Download Eurydice press release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Douglas
Morrisson
Theatre
22311 N. Third St.
Hayward, CA
(510) 881-6777
www.dmtonline.org
Mailing address:
Theatre, c/o H.A.R.D.
1099 E Street
Hayward, CA
94541
Media contact: Susan E. Evans, Bob Miller
Media phone: (510) 881-6733
Email: [email protected]; [email protected]
DOUGLAS MORRISSON THEATRE PRESENTS EURYDICE BY SARAH
RUHL
2013-2014 Season of Mystery & Romance continues with Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice.
April 24, 2013 – The Douglas Morrisson Theatre continues its 2013-2014 season with
Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl. Directed by the Douglas Morrisson Theatre’s Artistic
Director Susan E. Evans, the play features an ensemble of Bay Area performers:
Alisha Ehrlich as Eurydice, Aby George as Orpheus, Tom Reilly as Her Father,
Davern Wright as A Nasty Interesting Man/The Lord of the Underworld, Allison
Fenner as Big Stone, Bessie Zolno as Little Stone and Pamela Drummer-Williams as
Loud Stone.
Eurydice previews on May 16, opens May 17, and runs through June 9, 2013, at the
Douglas Morrisson Theatre, 22311 N. Third Street, in Hayward. The Saturday
matinee on June 1, 2013, at 2:00 p.m., will be followed by a talkback session with the
director and cast.
In the classic myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, as it has come down to us from Virgil’s
Georgics and Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Orpheus travels to the underworld to bring
back his new bride Eurydice who has died tragically on her wedding day. There’s
only one condition: he must walk in front of her and not look back until they reach
the surface. Just as he is about to reach daylight, he turns to gaze upon his love’s
face, and she is snatched away forever. The story has been explored in poetry,
painting, sculpture, ballet and opera for over 2000 years.
Ruhl’s Eurydice is a luminous reimagining of this myth through the eyes of Eurydice.
We tumble with Eurydice like Alice down into an eerie Wonderland underworld
where she is reunited with her father. He must teach her language, since she has been
stripped of all her memories. Ruhl’s Hades is also populated with a fantastical chorus
of Stones and a tricycle-riding Lord of the Underworld.
“Rhapsodically beautiful …an inexpressibly moving theatrical fable about
love, loss and the pleasures and pains of memory.” The New York Times
The Douglas Morrisson
Theatre is a program
and facility of the
Hayward Area
Recreation and Park
District
Director Susan E. Evans feels that Eurydice is as much about the power of love
between a father and daughter as it is about the classic Orpheus and Eurydice love
story. Ruhl wrote the play after the death of her father from cancer when she was 20
years old, and she has said that in this play she was trying to have more conversations
with him. Ruhl’s father loved puns, reading, language and jazz. Every Saturday from
when she was five years old, he took Sarah and her older sister to the Walker Bros.
Original Pancake house for breakfast. Each visit he taught them a new word and its
etymology. This personal memory is echoed in Eurydice when Eurydice’s Father reteaches Eurydice her lost vocabulary.
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“I like to see people speaking ordinary words in strange places, or people speaking
extraordinary words in ordinary places.” Eurydice is a play filled with lyrical magic.
Ruhl studied poetry before becoming a playwright and her dialogue is non-linear and
not naturalistic. She sees her plays as “three-dimensional poems.” In Eurydice she
manages a delicate balance of the sad and happy, of pain and pleasure, weirdness and
the quotidian, melancholy and whimsical humor.
Ruhl once said that her play could be “a playground for designers.” DMT is thrilled
to have a top-notch design team on board for Eurydice, with credits from many Bay
Area theatres, including the Magic, Cutting Ball, Shotgun Player and Word for Word,
as well as Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Michael J. Locher is the scenic designer,
Allen Willner, lighting designer, Valera Coble, costume designer. And in a different
twist, our composer and sound designer Don Tieck will be playing live at every
performance, alongside the Stones who act as fellow Foley artists. Evans says,
“DMT audiences have come to expect impressive design elements at our shows; I
don’t think Eurydice will disappoint them!”
Eurydice received workshop productions at Brown University, Children’s Theater
Company and La Jolla Playhouse. It premiered at Madison Repertory Theatre in
September 2003 and was subsequently produced at the Piven Theater Workshop,
Evanston, Williamstown Theatre Festival and at Theater Heilbronn, Germany. The
West Coast premiere of Eurydice was directed by Les Waters at Berkeley Repertory
Theatre in 2004; Waters also staged productions in 2006 at Yale Repertory Theater
and in 2007 at Second Stage in New York City.
ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT
Sarah Ruhl grew up in Wilmette, Illinois, near Chicago, and studied with the
playwright Paula Vogel at Brown University. Her plays include Dear Elizabeth, In
the Next Room, or the vibrator play (Broadway 2009, 2010 Pulitzer Prize finalist),
Clean House (2004 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, 2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist),
Passion Play, A Cycle, Dead Man’s Cell Phone, Melancholy Play, Eurydice,
Orlando, and Late: a cowboy song. Ms. Ruhl’s plays have been produced at Lincoln
Center Theater, Goodman Theatre, Playwrights Horizon, Second Stage, Arena Stage,
Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Yale Repertory Theatre and Berkeley
Repertory Theatre, among others. She has also been widely produced internationally,
with works translated into Polish, Spanish, Norwegian, Korean, German and Arabic.
In 2003 she received the Helen Merrill Emerging Playwrights Award and the Whiting
Writers Award. A member of New Dramatists, Ms. Ruhl is also the recipient of a
2006 MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant, and a PEN Center Award for mid-career
playwrights. Playwrights Horizons, the Off-Broadway company, will present the New
York City premiere in February-March 2014 of Sarah Ruhl's Stage Kiss.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Susan E. Evans is DMT’s current Artistic Director which she joined in 2011. For
DMT she has directed Private Lives, Dividing the Estate and All My Sons. She is the
former Artistic Director of Eastenders Repertory Company for which she directed
numerous productions over her 11 year tenure. Favorite productions with Eastenders
include We Won’t Pay, We Won’t Pay (Dario Fo), Frozen (Bryony Lavery) and Fear
and Misery of the Third Reich (Brecht) which she co-directed with Charles E. Polly.
She has also collaborated with solo artist Carolyn Doyle on productions at the Marsh
and the SF Fringe Festival, and regularly directs for Actors Reading Writers in
Berkeley.
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ABOUT THE DOUGLAS MORRISSON THEATRE
The Douglas Morrisson Theatre is located at 22311 N. Third St. in Hayward, next to
the Senior Center and the Japanese Gardens. The Box Office is open Tuesday through
Friday, 12:30 to 5:30 and can be reached at (510) 881-6777. Information is also
available at www.dmtonline.org.
The Douglas Morrisson Theatre is owned and operated by the Hayward Area
Recreation and Park District, and is funded by the property taxes of the people who
live in the Hayward, Castro Valley, and San Lorenzo areas, as well as other portions
of unincorporated Alameda County. First named “The Little Theatre” at its dedication
on November of 1978, the theatre opened its doors in January of 1979 with a
production of the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic, The King and I. The theatre
operated under The Little Theatre name until 2003 when it was renamed the Douglas
Morrisson Theatre.
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CALENDAR INFORMATION ON EURYDICE:
WHO: Douglas Morrisson Theatre presents
WHAT: EURYDICE by Sarah Ruhl, a luminous reimagining of the myth of
Orpheus through the eyes of his young bride Eurydice. Directed by DMT’s Artistic
Director Susan E. Evans.
Cast: Pamela Drummer-Williams, Alisha Ehrlich, Allison Fenner, Aby George, Tom
Reilly, Davern Wright, and Bessie Zolno.
DATES:
Thursday, May 16, 2013 Preview @ 8:00 p.m.
Friday, May 17, 2013: OPENING RECEPTION
THROUGH June 9, 2013
SHOWTIMES: May 16, 2013 – June 9, 2013
Thursday May 16 (preview) and June 6 @ 8:00 p.m.
Fridays and Saturdays @ 8:00 PM
Saturday June 1, 2013 @ 2:00 PM and 8:00 PM
Sundays @ 2:00 PM
CLOSES: June 9
WHERE: Douglas Morrisson Theatre, 22311 N. Third St., Hayward, CA 94546
Special Events: POST-PLAY DISCUSSION: Saturday matinee June 1
TICKETS:
$10 Preview
$29 Thurs. eve, Fri. eve, Sat. matinee, Sat. eve., Sun. matinee
Discounts available for seniors, students, TBA, KQED members, and
groups (10+)
BOX OFFICE: (510) 881-6777; www.dmtonline.org
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