Memory and Forgetting: A Director's Concept

Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice is steeped with the ideas of memory and forgetting; almost every page is saturated with symbolism and discussion about these two opposites. Most of us would view memory as good and forgetting as bad. Don’t we feel horrible if we forget an important event such as a birthday? Wouldn’t getting amnesia be on our list of top worse things that could happen to our lives? On the other hand, we are urged to remember. We blog and keep journals. Scrapbooking is a huge industry. Genealogy sites are the second most visited sites on the internet (next to pornography.)

But nothing is simple and Ruhl forces us to look deeper at these concepts. Poet Margaret Atwood looked at these same complexities in her poem Orpheus and Eurydice. In part it reads:

He is here, come down to look for you.

It is the song that calls you back,

A song of joy and suffering

Equally: a promise:

that things will be different up there than they were last time.

You would rather have gone on feeling nothing,

Emptiness and silence; the stagnant peace

Of the deepest sea, which is easier

Than the noise and flesh of the surface.[i]

Herein lies the challenge of Eurydice: As Sarah Ruhl wrote it, there is no privileging of memory over forgetting. She explores both concepts with an even hand: What if forgetting wasn’t so bad? What if memory is just too painful? It’s difficult to watch. We want to scream out with the Orphics of old, “Stay away from the waters of Lethe!” It will be the one thing that will irritate and agitate the audience – and get them thinking and conversing.

The concept of memory and forgetting is the major component to Lisa Hall-Hagan’s director’s concept. She wanted our production to focus on and explore these concepts. Each director who leads a production really shapes the script into something new and wonderful through his/her vision. Here is what Lisa had to say about her concept:

“I've always felt myth-based novels and plays work particularly well with dichotomies, and I like the way opposites express themselves in design. For me, this play is so steeped in the pain of loss that it seemed natural to highlight the elements that make loss painful or bearable: memory and/or forgetting. Memory is both comforting and agonizing; forgetting is both peaceful and sad. Immediately the dichotomies become nuanced when the ideas don't divide themselves neatly. Once this concept began to solidify, the concrete and verbal symbols in the play began to arrange themselves within the world - all seeming to point our attention towards one or the other, but also always referencing both.”[ii]

The play is rich in symbols of memory and forgetting. Memory is referenced by string, human objects, letters, names, language, stories, and melody/song. Forgetting is referenced by water, stones, and sound/non-melody. One way that Lisa is adding to this concept is with color. She and Casey Price, the set designer, have designed a white out set to represent the Underworld. So memory is color, forgetting is absence of color.

When you come to the production of Eurydice, come prepared to have your world turned sideways. Be ready to look at life and death in a new way. Also – look for ways the director has played out her concept. What details, great and small, support these ideas of memory and forgetting?

We all come to a piece of theatre from different places. We all connect to the story in different ways. What will you bring to Eurydice? What will you take away?

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[i] Buxton, Richard. The Complete World of Greek Mythology. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd., 2004. Print.

[ii] Hall-Hagan, Lisa. Email. 28 July, 2011.