Eurydice

First, I would just like to say that I really enjoyed reading the story of Eurydice. It's been a long time since I heard/read it, so this was a good experience.

I also really enjoyed reading Sarah Ruhl's adaptation. One of the most distinctive things about her script is that the stage directions don't read like typical stage directions. Instead of having somewhat of a neutral tone, the stage directions are as if another person is speaking in the play. Here were a couple parts that really struck me. The first is in the beginning scene 1 in the second movement:

"The underworld.
There is no set change.
Strange watery noises.
Drip, drip, drip..."

Another part that I liked was in scene 2, third movement:

"She takes another step forward.
She hesitates.
She is all of a sudden not so brave.
She is afraid.

SHE LOOKS BACK."

And then, in the same scene:

"HE TURNS TOWARD HER, STARTLED.
ORPHEUS LOOKS AT EURYDICE.
EURYDICE LOOKS AT ORPHEUS.
THE WORLD FALLS AWAY."

Ruhl's lack of fear regarding CAPITAL LETTERS gives the stage directions a much greater sense of urgency and emotion. It is like she is really trying to shout across the divide between the playwright and the director/performers. It gives the story not only physical cues for how it should be performed, but it also provides the feelings that should be conveyed to the audience. Ruhl desires a sensory experience; the "drip, drip, drip" is evident of that.

Continuing in the vein of stage directions, it's interesting that Ruhl has such a fondness for wordless interludes--the brief scenes featuring Eurydice's grandmother, for example. She is clearly not a fan of having overly talky plays. She wants her characters to be physical, and so Eurydice has very active characters.

Overall, I really liked the motifs and imagery that Ruhl brought to the story with her script. Rather than having the "underworld" be fiery and dark, she keeps it the same as the "real world": wet and rusty. The ideas for the staging are strange and wonderful, particularly the raining elevator Eurydice enters the underworld in. I enjoyed the characters of The Stones; their contrarian attitude to the other characters was very entertaining. I was interested by how Ruhl focused so much on Eurydice rebuilding her relationship with her dead father--though it is understandable, given that the play is dedicated to the memory of Ruhl's father. The ending I found to be pretty disturbing--in death, all the characters are put into the stasis of lost memory.

One thing that kind of bothered me about this script is that the longer it goes on, the more the scene switches between the underworld and the real world. I think that this prevents the script from being very flexible for small performances, and I worry that it might jar the audience too much.

Dialogues, 2/9

I find it interesting that in monologues--unless a character is supposed to be speaking to another character rather than the audience--much of the conflict gets internalized; dialogue, on the other hand, allows for conflict to be externalized. In dialogue, characters get a chance to vent their problems, like in Death of a Salesman, or they can actually battle over them, like in Henry IV. There still some asides to the audience ("Attagirl" says Bernard in Arcadia), but not like how monologues are mostly long asides.

Having another character to interact with in a dialogue can help flesh out another character. It also gives answers to an audience for questions they might be asking. In Orphans, Treat revels in the purchasing power of Harold's American Express card, which causes Harold to say, "You're developing a sense of style, Treat, that's fine...but remember, please, everything in moderation." Treat replies that he doesn't know much about moderation, to which Harold responds, "I can see that, Treat." From these lines, we can deduce that Treat has probably never been able to buy the sorts of clothes he has been buying, and he is very naive about how money and consumption work.

Whereas monologues are fairly straightforward in their narrative, dialogues allow for more of a dramatic build. In Angels in America, Harper confronts Joe about his sexuality. It would be boring if the interaction consisted of nothing more of, "Are you gay?", "Yes/no." Instead, Harper anxiously has to try and pull his confession out. Joe denies that he is a homosexual, and then deflects her question by stating that he is "a very good man who has worked very hard to become good" and accusing her of wanting to destroy his image. In dialogue, the verbal back-and-forth gives the audience a much more complex narrative.

Dialogues also provide a chance for juxtaposition. In Closer, the audience observes two couples at once--Dan and Alice, and Anna and Larry. Dan has cheated on Alice, and Anna has done the same to Larry. While both sets of dialogue start out fairly the same, they come to very different ends. Alice, while still angry, is mostly in grief over Dan's decision to leave her. Larry, on the other hand, is much more furious and distraught over Alice's actions.