Eurydice

Of course, you can't read plays in a vacuum, can you? That's what I thought I've been doing for the past 23 weeks: Considering plays in some sort of absolutist and detached way.

What complete bullshit.

This thought o' the week is brought to you by my magnificent wife, who mentioned that she read Sarah Ruhl's Eurydice last year before The Grand Theatre announced it as part of their season. She pointed out that her experience was completely different than mine, because my immediate reaction was about that theater trying to produce that script in that space with those resources: Who are they going to cast? Who's directing it? How is their audience base going to react?

Neither way of reading a play is better than the other, I suppose. One of the great experiences when reading a play is imagining it as a play. Part of the magic of theater is that it's never an intellectual exercise, bound only by imagination. Theater must always take place somewhere very specific and literal, performed by individual actors, for a unique audience. Having worked there earlier this year, I can't help but read each stage direction and try to set it on that beautiful proscenium.

It's more of a daring choice for The Grand Theatre than I originally thought, and I really hope it pays off for them. Underneath it's modernity, there is a poetic core that their audience can respond to. Theirs is generally an older audience, and it's themes of death and memory and fathers and daughters should make for some powerful and direct theater.