FROM THE DIRECTOR’S CHAIR: Director Blanka Zizka takes a break from rehearsing Eurydice and talks about what it’s been like working on a Pulitzer nominated playwright’s tale of loss and love in the Underworld...

I’m writing this as we are just going into a week of technical rehearsals. It’s been exciting, exhilarating, and occasionally exhausting work finding the stage life of Sarah Ruhl’s remarkable play, Eurydice. After months of conversations with the designers and composer Toby Twining and three weeks of rehearsals, everything is starting to come together in its final form.

Eurydice is Sarah’s retelling of the myth of Orpheus from the heroine’s point of view. This play poses challenges for theater artists because it is entirely non-naturalistic. Experiencing Sarah’s words on the page is very different from experiencing them from the mouths and bodies of actors, even more so than with the usual challenging plays Jiri and I direct. The space between words must be filled with gestures, silence, or sound – all of which can carry as much meaning as the most poetic speech.

Sounds are an essential component of Sarah’s play. I recognized an opportunity to re-explore and re-interpret Sarah’s play by drawing greater attention to these sounds. Toby’s unusual microtonal melodies immediately came to mind as the perfect compliment to bring the aural components of Eurydice to life, and we invited him to write music for our production. Toby was present during our work with actors which allowed him to polish his music, composed for a cello and vocal quartet, in response to the actual work the actors and I were doing to discover the shape of the scenes. When the actors met the musicians for the first time and heard the music that was accompanying their words, they were stunned by the depth and beauty the music added to the scenes. It was a very thrilling moment in the rehearsal process.

This play calls for unusual, almost surrealistic imagery to charter Eurydice’s journey into the Underworld. I’m very happy about the visual world we have created with set designer Mimi Lien. We have researched the work of various modern conceptual artists in developing our concept for the production. And Oana Botez-Ban's costumes add a quirky humor (an Alice in Wonderland quality) which always lurks in Sarah’s writing. However, I won’t give any secrets away because I want the production alone to awaken your sense of surprise and wonder.

I can’t wait to see the ideas and talent of our designers, actors, and musicians all come together to create surprising, enjoyable, and mesmerizing theater, and I look forward to sharing this with you!

Blanka Zizka