Terror and First Rehearsals

I’d like to talk about terror. Yesterday, at our first meeting of the Eurydice cast, I relayed to the performers and crew one of my reasons for selecting the play: it terrifies me. There is something invigorating and productive about terror—it is the mind’s way of alerting us to those opportunities that have the most potential to wrench us out of our ways of being and thinking, to grow into something new and wonderful. The process, predictably, can be a bit painful.

I could see on the faces of the cast and in their tiny nods of agreement that I wasn’t the only one feeling that pang of uncertainty and fascination. The meeting had the exciting quality of a new voyage, as every production has.

Why is it that a myth about a girl and her husband could bring up this terror? There are a couple reasons that strike me right away. First, and importantly, Ruhl tells stories in rich, evocative manner. The road map is full of challenges to coherency and opportunities for theatricality. It is exciting (and a little scary) to step into a role of authorship over these moments and visions.

Second, myths are designed to be reflexive. In other words, they reflect our energies and analysis back onto ourselves—our reactions to the story are inescapable in that we must necessarily look at the ways they apply to our own life. I find Eurydice’s story to be deeply moving. Each of the performers expressed a similar idea last night: something about the myth reflected back to them a part of their own world. Perhaps we’ll all share those parts of our world with each other as the rehearsals progress. For now we’re just sitting in a circle, feeling a little terrified, and it’s wonderful.