Dryads
Dryads are tree nymphs; the spirits of oak trees, to be precise. (Other species of trees have their own species of nymphs: Meliae for ash trees, Caryatids for walnut trees.) Their duty is to protect the trees and groves where they live, and they may punish mortals who cut down trees without permission. Some dryads, known as Hamadryads, are so intimately tied to a certain tree that if the tree dies, so does the nymph. Traditional mythology does not usually specify what gods or spirits are responsible for giving birth to dryads, and not many dryads have become famous in their own right. However, according to some sources, Eurydice, Orpheus’s wife, was a dryad. Dryads are often portrayed as shy and fearful of humans, though they can display a terrifying anger if you trespass in their sacred groves.
Of her play The Dryad of Suburbia, Marissa Skudlarek writes: “If you had told me, as an eight-year-old, that I’d eventually get commissioned to write a play about ‘tree fairies,’ I would have been ecstatic. I was a weird kid with an overactive imagination, who believed in magic for a few years after most of my peers had given up such beliefs as childish. Only recently have I wondered whether this ever gave my parents cause for concern! I drew upon these experiences to write The Dryad of Suburbia, which depicts a modern-day couple whose daughter has become convinced that she’s a tree spirit. Heidi and Tom aren’t sure whether their child is playing an innocent game, or is having harmful delusions. It’s not easy to be a tree spirit in a suburban neighborhood that’s blighted by both conformity and drought.”
DRYADS or THE DRYAD OF SUBURBIA by Marissa Skudlarek
Directed by Valerie Fachman
Staged Reading on November 5, 2014
Colleen Egan (Heidi)
Nick Trengove (Tom)
Carole Swann (Stage Directions)
Marissa Skudlarek is thrilled to return for a fifth year with the San Francisco Olympians Festival. After serving as box-office manager for the 2010 festival, she wrote the full-length drama Pleiades in 2011, the screenplay Aphrodite, or the Love Goddess in 2012, and the short plays Teucer and Laodike in 2013. Pleiades received a full production in San Francisco in summer 2014 and has also been published in Heavenly Bodies, an anthology of Olympians Festival plays from 2011. Additionally, Marissa wrote the introduction to the book Songs of Hestia, a collection of five plays from the 2010 Olympians Festival. Marissa’s other full-length plays include Deus ex Machina (Young Playwrights Festival National Competition winner, 2006), Marginalia, and The Rose of Youth (Marilyn Swartz Seven Award and Vassar College production, 2008; staged reading at the EXIT Theatre, 2013). Her shorter plays have been produced by San Francisco Theater Pub, Un-Scripted Theatre, Wily West Productions, and the San Francisco One-Minute Play Festival. Theater Pub also produced a reading of her new translation of Jean Cocteau’s play Orphée in spring 2013. Marissa writes a twice-monthly column called “Hi-Ho, The Glamorous Life” for San Francisco Theater Pub’s blog. She can also be found writing about books, music, theater and more at marissabidilla.blogspot.com, or on Twitter @MarissaSkud.
The image of the Dryad was created by Cody A. Rishell. You can see more of his work at here and here.