ACID CLEAN ALUMINUM

In the Next Room (or the vibrator play)

“A fascinating, funny and evocative play. . . . Ruhl develops the story with the enticing blend of irreverent humor and skewed realism. . . . It’s beautiful.” –San Francisco Chronicle
“[This] breathtakingly inventive addition to Ruhl’s singular body of work . . . has the potential to be a modern masterpiece.”–Los Angeles Times
Sarah Ruhl made her Broadway debut this fall with her latest effervescent comedy: a play about sex, intimacy, and equality, set in the 1880s, when enthusiasm for the electric light bulb gave rise to a handy new instrument to treat female hysteria. The story revolves around the medical office and home of Dr. Givings, who regularly induces “paroxysm” in his once high-strung patient Sabrina, allowing her to happily return to playing piano. Soon, Sabrina falls in love with the doctor’s assistant Annie, and also befriends his wife Catherine, who is dealing with her own neurotic misgivings about not being able to breast-feed her baby. With this new work, Ruhl once again uses playful symbolism and lyrical language as she makes seemingly effortless thematic leaps—crafting a play with tremendous critical and audience appeal, in her singular theatrical voice.
Sarah Ruhl’s plays include Dead Man’s Cell Phone, The Clean House (a Pulitzer Prize finalist), Passion Play, and Eurydice, all of which have been widely produced throughout the United States and internationally. She is a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship.

a photo my friend Alex took of me in my latest production. "The Clean House" by Sarah Ruhl. I play Matilde, the Brazilian maid, who is currently discovering that the man she works for is having an affair.

Jan Guarino (Virginia), Robin Arthur (Ana), Kelly Kennedy (Lane), and Bianca Bryan (Matilde) in Barksdale Theatre's production of The Clean House at Willow Lawn.

Play by Sarah Ruhl

Named one of the "Ten Best Plays of 2008" by The New Yorker
“Sarah Ruhl’s bold, inventive, and ironic triptych [is] a meditation on devotion and its appropriation by the state. . . . Ruhl is an original; a storyteller with a fine mind evolving her own theatrical idiom.”—John Lahr, The New Yorker
“It’s a different kind of morality play . . . an often wondrous work . . . with [Ruhl’s] own special lyrical blend of poetry, humor and grace.”—Frank Rizzo, Variety
Passion Play is Sarah Ruhl’s “biggest, most ambitious effort yet” (The New York Times), a three-and-a-half hour intimate epic, plunging the depths of the timely intersection of politics and religion. Ruhl dramatizes a community of players rehearsing their annual staging of the Easter Passion in three different eras: 1575 northern England, just before Queen Elizabeth outlaws the ritual; 1934 Oberammergua, Bavaria, as Hitler is rising to power; and Spearfish, South Dakota, from the time of Vietnam through Reagan’s presidency. In each period, the players grapple in different ways with the transformative nature of art, and politics are never far in the background, as Queen Elizabeth, Hitler, and Reagan each appear, played by a single commanding actor.
Sarah Ruhl’s plays include Dead Man’s Cell Phone, Eurydice, and The Clean House, which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Her work has been widely produced both throughout the country and internationally, and she is the recipient of the MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship.