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Michael Curry designs puppets and sets in Oregon, but they rarely stay here.
Working out of a studio in Scappoose, the production designer is famous for his work on The Lion King and Frozen on Broadway, five Cirque Du Soleil shows, many Olympics opening ceremonies and Super Bowl halftime shows. Plus: Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour stage.
This summer is different. Local theater audiences will have the opportunity to see Curry’s work up close—albeit on a much smaller scale—at a one-act play called The Darkened Room, which runs July 24–26 at Northwest Portland dance studio BodyVox. (Curry is a longtime friend and artistic collaborator of BodyVox founders Jamey Hampton and Ashley Roland.)
The play is about a Victorian séance, and audiences can expect ghost puppets and stage illusions. It was written by Curry’s daughter Eva Curry. Even publicizing the show to the staff of 60 at her father’s Scappoose studio has been a fun novelty for Eva, whose day job is running the design department there.
“I’m like, ‘Come see our show!’ Most people at the studio have maybe never seen one of our shows in real life,” she says. “The closest thing would be going to Vegas.”
The last time the company, Michael Curry Design, worked locally was a 2017 production of Perséphone with the Oregon Symphony.
The Darkened Room, however, is a full family production. Michael Curry contributed puppetry and illusion designs. He will also serve as a puppeteer along with Eva’s fiancé, Cody Burchfield. Eva wrote and is directing the play; her brother, Will Curry, of the electronic duo MEMBA, wrote the music; and her mother, textile artist Julia Hannegan, designed the costumes.
Eva is tight-lipped about which puppets and illusions will be in the show, so as not to spoil the surprises, other than to say that audiences should adjust their expectations to a one-act, two-actor local theater production, not David Blaine–level magic.
“Some are just very my dad,” she says. “He has a real style, especially when it comes to stage illusions and making something out of nothing. The simplest thing can be the most poetic and beautiful.”
Eva, 32, started writing The Darkened Room in 2018 after graduating from New York University with degrees in English and dramatic writing. The play takes place in 1875. The main character is Florence Cook, who was a real spiritualist in London at that time, famous for invoking the spirit of a woman named Katie King. After great renown initially, Cook faced a huge backlash to her claims of being a spiritual medium and, in the play, is being investigated by a journalist.
Witchcraft, magic, tarot cards—Eva’s here for all of it. “I’ve always been kind of into esotericism, just in general,” she says. (Eva traces this back to attending a Waldorf school and its experiential learning style. The educational philosophy was built by an Austrian mystic named Rudolf Steiner.)
As a writer, she gravitated toward the rich setting and characters of Victorian London, not to mention the high stakes of a woman trying to make it there as a medium. It was a time when science was making a lot of mind-blowing advances, such as vaccines, X-rays and telephones, which initially made people more receptive to spiritualism. People had to get their minds around being able to hear someone speak across an ocean, or doctors being able to take pictures of patients’ bones.
“It’s like, why would I believe that, and [not] believe that this person can talk to someone that’s dead?”
Eva has always been a writer, but directing is a new challenge. At the beginning of rehearsals, when actors asked what she thought of a scene, she’d spin around to find the director before she realized better. But she is settling into the role after a lifetime of involvement in theater, whether through her family business or during her decade in New York. (She now lives back home in Portland and just bought a house in Northwest.)
Her father says Eva grew up “smack in the middle of a theater family” and that both of his children seemed destined to work in the creative arts.
“It’s so rewarding to see Eva’s voice as a writer and director grow,” Michael Curry said over email. “The perspective of Eva’s view of the world has been delightful to see unfold and materialize onstage.”
Working with her father professionally is a dynamic she is used to navigating. He’s saved in her phone as Michael Curry, not Dad, for example, though they maintain a father-daughter relationship outside the studio. She calls it “toggling” between the two. Still, having every member of the family contributing to one production is a next-level family affair. So far, so good, Eva says, before reconsidering:
“Well, we’ll see how tech week goes.”
SEE IT: The Darkened Room at BodyVox, 1201 NW 17th Ave., 503-229-0627, bodyvox.org/featured-shows/the-darkened-room. 7 pm Friday and Saturday, 4:30 pm Sunday, July 24–26. $15.
