Sarah Ruhl’s plays include IN THE NEXT ROOM OR THE VIBRATOR PLAY (Tony Award nominee, 2010, finalist for Pulitzer Prize, 2010, Glickman Prize, 2009), THE CLEAN HOUSE (Susan Smith Blackburn award, 2004, finalist for Pulitzer Prize, 2005), DEAD MAN’S CELL PHONE (Helen Hayes award for best new play), DEMETER IN THE CITY (nominated for 9 NAACP awards), EURYDICE, MELANCHOLY PLAY, ORLANDO, a new version of Chekhov’s THREE SISTERS, and PASSION PLAY (Kennedy Center Fourth Forum Freedom Award). Her plays have premiered at the Lyceum Theater on Broadway, produced by Lincoln Center; Theater off-Broadway at Lincoln Center Theater, Playwrights’ Horizons, and Second Stage; and regionally at Berkeley Repertory Theater, Yale Repertory Theater, the Goodman Theater, Cornerstone Theater, Arena Stage, Woolly Mammoth, Cincinnati Playhouse, and the Piven Theater Workshop in Chicago, as well being produced at many other theaters across the country. Her plays have also been performed in England, Poland, Germany, Israel, New Zealand, and Australia, and have been translated into Spanish, Polish, Russian, Korean and Arabic. Sarah received her M.F.A. from Brown University where she studied with Paula Vogel, and is originally from Chicago. In 2003, she was the recipient of a Helen Merrill award and a Whiting Writers’ award, a PEN/Laura Pels award, and in 2006 was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship. Her work is published by TCG and Samuel French, and she is a member of New Dramatists and 13P. She lives in New York City with her family.

Check out Sarah’s plays,
available from Samuel French

The Clean House
Dead Man’s Cell Phone
Eurydice
In the Next Room (or the vibrator play)

Q & A with Sarah Ruhl

Q: What’s your favorite play?

King Lear.

Q: What films or books do you find inspirational?

Anything by Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, Jane Bowles, Caryl Churchill, Paula Vogel, Maria Irene Fornes, Elizabeth Bishop, Neruda, Rilke, the Greeks, Shakespeare.

Q: In THE CLEAN HOUSE, Matilde recites jokes in Portuguese. Do you have a favorite joke?

My favorite joke in Portuguese is too dirty to write here..

Q: Your play EURYDICE is an interpretation of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. You have written other plays based on myths, as well. What’s your favorite myth? Have you already adapted it? Or might you adapt it in the future?

I love all of Ovid. But I think I might be done with him for a while in terms of adaptations.

Q: In DEAD MAN’S CELL PHONE there is a cell phone ballet of various snippets of conversation. What’s the most bizarre conversation you’ve ever overheard while someone was on their cell phone?

It had to do with acquiring a death certificate.

Q: IN THE NEXT ROOM OR THE VIBRATOR PLAY focuses on an intrepid young mother who takes her desires and needs into her own hands. How has your experience of motherhood influenced your writing, of this or any of your other plays?

It means I have to get out of the house to do my writing...

Q: When did you know that you were a playwright?

Either when I first saw Passion Play when I was 22, or when I wrote my first court drama (about land masses) as a fourth grader...

(Photo courtesy of the author)