Musician Plays Special Role in Non-Musical Play

by Holly Johnson on April 14, 2010

Cellist Elizabeth Byrd

Palm Beach Pops cellist Elizabeth Byrd will perform in “Melancholy Play,” the second production in Portland Actors Conservatory’s 25th anniversary season, which opens this Friday, April 16. The play by Sarah Ruhl, actually called “a lighthearted, wry piece,” by director Connor Kerns, requires a role for a cellist of either gender to do live scoring and to play cello live onstage for a pivotal point in the piece, and the company chose Byrd for the part.

Byrd will join PAC second year acting students onstage in this drama which follows Ruhl’s offbeat look at one woman’s melancholia and its effect on the small-town Illinois residents who surround her.

Byrd trained at Julliard School of music and North Carolina School of the Arts before joining the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. She has been on the faculty of Florida International University and SUNY Stony Brook. She has combined her cello playing with Craniosacral Therapy to develop her own technique of vibration and tonal therapy. Byrd is also known for The Healing Cello, a handful of recordings promoting vibrational and tonal therapy through cello music.

Other cast members include Robby Ciardi Lunderg and Stacy Downs.

“Melancholy Play” runs at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays through May 2 at PAC’s Firehouse Theatre, 1436 S.W. Montgomery St. Tickets range from $13 to $25, and can be ordered online or call 503-274-1717.

Holly Johnson

Holly Johnson has been writing about theater, including musicals, since 1977. She has also covered all the arts for newspapers in California, New York and Oregon, has written about travel and other subjects, and has free-lanced for Travel Oregon, the Oregonian, Sacramento Bee, Plaisirs de Vivre magazine and other publications.