PicksInSix Q & A: In The Fast Lane with Hadestown's T. Oliver Reid
In The Fast Lane with Hadestown’s T. Oliver Reid
PicksInSix® Q & A | Ed Tracy
T. Oliver Reid, the accomplished 20-year Broadway veteran, cabaret performer, choreographer and educator who was an original member of the Tony Award-winning company of “Hadestown,” served as dance captain and cover for principle roles before taking over the role of Hermes after Broadway legend André De Shields. The show continues to be an integral part of his professional career as choreographer for the second national tour of the show that has production dates coming up at South Bend’s Morris Performing Arts Center December 19-21. We caught up via Zoom recently as Reid drove from New York to Philadelphia for the evening’s performance of the show, a true testament to his ability to multi-task, even at 70 miles an hour.
Reid credits the influence and encouragement of his musical family and teachers in Gastonia, North Carolina for his strong interest in the performing arts. He received a music scholarship at the North Carolina School of the Arts—now the University of North Carolina School of the Arts—with an eye on a completely different career trajectory in architecture that never materialized. Immediately upon graduation, Reid was cast in the 2nd national tour of “Once In This Island,” honed his choreographic skills and connected with a small circle of creatives who were all destined for Broadway success.
At about the same time, in the Green Mountains of Vermont, Anaïs Mitchell was developing a fascinating project of her own, a folk-opera based on the Greek myth of the tragic love story of Orpheus and Eurydice and the story of Hades and Persephone. “Hadestown” evolved through early development concerts in Vermont and workshops that led to a 2010 concept album. In 2012, Mitchell joined forces with director Rachel Chavkin and the project continued to coalesce with workshops in New York and Canada. Reid recalls that he was among those who heard the captivating score early on and felt an irresistible connection to the material.
Fast forward to 2019 and the Broadway run that received 14 Tony Award nominations receiving 8 Tony Awards including Best Musical, Original Score and Best Performance in a Featured Role for André De Shields. The stars in Reid’s universe aligned when in 2022, he was cast as Hermes. Later that year, Reid became the co-choreographer with David Newman for the first national tour and, in 2024, the choreographer of the second national tour, along with serving on the production’s expanding creative development team.
All this and maintaining a faculty position at Rider College in Lawrenceville, New Jersey keep Reid busy these days as one of the connecting creatives responsible for the continuing success of the national tour and lots of other exciting irons in the fire for the future.
The following has been edited for clarity and length.
Ed Tracy: You are a skilled choreographer and you joined this show as dance captain, however, the choreography in this show is a different than most Broadway shows.
T Oliver Reid: For sure. And I think that is why I was so daunted and why David Newman, the choreographer, and I have gotten along so well. The previous show that I danced captain was “Once in This Island” working with Camille Brown, who is a contemporary, choreographer dancer as well. I understand the way that their brains want to work, and that it is about movement and how they move. Then I add the numbers to it—the one through eight—so that things can be set and be recreated on different people as casts are changing. I think it’s been a good combination for me being able to work with people who come from the contemporary dance world. And for me, I happen to have facility to dance, but I truly come from a singing world. Musically, I hear everything and I understand where movement needs to be with the music. That's why it has been such a good fit with “Hadestown.”
ET: Well, I have spoken with André De Shields often and I have to say that it is quite an experience to spend even 10 minutes in a room with André. You can learn a lot, but taking over the role from him must have been quite a moving experience.
TOR: It was and (André) is one of the reasons that I wanted to do this show, to be able to watch him and understand how he brings the role together. I got to do that and then when the offer came for me to take over the role, it was the moment of “This is great!” and now I need to strip away some André and find the T, holding onto the things that really worked for me and resonated, but also then finding my own voice within the character within what I already knew of it from André. Hearing the text that Anaïs has written so beautifully, but really hearing it through my own voice, my own lens, so I could figure out where the pauses were for me, where there were commas within sentences, where the periods were, and when there was breadth in a way that didn't feel like it was a carbon copy of something that André had already done.
ET: Why do you think Hadestown is such a popular piece?
TOR: I think we are all looking for these stories of love and redemption, understanding and also the beauty of what Hermes says: We're going to tell this story until we get it right. And the audience is a witness, and they are an active member of the storytelling in this show. And there are things that we are going through—our humanity—that we have not gotten right yet, that we have not understood. We have not treated each other well and not treated the planet well. Until that full circle moment comes where we get that understanding and we fix all of the things that we have broken, we have to stay here, we have to continue to tell the story.
I am a firm believer—and I'm not sure where this this came from early on—that we are put on this planet until we learn all the lessons we need to learn. Once we have learned them, we can move on. I think this story has a bit of that feeling that until we have learned all the lessons that we need to learn, we have to tell this story again. We get to hear Hermes in any of the forms, give us the okay to tell the story. We get to see and hear this story about Hades and Persephone and where they are in this millennia old love story that they are telling. We get to see this young love (between Orpheus and Eurydice) and what that means and what you are willing to do for that.
ET: It is a fascinating story, musically generated out of the brilliant mind of Anaïs Mitchell, the Vermont resident who created the show. It went through many developmental workshops throughout the northeast, in Canada and then back to New York. And after your time with the show on Broadway, you became associate choreographer for the first tour and now choreographer for the second tour. Talk about the transition from the Broadway experience to the tour experience.
TOR: Well, part of the transition is that I am also full-time faculty member at Rider University in New Jersey. When the offer came for me to take over Hermes, I did not know if it was sustainable for me to do eight shows a week and be a full-time teacher. We had the conversation and the contract was the length that it was so that at the end of the contract, I could focus on school. It also meant that because of the institutional knowledge that I had of the show, the thing that made sense was for me to move into the role of associate choreographer so that I could still be there and help maintain the show and the choreography.
I have always known at some point that I would be teaching. It is a part of the journey of those who have some type of wisdom in something and to be able to impart that wisdom on a younger generation. I come from a family that is steeped in the educational system in this country, especially my hometown of Gastonia, North Carolina. Knowing that, I no longer needed to be on stage in that way. There are those who have that aching to be a star and luckily the universe puts them in those positions. That has never really been my journey.
ET: And you bring back to the classroom all of this hands-on experience that others do not have. And fortunate for those students to have professional, real world experience to tap into. The first tour lasted for four years. It was an Equity tour and ended in May 2024 and then the second tour picked up in October. How does that impact what you're doing now?
TOR: It has been a lot of compartmentalizing.
ET: You had the summer to put things together?
TOR: Yes. The second national tour is wildly different from the first national tour, which is different from Broadway. We have found ways to restage and re-choreograph the show so that the story makes sense for the staging and the set that we have and it feels like it is a new and inspired telling of the show.
There are some projections involved, but the humans on stage—the workers, the fates, the principles—are a vital part of the storytelling and how the story moves literally and figuratively around the stage.
ET: Talk about a regular week of your life in terms of dropping in on cast wherever they are. How does that work out for you?
TOR: It is a lot of time on a calendar, making sure that everything lines up in the way that it needs to. I got up this morning in New York, went to physical therapy, drove to Lawrenceville, New Jersey so I could teach at Rider, and then got on the road to Philadelphia where the tour is this week. We are going to watch the show tonight, have rehearsal tomorrow, watch the show tomorrow night, then drive back to New York for a rehearsal of a reading of a new musical. Every week is a little different. I know if I have to see the tour in a month that I probably have already planned out with company management, booked flights that do not have a lot of stops, so I can get in and out as easily as possible to get back to the other things that have to happen in New York. And that may mean going to the Broadway company to watch a show there, take notes that may be a cleanup rehearsal with the workers on Broadway, and then figuring out the rest of the schedule. The beautiful thing about “Hadestown” is that there are multiple companies. I helped set the company this past summer in Amsterdam, working it out so that we could be there for eight weeks and then come back and get new people into the Broadway company. In September, we had a couple of new company members that joined the second national tour and got them ready before that show went out on the road.
ET: How often do you see Rachel or Anaïs along the way?
TOR: I see Rachel more frequently in New York because she has so many projects going on and will come out on the road. The show is going to Burlington, Vermont, so she will definitely be there. If there is a place that is close by or she happens to need to see the show somewhere like this summer in Amsterdam, she happened to be traveling and stopped in so that she could see that production. The entire creative team is still very attached to the show.
ET: Anaïs Mitchell is probably the most famous Vermonter since Calvin Coolidge or maple syrup. It is an extraordinary piece of work to put this thing together and also put all these creative people around her to bring it to what it has become. You have been involved with this show for over seven years. Does it feel the same as it did day one?
TOR: No. Do I still have the same love for the show and the material that I did day one? Absolutely! I think the beauty of this show—and seeing so many people tell it over the years—is that the show changes and has a life of its own with new breath from the people who are inhabiting these roles. This is so unexpected the way that they are sharing the information with us. And that is because of who they are as human beings. Every time there is someone new, it feels like there is a new telling of the story in these roles because of what each of us brings to the table. All of those experiences of love, loss and misunderstanding that each of the humans playing these five principles. That is something that feels so special about this show, allowing the individuals who come in and inhabit the roles for however long they do to really breathe that life into them.
The 2nd national tour of “Hadestown” has multiple performance dates coming up including The Flynn Theatre, Burlington, VT (Dec 13-14) and The Morris Performing Arts Center, South Bend, IN (Dec 19-21). For a complete schedule, visit: Hadestown National Tour
PHOTO|Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade
Broadway in South Bend
presented by
The American Theatre Guild
National Tour
HADESTOWN
The Morris Performing Arts Center
South Bend, Indiana
December 19-21, 2025
TICKETS
TOUR WEBSITE
PicksInSix® Review - 1st National Tour
Sarah Siddons Award Interview with André De Shields
For more reviews, visit: Theatre In Chicago
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