Taylor University Presents Eurydice

Taylor University Theatre invites audiences into the haunting, luminous world of Eurydice, Sarah Ruhl’s acclaimed reimagining of the Orpheus myth—told not from the poet’s perspective, but through Eurydice’s eyes. Performances run February 20–21 and February 27– 28 at 7:30 pm, with matinees on February 22 and March 1 at 2:00 pm in Taylor University’s Mitchell Theatre.

In Ruhl’s bold retelling, Eurydice’s journey to the underworld is shaped not only by romantic love, but by the aching loss of her father. As she navigates a dreamlike landscape where language dissolves and memory slips away, the play asks urgent questions: What do we carry when someone we love is gone? What does it cost to remember—and what does it cost to forget? Blending lyrical dialogue with striking physical storytelling, Eurydice becomes a meditation on grief, identity, and the quiet defiance of holding on to beauty in the face of decay.

Artistic Director Tracy Manning speaks to the production’s central impulse: “The play is rooted in the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. In this production, Sarah Ruhl has made Eurydice our primary focus.” Centering Eurydice shifts the story from a tale about heroic rescue to one about agency, memory, and the interior life of a young woman navigating love and loss. By privileging her voice, the production invites audiences to consider how identity is shaped not by grand gestures, but by the intimate, often invisible work of remembering and choosing.

Manning adds, “We’ve been talking about the ways the set design and architecture, the costumes, and other elements represent decay—a thing that was once beautiful still has beauty in it, but it has been tarnished, erased, or hardened by loss. I think it begs a question about what happens when we stop paying attention to beauty.”

In Eurydice, beauty is not ornamental; it is bound up with memory itself. To remember is to resist erasure. To attend to beauty—even in a broken, fragmented world—is to assert that love and identity endure beyond loss. The production ultimately suggests that grief may tarnish what was once luminous, but it cannot extinguish the seed of beauty that remains.

She encourages audiences: “Come see a play, think deeply, thoughtfully, then talk to somebody about it.”