Approach:

Eurydice takes myth and turns it on its head. Instead of focusing on the hero of legend, this play offers a glimpse at Eurydice’s point of view. From Orpheus & Eurydice’s fateful wedding night to their long journey through Hades, Sarah Ruhl’s version of the story explores love, family, and the feasibility of challenging fate.

While there were a number of factors that led to me choosing and directing Eurydice, perhaps the most compelling thing to me is the exchange quoted above. Eurydice’s response could easily be understood as a simple expression of love, i.e., “I love you so much that I know I will continue to love you forever.” It seemed to me, however, that there was a certain ambiguity to her response, perhaps even a resignation, i.e., “I wish I had a choice, but I’m fated to love you forever whether I want to or not.” As I began to talk more about the production with the cast and designers, the duality inherent in that line began to shape a great deal of our approach. The fact that this story, and these lovers, find countless adaptation and inspiration throughout western literary history suggested to us that Ruhl’s version could be understood as a single iteration in that much larger cycle. This allowed us a great deal of flexibility in the way we played with memory, with questions of agency, and with character interactions.

Because of the balance between the specific/immediate and the mythic/perpetual, it was important to me that the cast understood the way Eurydice’s story in particular has been rehearsed, rewritten, written over, and become embedded as a trope in other media of various sorts. Early on in table work, to help the company come to terms with that history and context, I dedicated an entire rehearsal to an Orpheus and Eurydice themed art gallery/installation. While a range of related music (from opera to contemporary pop) played, students had the freedom to explore digital art-gallery stations and film stations spread around the edges of the room. The middle of the space was full of seating of various sorts, scattered with print outs of stories, essays, and poetry about Eurydice from across much of western history. As they explored the “exhibit,” they were asked to annotate the writing samples. The last portion of the evening (and the first of the next rehearsal) was spent sharing, talking, and wrestling with the annotated writing and reactions to the rest of the media.

While some of these discussions were more abstract in nature, they did provide a great deal of inspiration that was shared with the designers as we talked about realizing this version of the myth. Because of the connection Ruhl draws between strings and straps of various sorts and larger questions of memory, definition, and safety, these elements quickly became central to scenic, property, and costume design. Another core element of our approach was the use of sound and lighting design to distinguish between the worlds of the living and dead. In the underworld, for example, all music (aside from the Orpheus theme) was manipulated to sound like it was coming from a distance, in a different room. These included various party noises/conversation, sound effects (especially drips), and a huge range of musical underscoring that created a soundscape for much of the production.