Scenic Design
Client
Purdue University Theatre
West Lafayette, Indiana
West Lafayette, Indiana
Collaborators
Directed by: Noelle Monroe
Technical Direction: Michael Portrie
Lighting Design: Allison Newhard
Costume Design: Brian Butler
Sound Design: José Manuel Conejo
Eurydice retells the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice from the perspective of Eurydice.
The playwright, Sarah Ruhl delights in weaving technical requirements into the script. Characters arrive from holes in the ground, Eurydice’s father builds a room out of string and Eurydice arrives in the underworld in an elevator that rains. Such a post-modern twist on a classical tragedy provided some fun challenges and a chance to work on an operatic scale.
Noelle Monroe, the director, very much wanted the theatrical space to feel like it was down at the bottom of a well. I researched subterranean tunnels and hubs. I landed on a space that evoked a sort of ancient Greek temple but also an industrial subway station.
A ½’’ Scale Color Model of the design.
Orpheus plays onstage during preshow. I designed a title projection that also had a rain on water background. This clued the audience to the use of projections as well as the motif of water.
Establishing Design
Prior to her death and entrance to the underworld, we were challenged with making the space feel more vibrant and less like it was at the bottom of a well. Both lighting and collage-based projections were used to set the space.
Eurydice’s arrival in the underworld is one of the more iconic moments of the play. Because of the elevator’s significance, I placed it upstage center. Given the industrial nature of the set, I made the elevator mesh chain walls, allowing our lighting designer, Allison, to backlight the moment of her arrival.
Utilizing a scrim in the back wall, Orpheus delivered his ‘letters’ by appearing high above the stage. The director wanted him to physically be higher than the other characters as he still resided in the world of the living.
A cyc made of stretched string wrapped around the scenery upstage of the set. This allowed our lighting designer to expand and contract the space visually.
Removing shoes is a symbol for remaining in the underworld, so we decided to have Eurydice build her string room by pulling shoe strings from the shoes scattered around the space.
Noelle, our director, utilized the natural barrier of the string cyc to act as a border of the underworld. Orpheus was able to walk through it fairly easily, but it created a visual of him breaching the walls of the set.
