PHOTOGRAPHY BY KYLE NORTON // PRODUCTION BY VENERA ALEXANDROVA
Attempting to get a show to Broadway these days is not unlike setting out onto the high seas in a wee wooden vessel back when whaling was a dying industry. It takes a bold and adventurous spirit, financially reckless optimism and a willingness to go down with the ship. Back then, petroleum was replacing whale oil as the cheaper source of kerosene. Now audiences have streaming services, and it’s ever harder to get them off their couches—perhaps even harder still when a presidential election has them glued to their TVs (or hiding under their beds).
No matter. Old Greenwich native Sean Hudock doesn’t mind a little wind in his face. Like the sailors on the Mignonette in the story he put onstage, he probably didn’t expect the gale force ahead. When he and his producing partner, Matthew Masten, began chatting at a Super Bowl party a decade ago about creating a musical centered on a shipwreck, set to the music of the folk rock band The Avett Brothers, Broadway was a pipe dream—a faint destination across a choppy sea.
Hudock is approaching forty now but doesn’t look it. Sipping green tea in an upscale bar ten blocks from New York’s theater district, where Swept Away played, the storm has not weathered his face. He is someone you notice. He looks like an actor (and was) but displays zero bravado. His speech is measured, his thoughts reflective, his attitude gracious.
AN INSPIRING NEIGHBOR IN OLD GREENWICH
People in theater tend to have dramatic stories of a mentor or moment that inspired them to pursue a career that is considered unstable at best, foolhardy at worst.
Hudock was raised in Old Greenwich, in a house that had been in the family for years. (His dad, Bruce, grew up in Riverside.) When Sean was in kindergarten, actor Paul Ryan Rudd’s family moved to the neighborhood. (The great stage actor Paul Rudd, who appeared opposite Meryl Streep in Henry V in 1976, not the younger Paul Rudd who recently performed a duet with her on Only Murders in the Building.)
“I became friendly with his son, and Paul was always around,” says Sean. “I didn’t know he was an actor. But we used to play hide-and-seek—me and a bunch of friends that I’m still in touch with. Every time I would hide in a different part of their house, I would see another picture that looked like Paul. But I thought, that can’t be Paul; he was never in the army. Or, why does that look like Mr. Rudd wearing a toupee? There was one day when I hid in their basement, and a stream of light was shining on what looked like a painting of Paul Rudd as a monk or something. Underneath it, it said: ‘Henry V.’ I didn’t know what it was, but it was always seared in my mind.”
Rudd devoted himself to bringing Shakespeare into the classroom and sharing his passion for the Bard and poetry with kids. “I did my very first Shakespeare play with him,” says Sean, who attended Old Greenwich School, Eastern Middle School and Greenwich High School (class of 2003). “He came in and taught poetry to us in elementary school. William Blake’s ‘The Tyger’ is one poem I’ll never forget, and Alice Carroll’s ‘The Jabberwocky.’ Paul started directing young people, fourth- and fifth-graders, in cut versions of Shakespeare plays. I played Oberon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He kind of took me under his wing and showed me a door into a world that I wouldn’t have known any other way.” Sean names Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing as his favorite role at Greenwich High. “That was when I thought, this is what I want to do with my life,” says Sean.
It was only later in college, studying drama at University of Richmond, that Sean pieced together the puzzle of just how formidable an actor his mentor was. “I was reading the David Rabe play Streamers,” recalls Sean. “I flipped to the back of the book and saw that Paul was listed in the original cast of a very famous David Rabe play about the Vietnam War. So, then it was like this Memento moment of Googling Paul and seeing that the Henry V was actually the Henry V he did in the park opposite Streep. If you go to the Public Theater, that painting that I saw as a kid—a famous Paul Davis painting—is up on the wall. I go down to the Public every once in a while and pay my respects.” With one of his first acting paychecks, Sean found a vintage poster of the painting. It now hangs on his wall in Brooklyn, where he lives with his wife and their cat.
In 2010, Sean was wrapping on a film adaptation of Romeo and Juliet when he got a call from Paul’s son that his dad was dying from pancreatic cancer and wanted to see Sean. Paul was resting on a couch when Sean arrived. “I told him about the film. He proceeded to tell me this beautiful story about a moment in Streamers where the character Billy, who he played, was stabbed. He talked about how he and director Mike Nichols were talking about this moment, and he started reciting bits and pieces of Mercutio from Romeo and Juliet, comparing it to that moment that Billy has,” says Sean. “It was a really meaningful moment to be able to say ‘I’m an actor and doing Shakespeare, and it’s because of you.’”
COLLEGE AND EARLY CAREER
Sean did not come from a theater family—his dad was a prosecutor turned judge, his mom was in marketing. He didn’t go to Broadway shows as a kid. “In high school, with the theater department, we went to see Rent. I had a bunch of friends who were obsessed with it,” he explains. “I think I saw it five times. That was my first foray into understanding what Broadway was.”
When Sean toured the University of Richmond, the chair of the theater department told the eager young actor he wouldn’t get in. “I wasn’t a great test-taker, so based on my SATs, he said that,” recounts Sean.
Demonstrating the persistence that would serve him in his career, Sean applied anyway. Ironically, he ended up having a tremendous impact on the department, first starting an improv troupe that performed with Second City and then directing and producing theatrical productions. He also starred as Mozart in Amadeus and played Motel in Fiddler on the Roof.
While apprenticing at the Shakespeare Theater of New Jersey one summer, he was plucked from the obscurity of acting class and chosen to fill in for a sick actor in Galileo. “It changed my life,” says Sean. “I would sit in the wings and just watch this actor, Sherman Howard, who was playing Galileo, and take meticulous notes on his performance and preparation. I just wanted to soak it all up.”
Sean was selected to give the 2007 commencement speech at school. “I sort of unpacked the idea of being a liberal artist and what that means. It’s on YouTube,” he admits. “I left college feeling like everyone in some way is an artist. I still kind of have that view: We are all artists, and we’re shaping our world as we go into it.”
Sean set about doing that in his career. He read a story about the White Rose, the nonviolent resistance group formed in Munich during WWII, by Hans Scholl and his sister Sophie. “I found a book of letters the two siblings had written to each other. I approached the publisher, and I asked if I could adapt the letters into a play. They said, absolutely,” he says. The play premiered at Amphibian Stage in Texas in 2020.
By then, Sean was well into developing a new, bold show: Swept Away.
Actor John Gallagher, Jr. as Mate in Swept Away
THE VOYAGE TO BROADWAY
In 2015, Sean was at a Super Bowl party, talking with an acquaintance, Matthew Masten, about theater (you know, the usual football banter). The year before, Matthew had reached out to the Avett Brothers with the idea of developing their concept album, Mignonette, into a musical. “I had just seen the Avett Brothers on a late night show and loved them,” says Sean. “There was no director, no writer at that stage. It was just an idea with music. I said, ‘I’d love to work on that with you.’”
A producer partnership was born. “One thing I’ve learned in producing is that when someone gets as excited about an idea as you do, that’s the person you want to work with,” says Masten.
“Together we went around the world pitching the idea and putting together the team, raising money, putting on workshops and readings,” recounts Sean. He recalls seeing a Frank Marshall post about the Avett Brothers after a Red Rocks show Frank and Jimmy Buffett attended in 2018 and shooting an email off to Marshall about Swept Away. Marshall produced the Indiana Jones movies; Sean is a movie buff. The pair promptly signed on as co-producers.
“This whole show was built on miracles and guessing people’s email addresses,” Sean says, with a chuckle. Ken Taylor, a renowned concert poster artist, was their dream pick for the artwork. They emailed him. He jumped at the chance to do a theater poster.
“We took it to Berkeley, where the pandemic stalled its premiere until 2022,” says Sean. The show was so popular, the run was extended three times. Next stop: Arena Stage in D.C., where “it was the top-grossing show,” says Sean. “Broadway was a lofty goal, but we had put together a creative team that certainly warranted it: Tony/Oscar-winning playwright/screenwriter John Logan (Moulin Rouge, Red, Hugo, Gladiator) and Tony-winning director Michael Mayer (Spring Awakening, American Idiot). We were certainly building what we perceived as a commercial production, knowing full well the content was challenging.”
Swept Away recounts the story of a shipwreck in the 1800s and four sailors—including two brothers—battling for survival in a rowboat, without food or water, for twenty-one days. It’s loosely based on the story of a British yacht that capsized in 1884. Scenic designer Rachel Hauk (Hadestown) brings it to life with the cast plummeting into the sea as the hefty ship tilts vertically in a dramatic transition to a lone little boat spinning quietly on the blue sea, carrying its ravaged castaways. The audience watches their desperation play out, with this climactic question ringing in everyone’s ears long after the curtain falls: “What would you do to see your children again? Or your wife? Or your sweetheart?”
Sean’s grandfather was a sailor. “My parents would go up to Nantucket in the fall, so the whole whaling thing was in my periphery,” he says, “and I grew up being obsessed with the Titanic. I used to sink model boats of the Titanic in my bathtub, which is sort of morbid. When we opened in Berkeley, I had this moment where I was like, My God, I used to do this in my bathtub.” But Swept Away takes it a step further.
Was it a step too far for Broadway audiences? Or perhaps it was not the escape people were looking for in November of 2024, in the middle of a painfully divisive election. Critic Ben Brantley raved: “Through the rain to be warmed (and chilled) by the campfire glow of Swept Away, the perfect musical for the dark of winter.” Deadline reported: “As enthralling as it is disquieting, Swept Away is a taut and captivating new folk musical, featuring the gorgeous songs of the roots-rock group The Avett Brothers and an impeccable cast headed by John Gallagher Jr. and Stark Sands.” But not enough people were up for the voyage. The show started previews at the Longacre Theatre on October 29, opened November 19 and closed December 29 (after an unexpected second wind added two weeks to the original closing date).
“I had to make the announcement to the cast that we were closing,” says Sean. “That was the worst experience, creatively, of this whole thing for me. I don’t really remember what I said. I just saw their faces.” Many were involved in the development of the show for over five years, and unlike many producers, Sean and Matt were in the trenches with them, at rehearsals, molding the story.
Stark Sands, in the cast since 2019, played the pious Big Brother who sacrifices himself rather than have his younger dying brother killed and …served up. When asked about Sean, Sands recognizes that as much of a letdown as closing was, he “grew in immeasurable ways” while working with him on the show. “He’s a young producer, and he was able to bring this seed of an idea from inception all the way to Broadway. That’s a truly incredible feat.”
Sean’s mother was proud enough to send a letter to this magazine. Sean remembers first telling his parents about the idea and that “there was an element of cannibalism, and they were like, ‘What are you doing with your life?’ Then at the show at Berkeley, my dad wept,” says Sean, “and we were in the front row at the Avett Brothers’ concert at Forest Hills, where we announced we were going to Broadway, and my dad turned to me and cried on my shoulder. He said, ‘You knew all along.’ I don’t know if I knew. I just didn’t give up.”
Sean is really proud of his ongoing partnership with Masten and of the show they created. “Swept Away challenged what theater, specifically Broadway, could be. That’s the kind of work that I want to keep on doing,” he says.
Masten comments, “I joke that Sean’s the only person I actually enjoy talking with on the phone. After ten-plus years, I still answer his calls.”
The phone is ringing. Things are brewing. Whether there is a storm this time remains to be seen.
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Editor’s Note: As we were going to press, “Swept Away” received a Tony nomination for Outstanding Scenic Design of a Musical for Rachel Hauk.