Eurydice

Ruhl's "Eurydice" creates a postmodernist collage from disparate and diverse global stories of heroes so moved by lovers' deaths that they move heaven and earth to reunite. This Eurydice travels to the underworld by river boat, train, and elevator, but this Orpheus follows on a breath, through a straw, in sleep. Ruhl's play removes the tale from its classical roots, and sets it not in the contemporary world, but in a collage of "the past." Through this assemblage we see refractions of a story of love and loss and grief, but now through Eurydice's lens we are reminded that she didn't need to be saved from the underworld. Death is not "bad" but death, while heartbreaking for the living, is a natural part of life; the living can find hope, not that our lost loved one will return to us, but that we aren't alone in our grief. Ruhl has discussed in interviews that "Eurydice" is one of her most personal plays, written about the death of her father when she was 18. She notes that she wrote the play as a way to have more conversations with him. The play provokes us to think about our lost loved ones, our questions about the possibility of an afterlife and what our vision of that might look like, and, whatever our beliefs, the ways we still try to commune with the dead.