Anais Mitchell on the very public evolution of 'Hadestown' in the digital age
Anais Mitchell has been living in "Hadestown" for 15 years. The indie folk singer-songwriter never intended to linger so long, writing a musical that would travel - slowly - to Broadway and rack up 14 Tony Award nominations.
"I had no idea that it would have as long a life as it's had," says Mitchell, now 38. And because "Hadestown" has been shaped in the digital age, its evolution has been very exposed. Reviews of the work-in-progress have been posting online for years, and tracks from its two early albums continue to collect streams on Spotify even though the original Broadway cast recording still has not been released (more on that later).
"This development has been very public, and all of these drafts have been out there in the world," Mitchell says. "What's tricky now is, these days, everything is recorded, and there's not a lot of privacy. People have really been witness to the creation of this thing."
In other words, the very vulnerable process of writing and revising has been done for all to see - critics, colleagues, fans, haters - in real time, for years and years,
