Latest news with #Eurydice
Los Angeles Times
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
In ‘Lessons From My Teachers,' playwright Sarah Ruhl finds wisdom in art, motherhood, even grief
One of the mistakes of teaching, I've learned through my years as a part-time professor, is to prepare so much that the students have no choice but to become passive recipients of knowledge that has been predigested for them. The problem is akin to that of an actor who works so assiduously on his own that by the time rehearsals arrive he only wants to perfect what he's worked out on his own. Scene partners be damned. In 'Lessons From My Teachers,' playwright Sarah Ruhl ('The Clean House, 'Eurydice') derives lessons from her years of being, in the very best sense of the phrase, a perpetual student. Even as she has become a master playwriting teacher at Yale, she finds opportunities to learn from those she's paid to instruct. One of the recurring themes of the book is that education, in its highest form, is a dynamic process. Showing up, paying courteous attention and being as willing to receive as to share information are fundamental to the collaborative nature of learning. Even in the classroom, with its necessary hierarchies and rigorously observed boundaries, teaching isn't a one-way street. Authority is enriched, not undermined, by intellectual challenge. The most thrilling moments in my years of teaching drama have come when in the dialectical heat of class discussion, a new way of understanding a scene or a character's psychology emerges from conflicting perspectives. The goal of good teaching, like that of any art, shouldn't be packaged wisdom but the excitement of thought. Being a playwright, Ruhl is perhaps more attuned to how we get smarter when we think collectively. German playwright and novelist Gerhart Hauptmann insisted that 'dramatic dialogue must only present thoughts in the process of being thought.' Eric Bentley, inspired by this anti-didactic precept, commented that what sets Ibsen apart as a playwright is that, rather than offering summaries of existing knowledge, he allows us to be present at the dawning of new consciousness in his characters. We are privy, for example, to the pressurized inner movement that leads Nora to realize at the end of 'A Doll's House' that she must leave her marriage to become her own person. The play ushered in a revolution in modern drama not simply because Nora slammed the door on her husband. What was so radical is that by the end of the play audiences understood why this then-unthinkable act was so necessary. Just as the stage is most alive when actors, authentically responding to one another in the moment, allow unexpected emotions to break through the way they do in life, we are most fully activated when responding directly to the world and not to our assumptions about what we'll find there. For Ruhl, the greatest gift a teacher can give is being present. In a homage to her playwriting mentor, Paula Vogel, Ruhl writes, 'But what strikes me most when I remember Paula's teaching is her presence as much as the content of her teachings. In this country, we are obsessed with content and curriculum, all the while devaluing presence and proximity, which are two teaching values hard to describe or quantify (or, indeed, teach). As to whether playwriting is teachable, she asks in response: 'Is devotion teachable? Is listening teachable? Is a love of art and a willingness to give your life over to art teachable? I believe that these things are teachable mostly by example, and in great silences.' Aristotle understood that human beings are an imitative animal. We learn through identification and imitation. One of my mentors, theater critic Gordon Rogoff, who taught generations of artists and critics at the Yale School of Drama, valued teaching as an exchange of sensibilities. By sharing what mattered to him most in the theater, the values and experiences that shaped him as a writer and teacher, he had faith that our own artistic foundations would become more secure. Instructional manuals and study guides aren't what's needed most. The formative longing is for role models. Everyone could use a more extensive palette of human possibility than the one supplied by the crapshoot of an immediate family. Ruhl recalls Vogel bringing a small group of her students to her Cape Cod home, with its breathtaking ocean view, and asking them to say to themselves, 'This is what playwriting can buy.' Life-changing teachers, like Vogel, expand the frontiers of the dreaming imagination. They can also broaden the ambition of your intellectual scope. From David Hirsch, another professor who shaped her education at Brown University, Ruhl learned not to be afraid of tackling vast questions in her work. 'Professor Hirsch taught me that if you ask a midsize question you will get a midsize answer,' Ruhl writes. 'And if you ask a question that is so big it can't really be answered, you can write and read into the great mystery of things, without being easily satisfied.' When I think of the teachers who shaped my intellectual life, I remember their flamboyant theatricality, uninhibited moral fervor and extravagant articulacy. Above all, I remember their devotion to their subjects, the quasi-religious commitment to whatever their scholarly or creative discipline happened to be. This passion, more than any syllabus, is what engendered my own dedication. These professors loomed as large as superheroes, yet the best weren't afraid to reveal that they were also human. The older I get, the more comfortable I become parting the curtain on my life to remind students that I once sat where they are sitting now, that I know their struggles and have likely made many of the same mistakes. The student-teacher bond is remembered long after the lecture has faded from memory. In Mexico with playwright and legendary playwriting teacher María Irene Fornés, Ruhl entered a crowded taxi that didn't seem to have room for her. But Fornés, alert to the sensitivities of her writing students, reassured her, 'Come on, sit on my lap, I'll be your seat belt.' This playful exchange made a deep impression on Ruhl, perhaps because it illuminated something fundamental about Fornés' unconventional theater aesthetic, which rejected the notion that conflict was the soul of drama in favor of a vision embracing the waywardness and unpredictability of human relations. Fornés believed that a work of art isn't an equation to be solved but an invitation for wonder, which Aristotle considered the beginning of philosophy. Knowledge can excite wonder but so too can a joking voice, a sympathetic gesture and an unforeseen act of kindness. Ruhl tracks the way life continually presents to us opportunities to become more impassioned scholars of the human comedy. From a dying student name Max Ritvo, with whom Ruhl co-authored 'Letters From Max: A Book of Friendship' that was published after his death and later adapted for the stage, she learned 'not to wait for the slow reveal, to tell people you love them now and often' and that 'students sometimes make the best teachers.' From a crotchety neighbor who yelled at her daughters, she learned that responding with a homemade peach pie can establish a more harmonious relationship with a person undergoing his own private travails. Loss is a perennial teacher. In Edward Albee's 'The Zoo Story,' Jerry, at the end of a torrential monologue about a vicious dog, has an epiphany that kindness and cruelty combine to form 'a teaching emotion' and 'what is gained is loss.' Which is perhaps another way of saying what is gained is consciousness. Ruhl is a diligent student, learning not in just elite classrooms or before artistic masterworks but from the tyrannous demands of motherhood, the vicissitudes of marriage, the frustrations of modern medicine and the unhurried nature of grief. The sight of a sad-looking neighbor walking his ailing dog every morning teaches her that imagining someone's life isn't the same thing as getting to know the person. The moral is to say hello to the familiar stranger, to write that note of gratitude and to appreciate that teaching and learning are a lot closer to love than we've been led to believe. Ruhl's therapist, who is also a practicing Buddhist, relates a joke that he heard at a conference. 'What do Buddhism and psychoanalysis have in common?' The funny answer, that neither of them works, prompts Ruhl to ask, 'So, if nothing really works in the end, what is the goal?' 'Lightness,' he said. 'Lightness.'
Sydney Morning Herald
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Robber barons and moonshine: This show about the road to Hades is a hell of a good time
MUSICAL THEATRE Hadestown ★★★★ Her Majesty's Theatre, until July 6 Ancient Greek and Roman myths involving the underworld tend to agree on the ease with which mortals can find the road to hell. In Anais Mitchell's folk-musical Hadestown – a retelling of the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice, draped in a distinctly American mythos and musicality – the road becomes a railway line, and Hades a pinstripe-suited robber baron, whose train ferries denizens of jazz-age speakeasies to 'eternal overtime' in a factory at the end of the line. The other point on which the myths agree is how difficult the underworld is to escape. As Dryden put it in his translation of Virgil's Aeneid: The gates of hell are open night and day; Smooth the descent, and easy is the way: But to return, and view the cheerful skies, In this the task and mighty labour lies. We know that Orpheus will fail, that a fatal glance backward will condemn Eurydice to the underworld forever, but the tragic love story swells with every repetition and Christine Anu's Hermes – glam emcee in this steampunk adaptation – is determined they're going to tell it anyway. If Hadestown is too schematic to provide much emotional depth or tragic catharsis, it is musically superior to most Broadway blockbusters. This production delivers Mitchell's score (which started as a concept album and bloomed into a stage show) with propulsive catchiness and assurance. It's usually billed as a folk-musical, though the range of popular music referenced is much wider than that term suggests. Anu unleashes brassiness for the opening scene-setter, Road to Hell. Adrian Tamburini's Hades has a gravelly, embittered bass with dark country vibes going on – infernal shades of Johnny Cash or Nick Cave or even Tom Waits lurking in the low notes.
The Age
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
Robber barons and moonshine: This show about the road to Hades is a hell of a good time
MUSICAL THEATRE Hadestown ★★★★ Her Majesty's Theatre, until July 6 Ancient Greek and Roman myths involving the underworld tend to agree on the ease with which mortals can find the road to hell. In Anais Mitchell's folk-musical Hadestown – a retelling of the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice, draped in a distinctly American mythos and musicality – the road becomes a railway line, and Hades a pinstripe-suited robber baron, whose train ferries denizens of jazz-age speakeasies to 'eternal overtime' in a factory at the end of the line. The other point on which the myths agree is how difficult the underworld is to escape. As Dryden put it in his translation of Virgil's Aeneid: The gates of hell are open night and day; Smooth the descent, and easy is the way: But to return, and view the cheerful skies, In this the task and mighty labour lies. We know that Orpheus will fail, that a fatal glance backward will condemn Eurydice to the underworld forever, but the tragic love story swells with every repetition and Christine Anu's Hermes – glam emcee in this steampunk adaptation – is determined they're going to tell it anyway. If Hadestown is too schematic to provide much emotional depth or tragic catharsis, it is musically superior to most Broadway blockbusters. This production delivers Mitchell's score (which started as a concept album and bloomed into a stage show) with propulsive catchiness and assurance. It's usually billed as a folk-musical, though the range of popular music referenced is much wider than that term suggests. Anu unleashes brassiness for the opening scene-setter, Road to Hell. Adrian Tamburini's Hades has a gravelly, embittered bass with dark country vibes going on – infernal shades of Johnny Cash or Nick Cave or even Tom Waits lurking in the low notes.
Chicago Tribune
10-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Talking about mythology in the musical ‘Hadestown': ‘It's a sad song / But we sing it anyway'
With the national tour of 'Hadestown' currently back in Chicago for a two-week run, theater presenter Broadway in Chicago partnered with the National Hellenic Museum to host a panel discussion on Thursday about the Greek mythology behind the Tony Award-winning musical. Moderated by museum publicist Elizabeth Niarchos Neukirch, the event featured three cast members from the touring production in conversation with Krishni Burns, a classics and senior Mediterranean studies lecturer at the University of Illinois Chicago. Located in Chicago's Greektown neighborhood, the National Hellenic Museum has a mission to share Greek history, art, culture and the Greek American story. Greek mythology is at the heart of 'Hadestown,' Anaïs Mitchell's folk-inspired reimagining of two classic tales: the ill-fated journey of young dreamer Orpheus to the Underworld to rescue his beloved Eurydice, and the complicated romance between Hades and Persephone, which has turbulent effects on the natural world. As Burns noted, these myths have been around for about 3,000 years and have continued to 'accrue meaning' through countless retellings. 'We keep on telling these stories because they remain relevant,' she said. 'They help us explore ideas, express emotions and really delve into a depth of experience that we otherwise have a hard time accessing until we're in the midst of it and don't know how to deal with it. So, this is a place to grow as human beings through these stories.' Although the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice is famously tragic, 'Hadestown' tells it with a sense of bittersweet hope. Near the end of the show, Hermes — the messenger god who acts as narrator — sings, 'It's a sad song / But we sing it anyway.' In spoken verse, Hermes adds, ''Cause here's the thing: To know how it ends / And still begin to sing it again / As if it might turn out this time.' Jaylon C. Crump, who plays Hermes in the touring cast, finds a lot of meaning in this outlook. 'I think that it is just like a 'life imitates art' moment with me, personally, about how I view the world,' they said. 'I feel like I wake up with (renewed) hope every single day, and I think that the show has really taught me that.' Crump also believes that audiences resonate with this message. 'With how the world is right now, the story of Orpheus and Eurydice and Hades and Persephone is so much more relevant now than it's ever been. And I think that a lot of people leave the show with a newfound resilience and hope that they may have lost or may be trying to find again.' As a swing who covers eight of the show's 13 roles, Julia Schick experiences the story of 'Hadestown' from a different perspective nearly every time she performs. 'I think for me, the core of the show is about love and the different ways that people show their love and the lengths that you will go to for love — not just love for others, but love for your work and love for yourself,' said Schick. 'And as someone who is pursuing my passion, while it can be difficult traveling all over the country, it is not something I want to give up. I get to wake up every day and do what I love, and the lengths I would go for this love are astronomical.' Katelyn Crall plays one of the Fates, the three female figures from Greek mythology who represent the role of destiny in the individual lives of mortals. In her view, the fallibility of the show's characters makes the story feel true-to-life. 'I don't think there really is a good guy in 'Hadestown.' Every one of the characters has intrinsic faults and makes almost fatal mistakes,' she said. 'Why do we still root for them? It's a very, very interesting thing,' Crall continued. 'It also plays (on) the fact that all humans are intrinsically flawed and we're always fighting our own demons, and to mistake, to err, is human. And I think that's what makes 'Hadestown' so relatable, and that's why we keep on getting drawn to it, because everyone sees themselves in these characters even though they make really bad choices a lot of the time.' The humanity of these characters, even those who are technically gods, also comes through in the personalized way that actors approach their roles. 'The good thing about 'Hadestown' is that they really want you to bring yourself to the character,' said Crump, who is the youngest and first nonbinary actor to play Hermes. Their version of Hermes is 'completely genderless,' which is communicated through minor changes in the text, and has more of a peer-to-peer than parental relationship with Orpheus since they are similar ages. As a self-described 'dark-skinned Black queer person,' Crump also spoke to the importance of representation and bringing their authentic self to the stage. 'I'm giving the audience a piece of myself, and sometimes that audience doesn't want it — we're in different states, different political climates — but I'm giving it to you, and whether you receive it or not is on you.' Crump added that they have received a warm reception 'from so many people, especially members of the LGBTQ community. I've gotten so many messages from teenagers, from kids, from adults, from so many people of color, who have told me, 'I'm so glad that I was able to see somebody that looked like me on stage, and it's so inspiring.'' The current touring cast recently gave its 200th performance, but Crall, Crump and Schick show no signs of waning enthusiasm for this story. The tour will go on hiatus after the Chicago run, but 'Hadestown' will return to cities across the U.S. this fall. To echo Hermes, it's an old tale from way back when, and they're gonna sing it again and again.
Pembrokeshire Herald
08-05-2025
- Science
- Pembrokeshire Herald
Revealing the cells behind the biological clocks of intertidal animals
SCIENTISTS in Wales have identified the cells behind the bioclocks keeping time with tides in tiny marine organisms. The biological clock of land animals is regulated by a circadian rhythm, with biological processes such as sleeping and waking, digestion and hormone release responding to the 24-hour cycle of light and darkness. Intertidal organisms, on the other hand, regulate their biological processes to a 12.4 hour circatidal clock, which follows the ebb and flow of the tide, in addition to having 24 hour clocks. This allows them to survive in a temporally complex environment which is exposed at low tide and underwater at high tide. Dr David Wilcockson, marine biologist, from Aberystwyth University In a paper published today (Thursday 8 May 2025) in Current Biology, researchers at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge and Aberystwyth University reveal that they have identified the clock cells and genes they think are responsible for this tidal timekeeping. The discovery marks a significant step forward in scientists' understanding of how these natural biological clocks are orchestrated at the molecular and cellular level within the brains of intertidal organisms, and could provide insight to the evolution of biological clocks. The researchers studied two species of crustaceans which inhabit the space between the high and low tide-lines -Eurydice pulchra, the speckled sea louse which is a marine relative of the woodlouse, and the amphipod Parhyale hawaiensis. By manipulating the light regime that the animals were exposed to, and the maintenance or removal of tidal cues, the researchers were able to disentangle the cells responsible for the circadian and circatidal clocks in the organisms' brains. This allowed them to discover that the crustaceans have distinct circadian and circatidal cell groups, which adjust independently to light and to mechanical stimuli (tides). Dr David Wilcockson, a marine biologist based at Aberystwyth University's Department of Life Sciences, is a co-author of the paper. He said: 'For more than six decades marine biologists and chronobiologists have known about tidal clocks that regulate the life of coastal animals by studying rhythmic behaviours of numerous marine species. However, significant progress in understanding how these clocks work has been hampered because we have never found the cells that coordinate 12.4 hour behavioural rhythms. 'This discovery is significant because we can now tinker with the clockwork of these cells to better understand the mechanisms that have evolved to keep animals to tidal time. Many of these animals evolved many millions of years before land animals, making the clocks of marine species especially fascinating.' Chee Ying Sia, a PhD student and joint first-author of the study from the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, which led the research, said: 'It was exhilarating to identify, for the first time, a small cluster of cells capable of tracking the tidal time in the brains of intertidal crustaceans. These cells might just be the gateway to revealing the mechanisms of tidal timekeeping. The molecular rhythms that we see in these marine animals also hint at clock mechanisms that are different from what we have learned from circadian clocks of terrestrial model organisms.' The research was funded by the UKRI Medical Research Council and Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds, and was led by Dr Michael Hastings (Cambridge).
