Northampton, MA — The Smith College Department of Theatre presents Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl on October 29, 30, 31, and November 1 at 7:30 p.m. in Hallie Flanagan Studio Theatre, directed by Tara Franklin. In Eurydice, Sarah Ruhl reimagines the classic myth of Orpheus through the eyes of its heroine. Dying too young on her wedding day, Eurydice must journey to the underworld, where she reunites with her father and struggles to remember her lost love. With contemporary characters, unexpected plot twists, and breathtaking visual effects, the play is a fresh look at a timeless love story. Tickets at SmithArts.Ludus.com from $5 to $15. Free for Smith students by emailing boxoffice@smith.edu.
Award-winning playwright Sarah Ruhl wrote the play after her father’s death, reworking the classic myth to process her feelings of grief. “In the myth, we never hear from Eurydice—she is always a cipher. I'm interested in her voice, a voice that hasn't been heard before,” she said of her Eurydice, which premiered off-Broadway at Second Stage Theatre on June 18, 2007. Ruhl’s version of the story of love, loss, and the inevitability of regret resonates today as it did millennia ago. The New York Times called it “Rhapsodically beautiful... an inexpressibly moving theatrical fable about love, loss, and the pleasures and pains of memory.”
The seven member cast is directed by Tara Franklin, who teaches acting in the Theatre Department. “One of the most exciting things about Ruhl’s Eurydice is her ability to capture the mythic qualities of the story and interweave them with universal truths about what it is to be human,” says Franklin “Her use of language, while poetic and, at times, cryptic, brings the audience into a world that is at once magical and accessible.” Franklin hopes that audiences will be moved by the production in a way that opens up their own joys, heartaches, longings and memories. And to see that there is a light of compassion, connecting all of us, that shines even in the darkest places.
Much of the story takes place in a timeless underworld. The New Yorker called the play “A luminous retelling of the Orpheus myth, lush and limpid as a dream where both author and audience swim in the magical, sometimes menacing, and always thrilling flow of the unconscious.” This dream world of fractured memories and lost loves is created by faculty set designer Ed Check with lighting designed by Leila Suess ‘27 and Damien Shaw ‘27, costumes by Nicole Degelman ’27, and sound design by Via Sussman ‘26. Guest artist Yana Biryukova designed the projections. The production is stage managed by Madison De Santos ’26. Tickets are $5-15 online at SmithArts.Ludus.com.
