Worcester State University’s Visual and Performing Arts (VPA) Department stages Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice, which retells the myth of Orpheus from Eurydice’s perspective, at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 25th in Fuller Theater, located on the second floor of the Helen G. Shaughnessy Administration Building. The show continues at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, April 26, and Saturday, April 27, and concludes with a 2 p.m. matinee on Sunday, April 28.
The play follows Eurydice and her journey through the underworld in the classical myth of Orpheus. Worcester State guest director, Megan Schy Gleeson, says the audience can look forward to the symbolic use of paper in the show as a recurring motif around grief, loss, and the ties that bind us to our loved ones.
“Eurydice works with the nature of impermanence, and asks the question, ‘How do we move on when those we love have died?’” said Schy Gleeson, director of the spring production. For Sarah Ruhl, the playwright of “Eurydice,” this universal story is personal and comes out of her grief over her own father dying when she was just 20 years old. Schy Gleeson explains that we can see this in the character called Father in the play. It is this longing for connection and for more time that makes Eurydice both compelling and heartbreaking to its audience.
Tickets are $7 for students, $10 for seniors, and $15 for general admission. To purchase tickets online for the show, visit worcester.edu/VPABoxOffice. To purchase tickets in person, visit the Worcester State Student Center Information Desk or contact the VPA Box Office at 508-929-8843 or VPABoxOffice@worcester.edu to make a reservation. Tickets will also be available at the door.
Worcester State Theatre productions feature diverse styles that range from comedy to drama to tragedy, providing students with a variety of performance experience.
Eurydice cast members and roles include:
Jaclyn Kirby Morrison as Eurydice
Angel Sotomayor as Her Father
Rhiannon Mansur as Orpheus
Delaney DeNorscia as A Nasty Interesting Man
Quinn Willshire-Rogers as The Lord of the Underworld/The Child
John McAuliffe as Big Stone
Catherine Shine as Little Stone
Allison Bellardino as Loud Stone
VPA’s Bachelor of Arts in Theatre program immerses students in a 39-credit program of study that includes an extensive variety of theatre courses, performances, and other hands-on, lab-based experiences with productions such as Eurydice.
The Worcester State Visual and Performing Arts Department offers interdisciplinary and specialized artistic education that prepares students for professional lives in the arts. Its educational spaces encompass the Fuller Theater, practice rooms for music, and art studios at the University’s Sagamore Studios. VPA students gain in-depth knowledge of their preferred art form—art, music, or theatre—plus an understanding of what the arts have in common, and how they are performed and exhibited in the real world. Learn more at www.worcester.edu/VPA or connect with VPA on social media: Facebook/VPAatWorcesterState, and @wsuvpa Instagram @WSUVPA. Subscribe to our YouTube channel by searching “VPA at Worcester State.”
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