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Seattle University Honors Dept. June 2016

Produced, Directed, Engineered, and Designed by Meghan Roche

Original Compositions by Garth Ball

Lighting Designer: Lily McLeod

Scenic Painter: Becs Richards

 

 

Eurydice in the UnderWorld: A Theatrical Audio Installation

Adapted from Sarah Ruhl's Eurydice

 

 

In order to graduate with honors from the Seattle U theatre department, senior students are required to submit a lengthy proposal for the project of their choosing at the start of the school year to be selected by a committee made up of professors from the College of Arts and Sciences. Before mine, the majority of theatre honors projects were short plays that students would write, direct, or act in. However, I had a very different idea.

 

THE CONCEPT

 

Initially conceived as a radio play/aural interpretation of playwright Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice, it eventually morphed into a full-blown site-specific experience, complete with lighting and scenic design.

 

THE PROCESS

 

I cut the script myself, selecting the parts of the story I wanted my audiences to experience the most: Eurydice's physical and emotional progression through the underworld. Then, after auditioning a handful of student actors, I had a series of recording sessions in which I worked with and directed the 3 actors who I wound up casting in the parts. One played Eurydice, Connor Fogarty played both Eurydice's father and the Lord of the Underworld, and Emily Haver played the Chorus of Stones (made up of Little Stone, Big Stone, and Loud Stone). A student composer worked on a number of pieces for me in midi on ProTools, which I wound up warping delightfully by swapping out the piano plugin he used with a number of FX pads. 

 

I then edited the piece together (learning along the way exactly why making multiple tracks for each individual take can be valuable....I'd estimate I spent 20 hours just splicing the dialogue together!) and layered in the music and sound effects at the points I wanted them, tweaking--often heavily--when necessary. This was built entirely in Pro Tools, and when I was done I exported each stem as a track, then loaded everything into QLab where I could start assembling it with the sound system I created and put the whole thing together into the space I created for audiences to come experience it.

 

Because, while I initially envisioned a strictly aural radio play of sorts (presented to the honors committee and the audiences in the normal theatre setup through a rep sound arrangement), I eventually realized that what I really wanted was to truly immerse the audience into her world, which I could do so much more thoroughly with a completely curated physical environment. I am no scenic designer and I had extremely limited resources, but when going through the theatre's stock of soft goods I came across an enormous muslin cyc that was well over 100 feet wide and at least as tall as our black box theatre's grid. And so I worked from there; shaping a space that audiences could enter and move around in, with the muslin acting as the living walls of their metaphorical underworld.  A painter friend helped come up with a treatment for the floors done in a color very similar to the off-white muslin, so it would shift with the lighting, and a lighting designer friend sculpted color and light around the space and built cues to go with the shifts in the piece.

 

Some of the speakers were visible inside the space, others were just outside of it pointed in, but each had a very specific purpose and placement. The 3 "stones" (see image of poster above & attached discription) each had their own speakers, the narrator's voice (regrettably, mine) was affected and came out of a speaker placed right behind a prop 1940's radio.

 

 

 

Eurydice in the Underworld Clip 1: Eurydice's Arrival -
00:00 / 00:00

Eurydice first arrives via raining elevator. Big Stone, Little Stone, and Loud Stone all voiced by Emily Haver. Stage direction narration (unfortunately) by Meghan Roche.

 

 

Eurydice in the Underworld Clip 2: Dipped in the River -
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Eurydice's father dips himself in the river & Eurydice's return to the underworld. Father voiced by Connor Fogarty, Eurydice voiced by Anna Gebarski.

 

 

Eurydice in the Underworld Clip 3: The Lord of the Underworld -
00:00 / 00:00

The final arrival of the Lord of the Underworld (Connor Fogarty), to take Eurydice as his bride.

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