Alan Kim | The Roanoke Times

Alana Cooper plays Eurydice (right), with Alisha Saunders (red beret), Meghann Garmany (front) and Sarah Hoffman playing Loud Stone, Little Stone and Big Stone, respectively, in a production of “Eurydice” by the Virginia Tech theater department.

Want to go?

• When: 7:30 p.m. today, Friday; 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Sunday; 7:30 p.m. Nov. 12-15
• Where: Squires Studio Theatre, Virginia Tech
• Cost: $7, students and seniors; $9, general public
• Contact: 231-5200

How do you prepare to play a character who has lost the love of his life?

This is the question Virginia Tech actor Dustin Untiedt has wrestled with since taking on the role of Orpheus in the Tech theater department's production of "Eurydice," which opened Wednesday night.

Better yet, how do you deal with the pressure of co-starring in a play that just made its way off Broadway?

"Once it goes on Broadway, you have some big shoes to fill," Untiedt said at a rehearsal Monday night. "But as an actor, I try not to get caught up in knowing that someone else has done this and maybe they've done it better."

It's not common that a playwright would extend a play's rights to a university when it's still on Broadway, said Virginia Tech director Megan Carney.

"Eurydice," written by Sarah Ruhl, was produced by Second Stage theater company in New York this summer. The play is based on the Greek myth about Orpheus and Eurydice. Eurydice dies on their wedding day, and Orpheus journeys to the underworld to bring her back, only to lose her again.

Ruhl chose to present a contemporary version of the story through the eyes of Eurydice.

Carney, a third-year master's degree candidate in theater, said she fell in love with Ruhl's version and planned to direct the play a year ago as her final project.

Alan Kim | The Roanoke Times

Director Megan Carney is a third-year master’s degree candidate in theater.

"It was just about the time that the play got scooped up to go to Broadway, so the agents and producers and all the people involved in that kind of deal-making pulled the rights and said, 'No, we're not giving permission for anyone else to do the play,' " Carney said.

She was disappointed and started looking for other plays to stage. However, after the April 16 shootings at Tech, she felt strongly that "Eurydice," a classic tale of love and loss, was the show for the Blacksburg community.

Tech theater staff contacted Ruhl's agent to explain the importance of staging the play for the Tech community, and asked whether she would reconsider.

They were told "absolutely," Carney said.

"It's an amazing gift," she said. "This is a play that looks directly at deep love and very deep loss and the grieving process. I haven't done anything in the production to directly point at anything involving the 16th, but I think that the experience of coming to see the play could offer an opportunity for people to reflect on that -- what that experience was and how memory can help us as we continue to live."

Alan Kim | The Roanoke Times

Alana Cooper plays Eurydice and Dustin Untiedt plays Orpheus.

A community discussion forum will follow several of the performances, in which the audience will be encouraged to talk about the message of the play, as well as images and characters. The play is set on a beach, at a wedding and in the underworld, but it changes time periods from modern day to the 1930s to the 1950s.

Tech senior Alana Cooper, who plays Eurydice, said she read Greek mythology and "Alice in Wonderland" to prepare for the part.

"Sarah Ruhl makes a reference to 'Alice in Wonderland' in her script in the forward of the play, and so I decided to venture back into my childhood a bit," Cooper explained. She said the part of the play she most relates to personally is the relationship between Eurydice and her father, whom she encounters in the underworld.

"Oh and the love stuff, oh yeah," she added. "I know what it's like to be completely head over heels in love and not be able to see straight."

The biggest challenge of the role for Cooper is creating a personality for a character who was hardly noticed throughout history.

"Eurydice never speaks," Cooper said. "Finding the voice of a character who never spoke throughout history is a really big challenge. Is she shy when she speaks? Is she sarcastic or cynical or funny?"

Although Untiedt's character already had a voice, he said he still struggles with how to communicate that voice and the emotional vulnerability of the character.

"Essentially you go out there and bear your soul to people, and it's tough. I struggle really hard with that, like going to this place and accessing something that you don't necessarily want to show 200 people."

Untiedt said that he can relate to feelings of loss in the play because he had a close friend die this summer.

For him, the play has been a venting method, a release of grief.

But even though the play is saturated with grief, it also tells a story of hope.

"I think the play is a lot about memory and how when we remember people and when we remember things in our lives, we really re-create our lives, and we bring things back into being," Carney said. "We bring things back to life by remembering them."