Eurydice By Sarah Ruhl

Graduate class project

A retelling of the myth of Orpheus from the perspective of Eurydice. Upon her death on her Wedding day, Eurydice is reunited with her father in the underworld where she struggles with loss, love, and memory.

 

Final Renderings

Eurydice, Beach Scene

Eurydice, Wedding Scene

Interesting Man, Eurydice’s Death Scene

Eurydice, Underworld Scenes

Small Stone, Underworld

Lord of the Underworld/Child

Orpheus, Beach Scene

Orpheus, Wedding Scene

Orpheus, Letter Writing Scenes

Father, Underworld Scenes

Large Stone, Underworld

Trio of Stones, Underworld

Eurydice & Orpheus, Beach Scene

Eurydice & Orpheus, Wedding Scene

Orpheus, Underworld Scenes

Eurydice & Father, Underworld Scenes

Loud Stone, Underworld

 

Initial Renderings

 

Concept/Research

For this production I wanted to focus on two main aspects when it came to costuming. Firstly, Eurydice relationships with me, past, present, and future. Secondly, the effects of the underworld on characters. From my reading, Eurydice has a complicated relationship with the men in her life. Orpheus struggles to hear her. Her father, while loving, is the very one that creates her cage of string. And the Lord of the Underworld wants to claim her. For this reason, I wanted their costumes to reflect her life with these men. Orpheus is costumed as the same period, the 1950s, as Eurydice, her father the decade before (presumably when he died), and the Lord of the Underworld as the decade ahead to foreshadow her future.

I also wanted the underworld to create a stony effect the longer a character has been there. Eurydice has none, so while she is in the gray palette, she is too new to the underworld to be turning to stone. Her father is beginning to fray, but his hold on his memories keeps the stone away. This fraying costume does allow him to build Eurydice’s thread room and connect him to her as she walks away, the thread seeming to come from his own body. The little stones, which I costumed to be versions of Eurydice as a child, as well as the Lord of the Underworld have a good deal of stone.