by Adam West
Eurydice is a play by Sarah Ruhl that Centre Players will be putting on February 21st and 22nd at 7:30 pm and on the 23rd at 2 pm, all in Weisiger Theater. The play will run for about an hour and 15 minutes. The director of Eurydice, Skylar Hensley, is a senior and a Theater/English double major. This is an interview with Skylar:
What is Centre Players?
“Centre Players is the student theater organization here on campus, so we do a lot of different things, including little social events, but the main thing that we focus on is being able to put on productions – or at least that’s been our main focus for the past few years. I would say about the past three years. We try to do a main stage show at least once a year using funds from SGA. It’s completely student-directed, student-produced, and all the cast and crew are students; every aspect of it is student-run.”
Why did you choose Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl?
“So the first time I read this play was about two years ago, and the [theater] department was thinking about doing it. They ended up voting not to do it, but I pushed really hard for us to do it because I really like the emotion in it and I like the storyline in it. I think it’s very interesting to take something that already exists and twist it into a different way, like how it twists the myth of Eurydice and Orpheus in a different way by focusing solely on Eurydice. And whenever you look at the play, the play is written about Sarah Ruhl coping with the death of her father. A lot of the play has to do with building a relationship with her father through the underworld. The first time I read it, it genuinely made me cry because I just thought that the story was just so beautiful, and so whenever we were picking shows for Centre players, I was like ‘yeah, that’s the show I’m gonna do.’”
What kind of feel, vibe are you going for with this play?
“We’ve decided to go towards a more liminal space. We’ve really liked the idea of combining a lot of industrial aesthetic into a nature aesthetic. There’s a lot of man versus nature themes throughout the set itself. In terms of costuming and everything, a lot of the costumes come from a 1950s standpoint, and a lot of the music is also a jazz vibe, because it originally takes place in the 1950s. But with some of the other characters (which I won’t spoil), we’re drawing more inspiration from different time periods like the 1920s. We’re even drawing from the regency period at one point. It just exists as the space where time doesn’t really exist, which is why we had the set kind of focus less on a certain time period and more on a specific aesthetic.”
What has rehearsal been like without any professors or teachers?
“It feels a lot more lax, to be honest. Especially because everybody who’s in the rehearsal room – it’s people who I see in class and people who I hang out with on the weekends and stuff. So it’s a lot less, I wouldn’t say it’s less structured. That’s definitely not what I would say, because we still keep a very strict structure about our rehearsals. But it’s a lot more personable, and personal in and of itself. Because it’s one of those things where if I’m trying to relate it to somebody, I’ll be like, ‘hey, do you remember that thing that happened to you a year ago? This is that kind of scenario. It’s that kind of vibe.’ I draw more on their own personal experiences and stuff. And I think that by working with people who I already know very closely, it’s a lot easier to get more of a raw, emotional feel with the play.”
What’s something you don’t think people realize about theater?
“It takes a lot of work. It’s a lot of time, and it’s a lot more work than you think. As the director, I don’t think people realize that almost every single second that I spend outside of the rehearsal, I’m still in rehearsal, on call. I get random messages from my scenic designers and from my props designers, and I get random pictures from my costume designers, and that’s anywhere between 9 AM to past midnight. And I spend two and a half hours in rehearsals with my actors every single week, but I also do two meetings a week with my designers, and that’s just all of us all together. So usually per week, I would say I spend upwards of 20 hours working on this show just with other people. But if it’s just me by myself, I’m still just constantly working on it. And yeah, it’s a lot of time.”
Is there anything else you’d like to add?
“Come see Eurydice! February 21st through the 23rd. You should totally come see it and watch it, critique it, laugh, cry, do whatever – but you should come see it!”