Sing It Again: Hadestown's T. Oliver Reid on Lessons from the Tony-Winning Musical

Living near the theater district during the Broadway shutdown, photographer and performer Matthew Stocke has been haunted walking past the empty palaces sitting in repose, waiting for the lights and stars to return. In this new Broadway.com photo feature, he reunites members of the theater community with their Broadway home #AwayFromHome.

T. OLIVER REID
HADESTOWN

T. Oliver Reid is the dance captain at Hadestown as well as a swing and understudy for both Hades and Hermes, played by Patrick Page and Tony winner André De Shields, respectively. Having been in the business for over 20 years with 12 Broadway credits to his name, Reid says he's never experienced something "quite like this" before. Just hours before castmate John Krause was set to make his Orpheus debut (Reeve Carney was on vacation, marking the first time he was absent for a performance), the Broadway shutdown was announced. Now over five months since theaters went dark, Reid talks to Broadway.com about finding his own creative moments during shutdown (he recently co-founded the new Black Theatre Coalition) and the lesson that Hadestown keeps teaching.

"We were having a put-in rehearsal for three different people when the general manager and producers came in to say, ‘We’re shutting down for the next couple weeks.’ Our producer took us over to Glass House [Tavern] to have drinks. Reeve [Carney]’s understudy John Krause was going on for the first time and his family had come into the city to see him. He’s sitting in rehearsal, finds out we’re shutting down and the heavens opened up with waterworks. It was a hard day… We have always been focused on our show, so it's been nice to have this time to work on projects that are coming out of my own head… I don't think about the first day back [after shutdown] because our goal-line has changed so many times. I just want us to be able to get back into the room and experience the show we love so much. One day while I was working out, I decided to listen to our cast recording. I forgot how amazing the music and the story is. As soon as the first number started, I found myself with a huge smile on my face. It was a breath of fresh air for me to come to the theater today. To see our marquee and, in my head, hear the fans as we leave the stage door. It was like seeing an old friend, which was really nice. We say this over and over again in our show that if we don't learn the lessons, we continue to go through the lesson. We sing it again because, as a culture, we haven't learned the lessons of global warming or loving your brother. I hope that that the big takeaway from what we've gone through in the past five months is that we can learn the lesson, finally."

Photos by Matthew Stocke/Matt James Photo NYC for Broadway.com
Additional reporting by Caitlin Moynihan