Five years ago, Michael R. Duran built a pool with 1,800 gallons of gurgling water for a production of Mary Zimmerman’s “Metamorphoses.”
Now he’s making a memory-expunging river, an elevator inside which it rains, a room made only of string and even the Gates of Hell for a new spin on the ancient tale of Orpheus and Eurydice. Not to mention that it’s his job to figure out how to make objects fly, stones talk and humans float.
Didn’t he learn his lesson the last time?
“Yeah . . . I learned how to do this,” said Duran, who has designed hundreds of sets for area theaters.
Now he faces one of his greatest challenges: Creating the dizzyingly magical world — and underworld — born of Sarah Ruhl’s imagination and brought to collaborative life by a team of artistic designers for Curious Theatre’s “Eurydice,” opening Saturday.
Ruhl is a rising young playwright who asks for seemingly impossible things to happen in her plays. They’re almost blithe dares to designers who take on her work.
She writes stage directions in “Eury dice” like, “Raspberries, peaches and plums drop from the ceiling into the river. Perhaps only in our imagination.” Or, “The father creates a room out of string . . . It takes time to build a room out of string.”
“And that’s all we have to work with,” said director Chip Walton. “But I love to read a script where I go, ‘How in the heck would we ever do that?’ And not know. And dive into it anyway.”
It’s the task of Walton’s sound, light, costume, movement, prop and scenic designers to turn Ruhl’s enigmatic whimsies into physically accomplishable stage goals. It’s Ruhl’s unfettered imagination, Walton said, “that makes her perhaps the most exciting writer in the American theater today.”
Walton founded Curious as a company not of resident actors, but of designers. And the team he’s assembled for “Eurydice” represents “the all-star team” from the troupe’s first decade, he said, joined for the first time by Garrett Ammon, artistic director of Ballet Nouveau Colorado, as movement coach.
His designers have taken on big staging challenges before. They made a flood in “Cloud Tectonics”; they created Kabuki puppetry for “The Long Christmas Ride Home”; and they made a river for “9 Parts of Desire.” The biggest was perhaps the first.
“You have one big problem in staging ‘Angels in America,’ and it’s a monster: How do you make the angel fly?” said Walton. “But that’s a conversation that starts and ends with mechanics. From the start, you know that is the beast you have to wrestle and solve.
“Well, ‘Eurydice’ has about 20 monsters. And before you can even get to the engineering, you have to creatively imagine each one solved, because Sarah doesn’t tell you how to do it. She presents the challenges, and then we have to solve them on our own.”
For a scenic designer like Duran, named The Denver Post’s 2004 theater person of the year for his body of work, challenge equals liberation equals rejuvenation.
“It gives me a chance to be artistic,” Duran said. “Usually when you design a set, there are just certain requirements, like, ‘How many doors and windows do you need?’ Or, ‘This takes place in New York in 1956.’ Everything is pretty much answered for you.
“For this play, I kept wanting to go beyond anything that was familiar to me, or to lean back on things I have done before. When I first read the script, I kept thinking, ‘Are you out of your mind?’ But as time went on, I kept saying, ‘Why not?’ ”
Effectively creating the transformative world of “Eurydice” requires the invention and integration of so many artisans, Walton relied on a familiar team working in concert to create a world that is both functionally and visually logical.
For any play, designers are busy preparing “their parts” months before actors finally begin rehearsals, working from a director’s guiding vision and detailed plan for how to execute it. But because Ruhl doesn’t provide a specific roadmap, Walton said, “This is one of the first shows I’ve ever directed where I had to trust that the artistic vision would have to reveal itself as we went along.”
Initial creative decisions, once embraced, led the other designers down unexpected paths, leading up to the addition of the ensemble.
“It’s rare when design choices drive acting choices, rather than the other way around,” Walton said. “But design has affected the acting here more so than any other production I’ve ever been a part of.”
A telling example is the challenge of how Walton might represent Ruhl’s “Chorus of Stones” — three actors described in the script only as like “nasty children at a birthday party . . . or not.”
“We’ve got all these choices to make from a pretty blank slate,” Walton said. “But how we’ve made each of them represents what we really want to say with this story.”
And that story, as most either know or, at least vaguely recollect, is that of Orpheus, whose wife dies on their wedding night. Most retellings follow the grieving man’s determined journey to the Underworld to reclaim her, but where callous gods give him a challenge they know he will fail at, dooming Eurydice for eternity.
Ruhl’s is the first version told primarily from the woman’s perspective, resulting in a more moving elegy on love and death.
“It’s foremost a beautiful love story with a tragic ending,” said Walton. “But the great thing is how she’s made this myth accessible to contemporary audiences. And at the same time, she’s flipped this age-old tale on its head.”
And Walton and his team have been happy to help her flip.
John Moore: 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com
“Eurydice”
Ancient myth. Curious Theatre, 1080 Acoma St. Starring Karen Slack, Jim Hunt and Tyee Tilghman. Through April 18. 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays starting March 15. $24-$37 (2-for-1 Thursdays). 303-623-0524 or .
This weekend’s best bets
“Sixteen Wounded” The Evergreen Players present the regional premiere of Eliam Kraiem’s 2004 Broadway drama about the collision of two disparate lives — a lonely, emotionally remote Jewish baker and a passionate, young Palestinian far from home. Set in Amsterdam, where a bakery is shattered by more than broken glass, yet somehow, an improbable friendship develops. The playwright will conduct a talkback after the show, which continues through March 22, then returns April 3-5. 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays. at 27608 Fireweed Drive. $14-$18. 303-674-4934 or .
“Meanwhile Everywhere” The Cody Rivers Show is an innovative sketch-comedy duo from Bellingham, Wash., that pushes the envelope of physical theater and high-concept comedy. Their latest new show, “Meanwhile Everywhere,” employs unexpected juxtapositions leading audiences deep into experimental realms where laughter is often the only thing that makes sense. March 6 and 8: 7:30 p.m. Dairy Center, 2590 Walnut St., Boulder (800-838-3006 or .). March 7: 8 p.m. at the Bovine Metropolis, 1527 Champa St. (303-758-4722 or .). March 12-15: The Manitou Art Theatre, 1367 Pecan St., Colorado Springs (719-685-4729 or , various times).
This weekend’s other openings
“Below the Fold; a Blog on Stage” Five years of blogs by Rocky Mountain News columnist Dave Flomberg have been adapted into this world premiere staging, equal parts reminiscence and observation peppered with self-deprecating humor. Features a cast of 10. Opens Sunday, with performances to follow on Mondays and Tuesdays only through March 24. John Hand Theatre, 7653 E. First Place, 720-434-5245.
“A Closer Walk With Patsy Cline” A musical tribute to the woman who still ranks as the No. 1 jukebox artist in the United States. Songs include “Crazy,” “Walkin’ After Midnight” and “I Fall to Pieces.” Through May 31. Candlelight Dinner Playhouse, 4747 Market Place Drive, Johnstown, 970-744-3747, 1-877-240-4242 or
“Eurydice” Sarah Ruhl’s fantastical twist on the Orpheus myth, which here follows the story of his wife, lost on their wedding night. After falling to her death, Eurydice finds herself in the Underworld; but the Dead speak another language, and with the help of her father, she must re-learn her human tongue to remember the world and husband she left behind. In this visually stunning, whimsical story, our characters move through a world of talking stones, raining elevators, letters sent through the earth via worms, and rooms made of string. Through April 18. Curious Theatre, 1080 Acoma St., 303-623-0524 or
“Greater Tuna” Welcome to Texas’ third-smallest town, where the Lions Club is too liberal and Patsy Cline never died. Two actors play 24 residents of Tuna, offering a humorous look at small-town life. Through April 25. Victorian Playhouse, 4201 Hooker St., 303-433- 4343 or
“Mary, Mary” The newly formed 73rd Avenue Theatre Company debuts at the former home of the Gaslight Theatre with a lighthearted romantic comedy by Jean Kerr. It’s about a wisecracking couple on the verge of divorce following a nine-month separation. Through April 12. 7287 Lowell Blvd., Westminster, 720-276-6936.
“Office Space, the Musical” This original musical written by Jamie J. Bruss, Christopher Willard and Donna Debreceni is a sly parody of the 1999 cult movie “Office Space,” as performed by the second-floor accountants at Dynacorp. Through April 19. Backstage Theatre, 121 S. Ridge St., Breckenridge, 970-453-0199 or
“Tornado Season” This new one-woman play, written and performed by Emily K. Harrison, explores intersections of faith and violence in the American landscape and consciousness. Through text, image, sound, video and movement, the story travels to the intersection where the Bible Belt meets Tornado Alley, where floods meet fires, cowboys, debutantes and crystal meth. Live sound score by Toby Sinkinson. Through March 21. Square Product Theatre, at the University of Colorado’s Atlas Center, 1125 18th St., Boulder, 303-442-0234 or
Complete theater listings
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