In the fall of 2011, I was invited to direct a production of Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice for southern Rhode Island’s Contemporary Theater Company. An original adaptation of the myth of Orpheus from the perspective of his newly-wed, newly-dead wife, Ruhl’s script is a deeply touching and lyrical meditation on memory, love, and on the loss thereof–and I felt honored by the opportunity.

I was privileged with a stellar cast (Maxwell Mathews, Meghan Rose Donnelly, Kevin Killavey, Steph Rodger, Amy Lee Connell, Christine Cauchon, Christopher Simpson) with whom I set about transplanting the play’s poetry into space.

In the same way that the text describes its world without being prescriptive (featuring as it does an underworld peopled by a chorus of quasi-animate Stones and open-ended stage directions such as: “He has fun” and “It is raining in the elevator.”), I considered it imperative that the staging embody that world by way of a non-literal vocabulary of movement and gesture. To that end, much of the first half of the rehearsal process was devoted to improvised physical explorations using the Viewpoints technique.

The actors were complemented by inventive costume and makeup designs by Stephanie Traversa–featuring a simultaneously garish and grey underworld and a nostalgic palette for the living–a minimalist set collaboratively designed with Christopher Simpson–featuring a river Styx running from a water tower to a bathtub, in which floated panels of real love letters donated by members of the community. The sound design was my own, and included an eclectic mix of extant and original music–among these an “Orphic symphony” performed by volunteers from South Kingstown High School’s band ensemble.

In his review for The Independent, Doug Norris praised our “sensitive staging,” which allowed the events to “[unfold] like a dream” and provoked a sorrow which “linger[ed] in the mind’s eye beyond the curtain.”

All production photographs courtesy of Seth Jacobson Photography. Rehearsal photographs courtesy of Casey Wright.