The current issue of the Atlantic—the first annual “Culture Issue” for the 153-year-old magazine—features a short discussion with playwright Sarah Ruhl and set designer Scott Bradley about how she conceived, and he brought to vivid stage life, this stage direction from her mythic update Eurydice:
The sound of an elevator ding. An elevator door opens. Inside the elevator, it is raining.
The photo which illustrates the Atlantic article is from Eurydice’s original 2004 production at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre in 2004, but Bradley engineered the same water trick for the subsequent productions of the play at Yale Repertory Theatre in 2006 (which yielded the photo above, taken by Joan Marcus) and Off Broadway.
It really was a mesmerizing effect, even during a period where it seemed like fountains of water were gushing out of every other play you saw. (The Bluest Eye and Underneath the Lintel at Long Wharf, Singing in the Rain at the Goodspeed).
You can’t call the Atlantic’s coverage timely—the regional theater realm had largely moved on from Eurydice by mid-2008 (partly, of course, because Ruhl continues to churn out fresh, exciting and experimental works). The script has trickled down (so to speak) to college and small theaters which probably aren’t spending the same amount of energy and water on that particular special effect.
Still, a worthy incursion of technical theater into a mainstream publication. Hope to have items like that—behind the scenes of magical stage moments—on this very site, as NHTJ continues to develop.
(Does anybody, for instance, have the recipe for the poop that covered that poor man head-to-toe last year in Battle of Black and Dogs at Yale Rep?)
Water Works | New Haven Theater Jerk