at Cardboard Playhouse. “They’ve made some adjustments for content. It’s really just content, so that way high schools and other youth groups can put the show on, but otherwise it’s a full-length show. It has an intermission.”

“Hadestown” is a musical that features music and lyrics by Anaïs Mitchell.

“Following two intertwining love stories — that of young dreamers Orpheus and Eurydice, and that of immortal King Hades and Lady Persephone — ‘Hadestown’ invites audiences on a hell-raising journey to the underworld and back,” according to the Concord Theatricals website. “Inspired by traditions of classic American folk music and vintage New Orleans jazz, Mitchell’s beguiling sung-through musical pits industry against nature, doubt against faith and fear against love.”

Berg refers to the production as “a great piece of art.”

“They get the chance to do something that’s still touring and still on Broadway that our teams really resonate with,” she said. “They gave us the opportunity and we did not want to pass that up. So, that’s why we’re producing it.”

The Cardboard Playhouse cast began rehearsing the production in November 2024.

“We will have rehearsed for about eight weeks by the time the show goes up,” Berg said. “We took a couple of weeks off for Christmas, for the winter break.”

There are 22 cast members that are part of the production.

“We have some kids that are in this production, who are about to age out of our program, because the high end of the cast is 19 years old,” Berg said. “We usually stop working with kids once they hit 18, because a lot of stuff that we license has an age limit on shows that we do. (There are) kids in the cast that we’ve been working with since they were like six or seven, and now they’re about to graduate out of our program.”

Cardboard Playhouse holds open auditions for each of its productions. Performers are considered company members after they have been in two Cardboard Playhouse shows.

“Usually for us, because we’re surviving on ticket sales, we don’t charge the kids to be in our shows,” Berg said. “It’s totally free to be in them, but because we’re surviving on ticket sales, we also give preference to people who are company members in larger roles because they’re people that we depend upon. They’ve proven themselves time and time again to be trustworthy, and they act professionally when they’re in the rehearsal process with us. We do have kids in this production that have never done a show with Cardboard Playhouse before, but I would say a large majority of this specific cast are company members.”