Last weekend, starting April 9th, Mr. Castano and the rest of the theater department put on the 2026 spring musical: Hadestown. The play was directed and directed by the head of Theater at Timberlane, Michael Castano and of course performed by multiple actors/ students from the Timberlane community.
Castano explains that it is based off of the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. “Orpheus and Eurydice fall in love. Orpheus is a little selfish and decides to work on his song. While working on his song Hades offers her a trip to the underworld where she would be “cared for and protected” said Castano when summarizing the musical. Orpheus takes the Hero’s Journey to Hadestown to rescue Eurydice. In the process he sings his song to Hades. He convinces all of them to leave while singing the song. Because of this, Hades lets them leave under the conditions of a test; Orpheus must walk out first with Eurydice following behind. Orpheus can not look behind and must trust that she is staying behind”.
When talking about the musical, Castano is beaming ear to ear showing the pride he has for his students and actors. Hadestown is a very difficult show to direct, let alone to perform. This is a very new musical, as it was only approved and developed into a teen production in 2024.
The show had four different performance times. The show’s opening night was Thursday, April 9th followed by a performance on Friday night, April 10th. The next day the cast had a busy Saturday with a 1:00 Saturday Matinee and Closing Night on April 11th. “The word I always go back to is “Bittersweet”” said Castano. “We accomplished the thing we have worked on for a whole year. The cast had been working on this for the past 5 months. I think there are certain things in your mind that you invision from the beginning, for us it was the lift that dropped Eurydice. Seeing it come to life was so weird because it was once just an idea that we all had in our minds and seeing it come to life was so surreal.”
Although the play may be over mid-April, the cast has been well aware of the Hadestown performance and has been put to work since the beginning of the school year. Senior actor, Luke Swanney has has a huge role within the Timberlane Player community the past four years. “We found out about Headestown before the summer started. Since everyone knew what the show was, I started listening to the soundtrack a lot during my free time. Auditions were in December so that when we all started really focusing and learning the line for Orpheus [one of the leads] because that what I knew I wanted to do” he said.
On stage, you see the main characters that had auditioned for these important parts with lines and solo singing roles, but a lot more goes into setting up the spring musicals than you may think. There are people that are a part of “stage crew” that control the lighting, curtain calls, and spotlights. People are apart of setting up and painting the background that set the time and place for the entire musical. Castano said “…the back stage crew are like the “true heroes”, not to undermine any of the incredible talent on stage, but the show does not exist the same way and is not performed the same without any of the crew that the audience doesn’t see”.
“During the song “wait for me”, Adrien (Fearis) has to perfectly time the 4 swinging lights lowering onto the stage. If it is not perfectly dropped, the lights will hit the someone in the head. If no one recognize the lights being dropped in, than they did their job” said Castano. This also shows how much of and popular program Theater has become here at Timberlane. The Timberlane Players community has been putting on shows since the 90s, but each show is that much better because of the high standards they continue to hold for themselves and fellow cast mates. In the musical Hadestown, as well as last years musical, Anestasia, there were two casts. One cast would perform Opening and Closing Night, while the other cast performed Friday Night and Saturday Matinee.
Luke Swanney, a senior and a new and promising junior Logan Mottram had to split times for the lead role of Orpheus. “In last year show [Anestasia], I was my role for all four shows so I got double the practice time than I did this year. When Logan would perform, I would go sit in the audience and watch which was really fun to do. I learned a lot from watching him; in one scene he dropped to his knees to talk which I really liked so I took that and implemented it into my performance too” said Swanney.
Castano has mentioned that he is already brainstorming ideas for potential shows and ideas for next years production. “There will never be a time where all of these same actors will be in the same room performing a show together again – and thats the bittersweetness.”
