NIC Music Student Composes Original Score for Spring Theatre Production

Evangeline Collett had never written a note for a stage production before NIC's Theatre Department handed her its entire spring mainstage. The Coeur d'Alene music student, who plays violin and pedal harp, spent the past two months composing a full original score for the college's production of Eurydice, a feat that Assistant Theatre Professor Adam Kroeger described as "almost unheard of at the college level."

"I'm a perfectionist so it's taken a lot of my time over the past two months after my classes," Collett said. The assignment marked her first foray into theatrical composition: "I've never composed for a play before, only for myself, so I'm really excited for this opportunity to be creative."

The score, written in the modern classical idiom, accompanies Sarah Ruhl's celebrated 2003 play, which retells the Greek myth of Orpheus from the perspective of his wife, Eurydice. Ruhl's version pivots the myth on its defining moment: rather than Orpheus looking back on his own, it is Eurydice who calls out to him, suggesting she may fear reentering the world of the living or may choose to remain in the underworld with her father, a character Ruhl invented for the play. Ruhl dedicated Eurydice to her own father after his death, and the New York Times called it "a weird and wonderful new play."

The work has become a staple of American collegiate theatre since its world premiere at Madison Repertory Theatre in September 2003, produced by hundreds of high schools and universities. Ruhl herself holds two Pulitzer Prize finalist citations (2005 and 2010), a MacArthur Fellowship, and a Tony Award nomination. She later adapted Eurydice into the libretto for composer Matthew Aucoin's opera of the same name, which premiered at the Los Angeles Opera in February 2020 and earned a nomination for Best Opera Recording at the 2023 Grammy Awards.

Kroeger emphasized the cross-departmental dimension of the project, noting that Collett's original score elevates the production and reflects NIC's capacity to support collaborative creative work between its music and theatre programs.

NIC's Theatre Department will present Eurydice on April 16, 17, 23, and 24 at 7 p.m., with matinée performances on April 18 and April 25 at 2 p.m., in the Schuler Performing Arts Center inside Boswell Hall on NIC's Coeur d'Alene campus at 880 W. Garden Ave. All performances are free and open to the public.

The Schuler Performing Arts Center, completed in 1988 after then-NIC President Barry Schuler lobbied the Idaho state legislature for a dedicated arts facility, seats 1,159 and serves as the home venue for both the Coeur d'Alene Symphony and Coeur d'Alene Summer Theatre, Idaho's oldest performing arts organization, founded in 1967. NIC's Division of Communication and Fine Arts draws more than 10,000 community members to campus each year; Eurydice is one of two main-stage plays the college mounts each academic year.

For Collett, the coming performances will mark the first time her compositions are heard beyond private practice, a two-month creative investment set to one of American theatre's most emotionally charged canvases.