Sarah Ruhl: A Comprehensive Analysis of The Clean House, Eurydice, Passion Play, Dead Man’s Cell Phone and In The Next Room or the Vibrator Play

by

Heather Welch, B.F.A.

A Thesis

In

THEATRE ARTS

Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Texas Tech University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

MASTERS OF ARTS

Approved

William Gelber, Ph.D. Chair of Committee

Bruce Hermann, M.F.A.

Peggy Miller Dean of the Graduate School

May, 2012

Copyright 2012, Heather Welch Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would be remiss if I didn’t thank several people who have been instrumental to the process of writing this thesis and to my development as a student of the theatre. First and foremost, I would like to thank the members of my committee, Dr. Bill Gelber and Bruce Hermann. Dr. Gelber’s guidance throughout the entire process and his probing questions and thorough reviews of each chapter during the editing process has been extremely beneficial to this project. Bruce Hermann also has provided helpful insight and critical questions that shaped the methodology of this thesis and ultimately, the project is better because of it. I am indebted to both of them for their guidance, their kindness and for reassuring me when I was “in the weeds.”

I must also give thanks to Dr. Norman Bert. It was in his Dramatic Analysis class in Fall 2010 that I first attempted to write about Sarah Ruhl. Once the semester was over, I realized that I was not quite done with writing about her. This project is a much larger and satisfying result of that small paper.

Dr. Dorothy Chansky, Dr. Rebecca Hilliker and Dr. Fran Averett Tanner are also deserving of my thanks. All three have pushed me forward, believed in me, and have provided me with the strength to continue my education as a theatre practitioner and scholar at varying stages of my academic career. They are all responsible for my academic successes. These phenomenal women are excellent examples of theatre scholarship and education in practice. I am grateful to have been under their tutelage.

Lastly, I give thanks to Emmett and Hannah for supporting me in my dreams and loving me unconditionally. I love you both very much.

ii Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ii I. INTRODUCTION 1 II. THE CLEAN HOUSE 7 III. EURYDICE 23 IV. PASSION PLAY 36 V. DEAD MAN’S CELL PHONE 59 VI. IN THE NEXT ROOM OR THE VIBRATOR PLAY 73 VII. CONCLUSION 95 WORKS CITED 98 APPENDIX: THE PLAYS OF SARAH RUHL 102

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CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Sarah Ruhl has only been working as a published playwright for a decade; however, her clear distinctive voice, profound dramatic statements and unique ideas in staging techniques have already made their mark on American theatre.

Sarah Ruhl earned a MFA in Playwriting from Brown University in 2001 under the tutelage of Paula Vogel. Vogel, who is an accomplished playwright and is now the head of the playwriting program at Yale University, sees great promise in her former student. In the Spring 2007 edition of Bomb Magazine, Vogel wrote:

”I have worked with many stunning young voices, but I have been blessed with a continuing conversation with Ruhl over the years...and now I turn to Sarah as a trusted and beloved colleague who still has one of the most unique minds in theater I’ve encountered” (Vogel). Vogel’s views concerning Ruhl’s unique mind and the distinctive nature of her plays are echoed in the performance reviews written about her work. In the New York Times review of Ruhl’s play, Eurydice,

Charles Isherwood called her “weird and wonderful” and later wrote: “Ms. Ruhl’s theatrical vision is an idiosyncratic one. She is not a journalist of domestic life, as so many playwrights today seem to be, but an adventurer who is not afraid to blend the quotidian and the fantastic, deep feeling and airy whimsy”(Isherwood).

Ruhl’s work is hallmarked by configurative play structures that employ metaphysical locations loosely tied to reality that focus on distilled elements of

1 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012 the human condition. Her work is distinctly poetical, deeply personal and highly conceptual. The subject of her work varies, from the domesticity of house cleaning, to the staging of the Passion, to the invention of the orgasm, to dealing with death and loss—but are all tied together by her sharpness and wit.

Biographical Information

Sarah Ruhl was born on January 24, 1974 and was raised in Wilmette, a suburb of

Chicago (Al‐Shamma, Sarah Ruhl, A Critical Study of Plays, 9). Her mother,

Kathleen Kehoe Ruhl, taught high school English and also acted in and directed plays. She now holds a Ph.D. in Language, Literacy and Rhetoric from the

University of Illinois. Her late father, Patrick, marketed toys. He died of cancer when she was twenty years old (9). She credits them both for her career in theatre: her mother for taking her to theatre rehearsals at a young age and her father for his love of “puns, reading, language and jazz” (Lahr, “Surreal Life.” The

New Yorker, March 2008). Sarah has one sister, Kate, who is a psychiatrist. Sarah wrote her first play in elementary school. In an interview with Susan Stamberg for the National Public Radio, she described the play as a court case between two landmasses that had a dispute. She admitted loving such words as “isthmus” and

“peninsula” (Ruhl, “Playwright Sarah Ruhl Entertains with Big Ideas”).

Sarah Ruhl went on to attend Brown University where she studied English and had decided to be a poet. In 1995, she met playwright and mentor Paula

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Vogel, when she enrolled in Vogel’s intensive playwriting seminar in her sophomore year. Her first assignment was a short exercise in which she was asked to write a play with a dog as the protagonist. Ruhl wrote “Dog Play,” a short play that dealt with her own father’s death from a dog’s perspective. In an article for Bomb Magazine, Paula Vogel described it as:

[A] dog is waiting by the door, waiting for the family to come home,

unaware that the family is at his master’s funeral, unaware of the

concept of death. And, oh yes, the play was written with Kabuki

stage techniques, in gorgeous, emotionally vivid language. I sat

with this short play in my lap in my study, and sobbed. I

interrupted my then partner, now wife, Anne Sterling, at her

computer in her study, and read it to her, and the two of us shared

that playworld, and the recognition of who this young woman

could become: Sarah Ruhl (Vogel).

After studying abroad at Pembroke College in England, Sarah completed her B.A. in English from Brown University in 1997. For her senior thesis, she turned to her professor from two years earlier, Paula Vogel. Although Ruhl originally wanted to write a Victorian novel, Vogel agreed to work with her if she chose to write a play instead (Goodman). The thesis project turned out to be the first part of her three‐part work, Passion Play. It was produced in a student new work showcase at Brown University, where it caught the eye of director Molly Smith

3 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012 who would later direct the world premiere of the three parts at Arena Stage in

Washington D.C. in 2005. After completing her undergraduate studies, Ruhl took a few years off from school before returning to Brown to complete an MFA in

Playwriting in 2001, also under the tutelage of Paula Vogel.

In the few short years since graduating from Brown University, and at just

37 years old, Ruhl has had her plays produced in regional theatres across the nation as well as internationally, and she has been considered for or won many major playwriting prizes and grants. She has been honored as a two‐time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and has received the Susan Blackburn Prize, The

MacArthur Genius Grant award, and three Tony Award nominations.

The Study

The purpose of this thesis is to offer a comprehensive dramaturgical analysis of Sarah Ruhl’s five most highly produced and critically acclaimed plays,

The Clean House (2004), Eurydice (2003), Passion Play (2006), Dead Man’s Cell

Phone (2007) and In the Next Room or the Vibrator Play (2010). Also, this thesis sets out to fully examine the nature and form of Ruhl’s plays while comparing commonly used writing strategies to explore Ruhl’s writing style.

Since it is relatively early in her career, very little has been written about

Sarah Ruhl. In fact, other than performance reviews of her plays, several interviews with the playwright, and one master’s thesis, her written work has yet to be explored in great detail. Only one author, James Al‐Shamma, has published

4 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012 books about Sarah Ruhl. His books, Ruhl in an Hour and Sarah Ruhl: A Critical

Study of the Plays have been invaluable to the development of this thesis and will be incorporated with the available performance reviews and interviews throughout my comprehensive analysis of her work. Taking into consideration the unique nature of Sarah Ruhl’s plays, it is difficult to adhere strictly to standard, formalistic dramaturgical approaches to her work. Although I will certainly employ some methods of formalist analysis to examine the plays of

Sarah Ruhl, I will primarily focus on the language‐based nature of her work.

Chapter 1 will focus on The Clean House, a metaphysical foray into domesticity and spiritual cleansing. In this chapter, I will establish some of the hallmarks of Ruhl’s work, including scene structure and location, the significance of her highly conceptual stage directions that inform her overarching artist visual signature, and her uncanny ability to tackle life’s difficult problems with lightness, wit and laughter. Chapter 2 will focus on Eurydice, Ruhl’s contemporary interpretation of the Orpheus myth. Ruhl’s version examines circumstances of mortality and loss in a contemporary interpretation, which finds a young woman balancing life and death as she plunges into the depths of the Underworld. In Chapter 3, I will study Passion Play, Ruhl’s examination of war, fear and humanity in three different time periods: Elizabethan England,

Hitler's Germany and Reagan’s South Dakota; actors stage the Passion Play under the fears and restrictions of their regimes. In Chapter 4, I will look at Dead Man’s

Cell Phone, in which Ruhl examines the fragility of life and human connectivity

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(and ultimately, love) when a woman takes it upon herself to put a stranger to rest when he dies next to her in a café. Chapter 5 will examine Ruhl’s latest play,

In the Next Room or the Vibrator Play, a whimsical look at the dawn of many inventions: electricity, paroxysm and Victorian marital intimacy.

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CHAPTER II

THE CLEAN HOUSE

The Clean House was the first of Sarah Ruhl’s plays to garner critical and widespread attention. It also set the stage nicely for several hallmarks of Ruhl’s work that are woven into her other plays as well. In this chapter, I will examine several writing strategies that set Sarah Ruhl apart: her specific and unique staging, her highly conceptual visual style, and her ability to take extremely weighty life subjects and deal with them in beautiful ways.

The Clean House premiered at the Yale Repertory Theatre in September

2004 and had its West Coast premiere at South Coast Repertory Theatre in early

2005. It was later performed at the Goodman Theatre (2006), Lincoln Center

(2006), and several other regional theatres across the nation. It was nominated for the 2004 Susan Blackburn Prize and was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. As for the inspiration for the play, she told Wendy Weckworth:

I was at a party full of doctors. One of them came into the room, and

someone asked her how she was doing. She said that she’d had

such a hard month because her cleaning lady from Brazil was

depressed and wouldn’t clean the house. So she had her medicated,

but the woman still wouldn’t clean. She said, “I’m sorry, but I didn’t

go to medical school so I could clean my own house.” It was all laid

out right there, ready for the page. That statement is an amazingly

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efficient, clear description of a woman’s psychology, but it also

contains all kinds of other cultural information. Here’s this woman

who thinks she’s transcended cleaning because of her education.

It’s as though liberal‐minded career women are too good to clean

their own house. That fascinates me on a political level, but also on

spiritual and psychological levels. What does it mean to be

alienated from your own dirt? What does it mean for the upper

classes to be alienated from the exigencies of everyday living, so

that they’re not noticing what accumulates over time? (Ruhl, “More

Invisible Terrains,” 32).

Ruhl’s chance overhearing inspired her so greatly that she created the character of Lane, and even found a way to include the stranger’s line “I’m sorry, but I didn’t go to medical school so I could clean my own house” to develop her character.

The action of the play centers on Lane, a physician who finds her life in shambles after her husband leaves her for a patient, who he considers his soul mate. With the help of her Brazilian housekeeper, Matilde, who hates to clean and spends her time making up the perfect joke, and her sister, Virginia, who loves to clean and strikes up a deal with Matilde to clean Lane’s house, Lane begins to find peace through friendships, humor and house cleaning.

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The first thing that is the most striking about The Clean House is the specificity and highly conceptual nature of the play’s setting. Ruhl describes the location as a “metaphysical Connecticut. Or, a house that is not far from the sea and not far from the city” (Ruhl, The Clean House and Other Plays, 7). Ruhl often sets her plays in metaphysical locations, replacing elements of the physical world with surreal, dreamlike fantasies filled with language and emotion. By setting her play somewhere in the ether, she is able to move back and forth between the physical realm and the realm of imagination without firmly establishing ties in either realm. Scenically, she explicitly asks for a white living room with white décor. This living room is not to have unnecessary clutter since its owner, Lane, is perceived to have her life in order. Above the white living room, Ruhl prescribes a balcony, which is only used in Act II as the home of Ana, Charles’s lover. Ana’s home, simple but lovely, serves as a contrast to the sterility and pristine nature of the stage below. Another interesting scenic element Ruhl uses in The Clean House: a series of Brechtian‐like subtitles that she suggests be projected for the audience during the moments that require specificity and may not be “actable.” For instance, she includes several suggestions such as “Matilde tries to think up the perfect joke” or “Virginia has a deep urge to order the universe” which are both moments that may not carry universal meaning to all audience members.

Ruhl’s primary writing strategy as a playwright is developed within the form of a configurative play structure. In his book, Playwriting, author Sam

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Smiley describes the configurative form as being comprised of several things, including broken episodic action that is not causal scene to scene, language that is

“variegated and rhapsodic” and a general lack of standard exposition and linear story. Smiley also describes configurative characters as “fragmented,” i.e. that are missing motivation and may seem “fantastical” or “surreal” (97‐98). Several of these elements describe Ruhl’s writing strategies. In The Clean House, there is no fixed conformity to the scenes of the play as Ruhl takes several approaches in conveying meaning to the audience. She uses direct address, conventional scenes and even scenes with no speech. Each scene is comprised of brief, fleeting moments that exist to explore characterization as well as move the plot forward.

In the opening sequence of scenes in the play, Ruhl introduces three characters, Matilde, Lane, and Virginia, through direct address monologues. In the first monologue, Matilde tells a long joke in Portuguese (9). Instead of beginning the play in a contemporary theatrical manner, Ruhl opts to draw the audience in with the rhythm and tempo of a foreign tongue. The joke, which is outlined in Ruhl’s liner notes, requires timing, humor, and physicality for the actress playing Matilde. In the first monologue in English, Lane laments that her housekeeper is depressed and won’t clean the house so Lane thought she was depressed and decided to take her to the hospital to have her placed on antidepressants. She claims she did not go to medical school to clean her own house (9‐10). Lane’s attitude, in contrast to Matilde’s lively Portuguese joke, seems stately and reserved. There is an immediate dichotomy that is established

10 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012 between Matilde and Lane. Matilde is described as wearing black and is mourning the loss of her parents. Lane wears white and lives in the white living room. The dichotomy in this instance can be construed in several ways. The first is the idea of class. Lane, a wealthy physician (who is also Caucasian) can afford to hire a lower class woman (who happens to be Brazilian) to clean her house.

The second way this dichotomy can be construed is of course through the perception of “having it all together.” Lane, who seemingly has her life in order, has a pristine life. Matilde is still searching for her happiness, her perfect joke.

Virginia’s introduction tells the audience that she considers anyone who gives up the privilege of cleaning their own home to be insane (10‐11). Virginia serves as the middle (wo)man in this situation. She, like Lane, is of an upper status in life, but she chose a life as a homemaker and a wife over having a career. Unlike

Matilde, who cleans houses to make money, she enjoys cleaning because it gives her a sense of purpose in her otherwise quotidian life.

Matilde then has her first monologue in English and explains that her parents were comedians, and her mother died laughing at a joke told by Matilde’s father. Overcome with grief, he committed suicide (11). This monologue (and several like it throughout the play) reveals Matilde to be richly imaginative, wildly passionate, and a stark contrast to the women she encounters in the household, where she is employed.

Once each character has been introduced, Ruhl then devises scenes for the characters to interact while each character remains firmly established in his/her

11 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012 own orbit. Each scene is short and is usually titled with the characters that appear in the scene (ie. “Lane and Matilde”, “Matilde, Virginia, then Lane”, etc.), and the scene ends when a character exits, functioning a great deal like a traditional French scene.

The scenes between Lane and Matilde reinforce an employer/employee relationship, although surprisingly, the first encounter between them has a reversal of roles. When Lane awkwardly asks Matilde to clean the house, Matilde asks her if she speaks so timidly to the nurses at the hospital. She encourages her to be more forceful and to order her to clean the house. Lane obliges and orders her to clean (12‐14). Matilde cleans for just a moment before addressing the audience; and imagines her parents dancing (14‐15). This encounter proves that although Lane may be a doctor who functions well at the hospital, her deeply imaginative Brazilian housekeeper rules the roost.

Ruhl devises scenes between Matilde and Lane’s sister Virginia to move the plot forward and as a source of discovery. For instance, when Matilde first meets Virginia, she confides that she is not depressed, she just hates to clean.

Virginia offers to clean Lane’s house because she loves to clean and needs something to do (15‐23). In the next scene, Lane comes home to find the house spotless and assumes Matilde is taking the anti‐depressants she prescribed (23).

Each character has for the moment been granted what they desire: Lane has the satisfaction of a tidy house; Virginia can find solace in the joy of a perfectly

12 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012 scrubbed toilet, and Matilde does not have to be bothered with cleaning and can focus on the perfect joke, which she describes as follows:

MATILDE The perfect joke makes you forget about your life. The perfect joke makes you remember about your life. The perfect joke is stupid when you write it down. The perfect joke was not made up by one person. It passed through the air and you caught it. The perfect joke is somewhere between an angel and a fart (24).

Matilde’s jokes are built into the fabric of the script in several ways to draw in the audience, to show differences in cultural sentiment and to highlight the significance of humor through life’s heartbreaks.

At this point in the script, a certain stasis is reached and the plot begins to move forward to introduce other characters, namely Lane’s husband, Charles.

Ruhl provides information about Charles that point to the fact that Charles may be drifting. For example, Matilde and Virginia are chatting while Virginia folds

Lane’s laundry. They find a pair of sexy black panties among Lane’s very white and practical underwear (24‐27). In the next scene, Lane and Virginia sit down over coffee and discuss Matilde, the new clean household, and Charles’ intensive schedule, which does not allow him to be home (27‐30). Ruhl uses her sense of poetry to describe a moment at the end of the scene in the stage directions:

A pause. For a moment, Lane and Virginia experience a primal moment during which they

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are seven and nine years old, inside the mind, respectively. They are mad. Then they turn quite naturally to language, as adults do (30).

Ruhl’s highly visual and poetic imagination is found in such stage directions, which may not necessarily be exactly actable or universal to all audience members, but it does serve to capture a certain mood or quality of the “actable moment” between performers. This type of highly poetical stage direction can be considered a key example of her writing strategy since it is commonly found in many examples of her plays. In this sense, Ruhl relies on speaking to the reader/performer/director to convey the meaning of her text in performance.

In the next scene, Lane is startled to find Matilde sitting in the living room in the dark. Matilde tells her that she was attempting to think up a joke. Matilde asks if Charles is coming home (31‐33). In another scene, Virginia and Matilde are sitting in the living room and find a pair of racy red underwear. They conclude that Charles is obviously having an affair. Lane enters and Matilde hides the underwear. Lane informs them that Charles has run off with a patient. Lane realizes that Virginia has been cleaning her house and fires Matilde and fights with Virginia (34‐43). When accused that she has better things to do than clean

Lane’s house, Virginia says:

I wake up in the morning, and I wish that I could sleep through the whole day, but there I am, I’m awake.

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So I get out of bed, I make eggs for my husband. I throw the eggshells in the disposal. I listen to the sound of delicate eggshells being ground by an indelible machine. I clean the sink. I sweep the floor. I wipe coffee grounds from the counter. I might have done something different with my life. I might have been a scholar. I might have been described one particular ruin with the cold‐blooded poetry of which only a first rate scholar is capable. Why didn’t I? (35)

The aim of the first act of The Clean House is to deal with the realm of the domestic, primarily with the act of cleaning. As Virginia’s outburst suggests, her version of domesticity is simply not enough. The same can be said of Lane.

Although Lane certainly seems to have it all, the way this series of scenes overlay each other increases the audience’s anticipation of meeting Charles, who until this point has been an “absent male” in the script. He has been spoken of, but he has yet to be seen.

In the final scene of Act I, Lane imagines her husband with his lover, Ana, for the audience. This action breaks the mode pseudo realism on the part of

Lane, and it breaks the convention of Matilde being the only one to enter the metaphysical realm to identify and interact with “imaginary characters.” Matilde enters and sees the couple in the middle of the living room and asks who they are.

This also marks the first time that figments of imagination are noticed and commented on by another character in the play. Lane and Matilde have a conversation about people in love, and Matilde attempts to cheer Lane up with a

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Portuguese joke. Lane begins to cry (46‐50). The act ends as Virginia enters and announces that Charles is at the door with Ana, his patient.

The second act of The Clean House serves as a considerable break from the first—which focused on domestic tidying—and instead provides an argument for emotional cleansing. This act also intensifies Ruhl’s use of metaphysical means to convey the depth of Charles and Ana’s relationship. The first scene of the second act is a described as a dream sequence: the living room becomes a white hospital and shows Charles performing surgery on Ana. The scene uses no dialogue, but the stage directions again show Ruhl’s distinctly visual and highly conceptual style:

Ana lies under a sheet. Beautiful music. A subtitle projects: Charles Performs Surgery on the Woman He Loves. Charles takes out surgical equipment. He does surgery on Ana. It is an act of love. If the actor playing Charles is a good singer, it would be nice if he could sing an ethereal medieval love song in Latin about being medically cured by love as he does the surgery. If the actress who plays Ana is a good singer, it would be nice if she recovered from the surgery and slowly sat up and sang a contrapuntal melody. When the surgery is over,

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Charles takes off Ana’s sheet. Underneath the sheet, she is dressed in a lovely dress. They kiss (51‐52).

Ruhl’s ideal poetic vision of this scene is conveyed in her passionate language and may be used by readers/performers/directors to come to a better understanding of the idealized version of love she attempts to create between Ana and Charles.

Ana’s monologue introduces her to the audience and reinforces Ruhl’s use of direct audience address as established in the first act. Ana notes that she has always hated doctors but Charles is different and that they are in love (52). Ana, like Matilde, creates a sense of the “Other” in this otherwise quotidian world and serves as a point of contrast to Lane and her fastidious and sterile expectations in life. Richly passionate and choosing to live life to the fullest, Ana is Lane’s antithesis. Charles introduces himself by talking about his long history with

Lane and his love for Ana (53). Charles is enthralled by the vibrant nature of the love he feels for Ana. His relationship with Lane seems like a distant memory,

Lane later says that he looked at her “admirably” on their wedding day. These monologues are followed by another dream sequence in which Charles tells Ana she has breast cancer and promises to save her (54‐56). Ruhl again uses metaphysical means to prove their idealized love. She prescribes moments in the script when they begin to fall in love, fall even more in love and finally, fall completely in love.

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Once these new characters have been established, the action resumes in

Lane’s living room. Lane meets Ana and is informed that Charles and Ana are soul mates. Ana, who is Argentinean, immediately hits it off with Matilde and offers her a job. Lane immediately hires Matilde back. Matilde decides to split her time between both houses (56‐70). This strategic structure device allows

Ruhl to directly compare the differences between Ana and Lane.

The rest of the play is divided into scenes that take place on Ana’s balcony or Lane’s living room. Ruhl prescribes that the balcony be directly above the white living room. In a particularly spectacular scene that provides a wonderful use of multivocality in language, Ana and Matilde bond while eating fresh picked apples. Matilde tells Ana about her search for the perfect joke, and they decide to toss any imperfect apples over the side of the balcony. Because Lane’s living room is placed “below” the balcony, the character notices the apples falling into her space. Ruhl’s use of diction is particularly unique here because she introduces two Portuguese‐speaking characters that converse in scenes together in Portuguese. In Paul Castagno’s book, New Playwriting Strategies, he defines multivocality as using different techniques and strategies to create dialogue in the script among the characters (17‐34). The rhythm and tempo of the

Portuguese in this scene not only adds multivocality to the characters but also a great deal of depth and variety to the script.

Near the end of the play, we see a certain tidiness of complex feelings that come rushing together to end the play neatly and whimsically. Ruhl deals with

18 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012 life’s weighty subjects in unexpected and beautiful ways. In Lane’s living room,

Lane and Matilde play cards as Virginia cleans. Lane asks a lot of questions about

Matilde’s time with Ana. Matilde tells them that Ana is dying and asks Lane to make a house call to her husband’s soul mate, which Lane finds ridiculous (77‐

81). On Ana’s balcony, Charles is adamant that he and Ana attempt to read each other’s minds, in an attempt to prove that they indeed have an idealized form of love. Matilde is convinced that she has come up with the perfect joke but is wrong because she did not die as a result of telling it (77‐81). Back in Lane’s living room, Lane and Virginia argue about cleaning. Matilde enters and tells them that Charles has gone to Alaska to cut down a yew tree to save Ana (81‐87).

Since Ana is alone and sick, Lane finds herself making a house call to Ana. She ends up having an emotional outburst about the destruction of her marriage, but just as quickly as the anger comes on, it dissipates and Lane forgives Ana (88‐93).

What could have been a messy situation is simply dismissed. Visually bringing this scene to a close, Ruhl finds a way to craft yet another unique staging opportunity. In the final stage directions, Ruhl prescribes that:

In the distance, Charles walks across the stage in a heavy parka. He carries a pick axe. On the balcony, it is snowing (93).

Ruhl’s use of the stage space indicates a far off place and the lengths Charles will go for his quest to end Ana’s suffering.

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In Lane’s living room, Lane calls Virginia to tell her that Ana is coming to live with her and asks Virginia for her help. Virginia cares for Ana as her health continues to decline. Matilde enters with a telegram from Charles in Alaska. Ruhl engages the characters in an interesting staging pattern, with Charles in his far off location; it begins to snow in the living room. Charles delivers his telegram to the audience:

CHARLES Dear Ana. Stop. Have cut down tree. Stop. Cannot get on plane with tree. Stop. Must learn to fly plane. Stop. Wait for me. Stop. Your beloved, Charles.

ANA I want him to be a nurse and he wants to be an explorer. Asi es la vida. (That’s life) (98).

Ruhl takes this opportunity to again show Charles in his far off location, making his love known for Ana but for the first time, Ana expresses that he may not meet her expectations. He is not there with her to comfort her in her sickness although he is doing his best to save her life. Ana asks Matilde to tell her a perfect joke so that she is able to die peacefully. Matilde reluctantly agrees to do it the following day (99‐103). Ana says her final goodbyes. Matilde whispers the joke to Ana and

20 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012 she dies. Charles dashes in with the yew tree to find his soul mate dead (104‐

108).

In the final scene of the play, Matilde explains how she imagines she was born. Her father told her mother a joke and her mother laughed so hard, Matilde popped out (109). With this, the play ends. Matilde is transformed from a woman who is mourning over her parent’s death to a woman who provided a humane service by telling a joke to end someone’s suffering.

The Clean House is a close examination of the power of domestic and spiritual cleansing through the bond of female friendship. The richly imaginative play speaks to the heart of the relationships built in our lifetimes, sometimes by accident, and explores how we may embrace these people in our lives when we are our most headstrong, our most persistent and allow them to show us the light. In a way, although Ruhl’s flairs and methods of devising plays are quite incomparable to other theatrical practitioners, the real essence of The Clean

House is not unlike a traditional kitchen‐sink drama, complete with issues that plague human existence: heartbreaking events like marriages ending or deaths of family members and friends. Ruhl’s style brings great depth to the message that above all; friendship, laughter and transformation can assist you in keeping a

“clean house.”

As was noted earlier, The Clean House was the first of Sarah Ruhl’s plays to garner critical and widespread attention and introduces several of her writing strategies. In the next chapter, I will take a close look at Eurydice, a play that

21 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012 utilizes similar strategies: a highly conceptual visual style, specific and unique staging, and the ability to take extremely weighty life subjects and deal with them in poetic ways.

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CHAPTER III

EURYDICE

Like The Clean House, Ruhl’s Eurydice employs several writing strategies that are found throughout her written work. In this chapter, I will continue to examine these writing strategies but at the same time; I will also explore other methods that Ruhl uses in creating her interpretation of myth.

Eurydice premiered at Madison Repertory Theatre in 2003 and was then produced by the Berkeley Repertory Theatre in October 2004. It opened off‐

Broadway in June 2007 and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in Drama the same year. In Eurydice, Ruhl takes up the Orpheus myth, in which the musician

Orpheus loses his new wife Eurydice on their wedding day and decides to journey to the land of Hades to beg the King of the Underworld to return her. He arrives at the gates of the Underworld, playing his harp; he is granted admittance across the River Styx. Playing his enchanting music, he passes several mythical creatures and finds himself in front of the King of the Underworld. The King allows Orpheus to take Eurydice with him to the Land of the Living on the condition that as he travels, he must not look back at her. He begins walking but can’t help himself: he takes a glance back at his beautiful bride. He catches a glimpse of her long enough for her to mouth the word farewell before vanishing.

Ruhl’s version follows the story of the Orpheus myth and examines circumstances of mortality and loss in a contemporary context. The significance of her interpretation comes from something distinctly personal: her father,

23 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012

Patrick, died of cancer when she was twenty years old. The primary action of

Ruhl’s interpretation revolves around Eurydice, who faces love, loss, grief and acceptance as she plunges into the deepest depths of the Underworld. True to

Ruhl’s style, she tackles these subjects with beauty, lightheartedness, and even humor.

The play is divided up into three movements with scenes interspersed between the living world and the underworld. The first movement begins with the young lovers, Orpheus and Eurydice, spending some time at the water’s edge professing their love for each other (The Clean House and Other Plays, 333‐336).

It is a young, idealized love, quite a bit like the love portrayed between Ana and

Charles in The Clean House. Ruhl writes that Orpheus and Eurydice “should be played as though they are a little too young and a little too in love. They should resist the temptations to be ‘classical’”(332). Also, very interestingly, Ruhl indicates that they are wearing bathing suits from the 1950s in the first scene suggesting that, although they are not to play to the classical features of Greek myth, they are to represent a love from another time. Ruhl gives no other indication of physical time. The profession of this young love is based in music.

Orpheus, a musician whose brain is filled with melody and song, attempts to get his betrothed (whose head is filled with literature and books) to sing the melody in his head. In a sweet attempt to suggest that their fate is the perfect match,

Ruhl prescribes the following stage directions:

She sings the melody.

24 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012

She misses a few notes. She’s not the best singer in the world.

ORPHEUS Pretty good. The rhythm’s a little off. Here—clap it out. She claps. He claps the rhythmic sequence for her. She is still off (337‐339).

Orpheus ties a string around her ring finger, stating his intentions to work on their idyllic love: they then race for the water’s edge (340‐343).

The Underworld is introduced in the second scene; Eurydice’s father writes her a letter for her wedding day and describes what it is like to be dead.

He places the letter in an imaginary letter slot, which Ruhl uses as a reoccurring method of communication between the physical world and the underworld throughout the play. The imaginary letter slot serves as a mechanism to express the words the sender wants to say that may never have been said to the other in the physical world (343‐344). The following scene finds Eurydice off by herself on her wedding day. Eurydice reveals to the audience that she is alone because she hates parties. She encounters “A Nasty Interesting Man” who attempts to get her to go off with him. She declines and exits. The man finds the letter from

Eurydice’s father and reads it (344‐347). The next scene incorporates both the underworld and the living world at the same time, with Orpheus and Eurydice dancing and singing a lovely rendition of the song, “Don’t Sit under the Apple

Tree” which conveys the love between the characters. Meanwhile, in the

25 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012 underworld, Eurydice’s father celebrates the union by trying to remember how to jitterbug (347‐348). The final scenes of the first movement unfold quickly when

Eurydice encounters the Nasty Interesting Man again. He tells her about the letter from her father and lures her away from her wedding. This is followed by a short scene in which Orpheus looks for Eurydice and continues with a scene of

Eurydice following the Nasty Interesting Man to his high‐rise apartment. She retrieves the letter and begins to run away, at which point, Ruhl indicates that she falls down six hundred steps to her death (349‐356).

There are several scenic requirements that help to set the mood of the play. Among the required elements for Eurydice are a raining elevator and an abstracted River of Forgetfulness. The raining elevator serves as a way of forgetting one’s past life upon entering the Underworld. It is suggested that once someone dies they forget everything about their former selves and live a sort of listless existence in the Underworld. The River of Forgetfulness is less prescriptive and perhaps may be explored by individual productions to determine its specific spacial nature on stage. Its function is to serve as a way for a character to die a second death, thereby forgetting everything they have learned in the Underworld. Being dipped in the River of Forgetfulness is considered a great punishment and is used as an open threat to get subordinates to follow the rules in the Underworld. Ruhl also suggests that the setting of the play be conducive to continuous action between the living world and the underworld.

26 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012

The second movement begins with a Greek‐like chorus of stones. This chorus is comprised of three stones: a large stone, a medium stone and a small stone. They speak in unison and build in intensity to explain the Underworld to

Eurydice and her father. The stones announce the arrival of Eurydice to the

Underworld. She steps out of the raining elevator but is unable to speak (357‐

358). This moment is particularly significant to the action of the play and again gives insight into the highly conceptual nature of Ruhl’s vision:

The sound of an elevator ding. An elevator door opens. Inside the elevator, it is raining. Eurydice gets rained on inside the elevator. She carries a suitcase and an umbrella. She is dressed in the kind of 1930s suit that women wore when they eloped. She looks bewildered. The sound of an elevator ding. Eurydice steps out of the elevator. The elevator door closes. She walks towards the audience and opens her mouth, trying to speak. There is a great humming noise. She closes her mouth. The humming noise stops. She opens her mouth for the second time, attempting to tell her story to the audience. There is a great humming noise. She closes her mouth—the humming noise stops.

27 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012

She has a tantrum of despair (359).

Ruhl creates a sense of depth and variety in the script by creating certain dialogue styles for the living world and the Underworld. In the living world,

Eurydice, Orpheus, and the Nasty Interesting Man speak in naturalistic prose. In the Underworld, with the introduction of the Greek style chorus of stones, the style of the ode extends to Eurydice as she laments the loss of her life and her inability to remember her husband’s name and as she says goodbye to her former self. When Eurydice’s father enters, this style is abruptly broken. An entire scene passes in which they seem to be speaking different languages. Eurydice’s father enters and she does not recognize him after being dipped into the River of

Forgetfulness. He remembers her and tries to convince her that he was her father in the land of the living but the stones remind him that dead people should not remember their past lives. She cannot understand what he is saying and has no recollection of her past life (359‐366). She thinks she is to be checked into a fancy hotel and that he is her hotel porter, while he is deeply trying to connect and regain his relationship with her. In a sense, Ruhl is expressing how language can be inadequate in the expression of emotion.

This inability to communicate effectively is reinforced several times in the second movement of Eurydice. Just as in the first movement, there is interconnectivity between the living world and the Underworld: letters can be delivered from one place to another. This time, in the land of the living, it is

Orpheus who writes a letter to Eurydice. In striking contrast to the first

28 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012 movement where Eurydice’s father would write her long, beautiful, prose‐filled letters of what he would say at her wedding day, Orpheus attempts to express his deep love for her but can’t find the actual words to do so. He crumples up the first letter and writes a new one, writing simply “Symphony for twelve instruments.”

He finds solace in music and begins to hum and places the letter into the invisible letter slot (366‐367).

Quite possibly one of the most interesting set of stage directions, which also reinforces the unique and highly conceptual nature of Ruhl’s work, occurs in the second movement of Eurydice. In this scene, Ruhl prescribes that:

The Father creates a room out of string for Eurydice. He makes four walls and a door out of string. Time passes. It takes time to build a room out of string. Eurydice observes the underworld. There isn’t much to observe. Every so often, the Father looks at her, happy to see her, while he makes her room out of string. She looks back at him, polite (367).

This type of moment, which is interlaced so frequently within Ruhl’s work, cannot be taken lightly. From a performance standpoint, how long should building a room of string take? In her article, “Figuring the ‘Spells’/Spelling the

Figures: Suzan‐Lori Parks's ‘Scene of Love (?)’”, Jennifer Johung takes up a similar

29 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012 notion of the actability of textual moments in Parks’s play, Venus. Venus is similar to many of Ruhl’s works in that certain elements of visual style or moments are explicitly imagined and yet may not always be entirely “actable and universal.”

Johung’s article deals primarily with Parks’s use of what she calls a “spell,” a scene comprised of two characters names listed one after each other (as if they were in conversation) although there is no text between them:

Scene 19 A Scene Of Love (?)

THE VENUS. THE BARRON DOCTEUR. THE VENUS. THE BARRON DOCTEUR. THE VENUS. THE BARRON DOCTEUR. THE VENUS. THE BARRON DOCTEUR. THE VENUS (Parks, Venus, 85).

Johung’s primary observation in her article is that Parks’s short scene of spells does not provide a framework for space, time or performance of the spell to be enacted in real time by actors. She asks whether or not the guidelines or strictures the Parks operates under exist outside textual or performance practices. She states:

I agree that Parks’s spells take us outside of not only the domains of

the typically verbal performance script, but also of the theatre’s

determination of onstage presence and action, space and time. But I

30 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012

also want to suggest that these typographical challenges that

operate within visual as well as verbal domains can direct an

alternative means of embodying the page, albeit in an indirect

manner whereby the elusiveness functions to question the very

conventions that move page onto stage. At the very least, we can no

longer read the spells as only linguistic determinants of speech,

silence, or space, but must, in conjunction, acquire a visual

articulation that expands interpretative potential by widening the

conceptual frameworks that drive practical decision‐making

(Johung, 42).

Ultimately, it is up to individual productions of these plays to manage such moments and to determine the appropriate time and space, but I feel it appropriate here to address it in the textual sense because Ruhl embeds it so deeply in her written world as it comes up time and time again in her plays.

Textually, Ruhl’s stage directions add depth to the moment and convey her explicit feelings on how to reveal the feelings in the scene but may be difficult to realize on stage. Like Parks’s spells, Ruhl’s poetic descriptions and vivid visual style must be carefully considered to execute her visions from the markings on the page all the way through to production.

This scene with no dialogue is followed by one in which Eurydice’s father shows her the room of string. She still treats him as if he is a porter (Ruhl, 367‐

368). Their relationship is at an impasse. She is unaware of her relationship with

31 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012 him, and he yearns for a deeper relationship with her. Structurally, the second half of the second movement moves the play toward its conclusion. Orpheus writes a letter to Eurydice telling her that he writes the saddest music without her and that she knows he hates writing letters. This time, when he drops it into the invisible mail slot, it finds its way into the Underworld. Eurydice’s father finds it and offers to read it to her since she no longer knows how to read because once you die, you forget everything from your past life. Hearing his name sparks her memory, and she begins to remember her past life (368‐371).

Once Eurydice’s memory is sparked and she begins to remember more and more things about her past life, a number of remarkable things happen. She and her father begin to build their relationship, much to their delight. The other and much more peculiar thing, however, is that Orpheus suddenly finds the capacity to write how much he misses Eurydice, this time by describing a lengthy dream about Mount Olympus. With this, the characters seem to be driven by new motivations and desires: Orpheus is no longer paralyzed by his inability to connect and is able to express that he wants Eurydice back. Eurydice begins to remember her past life including Orpheus and her beloved father. She is now able to ask the latter more and more questions and is re‐taught Greek words— and even to read after Orpheus attaches her favorite book, The Complete Works of

William Shakespeare to his latest letter (371‐377).

Structurally, the crisis of the play also comes in the last part of the second movement. Orpheus’s attempts to reach Eurydice prove unsuccessful when he

32 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012 attempts to dial 411 (377). The forbidden relationship between Eurydice and her father is noticed by the chorus of stones and later by a child, “The Lord of the

Underworld,” when he comes to visit Eurydice. He sees her room and hears about her father. He threatens to dip her in the river for breaking the rules (378‐

384.) Orpheus writes a letter telling Eurydice that he is faking his own death by drowning and is coming to the underworld. He will sing at the gates of the

Underworld to retrieve her. He asks her to wait for him. Eurydice receives the letter and tells her father that Orpheus is coming for her. The second movement ends with the chorus of stones hearing a knock at the gates to the Underworld

(384‐388).

The second movement of the play Eurydice seems to be an extrapolation of

Ruhl’s own personal feelings about her relationship with her father; it breaks away from primary idea of myth and deals with the murky middle between

Eurydice’s death and Orpheus attempts to retrieve her. The third movement deals primarily with the contemporary interpretation of the myth and attempts to connect it to the traditional story. It begins with Orpheus standing at the gates of hell. He attempts to sing but no sound comes out. The Lord of the Underworld tells him that he will have to do more than sing to get Eurydice back. He is to walk along the road without looking at her. If he looks at her, she vanishes (389‐

391). In the scene that follows, Eurydice tells her father she hears Orpheus at the gates. Her father warns her that if she looks at Orpheus, she will die a second death and that she should not cry out to him. They say their farewells. Eurydice

33 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012 catches up to Orpheus and they begin to speak without looking at each other and begin to walk away from each other (392‐399). Father decides to dip himself in the river because he is overcome with grief at the loss of Eurydice. He dies a second death. Eurydice, choosing the newfound relationship with her father in the Underworld over her past forgotten relationship in the living world with

Orpheus, rushes back too late and finds her father asleep. The stones tell her what he has done. Eurydice mourns the loss of her father and writes a letter to

Orpheus apologizing for being frightened and not going with him. She then dips herself in the river and also dies a second death. Orpheus enters happily, the raining elevator washing away his prior memories. He sees the letter but cannot read it (400‐411). With all of her primary characters cleansed of all of their memories, loves, sadness, accomplishments, and regrets, Sarah Ruhl ends her play. This time, she does not attempt to mask the weight or the emotion that the audience may feel about the preceding scene or to end it on a high or whimsical note; the play just ends.

Deeply rich in powerful poetry and with a beautiful lyrical style, Ruhl’s

Eurydice delves deeply into depths of despair and by doing so, both retains and departs from the style of writing she showcases in The Clean House. Although

Ruhl’s hand is apparent in all that she does, her highly conceptual visual style, her ability to take extremely weighty life subjects and deal with them in beautiful ways, and her specific and unique staging present themselves in different ways in each of her scripts. Perhaps the most interesting feature of her work is the spark

34 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012 of inspiration she finds in herself. In Eurydice, this spark of inspiration is distinctly personal. The death of her father sent her on a search to speak with him one more time, and this search made her deal with the power of grief.

This chapter dealt with a contemporary interpretation of a Greek myth.

The next chapter will take a close look at Passion Play, a progressive, hybrid play that spans three seemingly disparate time periods, interweaving elements of war, fear, insecurity, and a charismatic world leader to examine the shift from a religious society to a secularized world.

35 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012

CHAPTER IV

PASSION PLAY

Passion Play is by far Sarah Ruhl’s most ambitious undertaking. It began as an undergraduate thesis at Brown University and has evolved into a three‐ part, full‐length play. The piece spans over three and a half hours when all three parts are performed in one evening. The intent of this chapter is to examine the nature of Ruhl’s hybrid play and her writing style as it applies to this piece.

Passion Play was first produced in its entirety for the first time at Arena

Stage in 2005, directed by Molly Smith. It was later performed at the Goodman

Theatre in 2007 and Yale Repertory Theatre in 2008; Mark Wing‐Davey directed both of these productions. During the same time, Ruhl was named a 2006

MacArthur Fellow, a prestigious grant awarded by the John D. and Catherine T.

MacArthur Foundation that awards a limited number of fellowships to nominated individuals who show “exceptional creativity, as demonstrated through a track record of significant achievement, and manifest promise for important future advances.” The yearly award of $500,000 is divided among the recipients and is dispersed quarterly over five years.

Passion Play examines universal themes of mortality via the staging of the

Passion in three different time periods: 1570s England, 1930s Germany and

South Dakota 1969 to the present. Ruhl cleverly crafts the piece to show the similarities between the three scenarios of love, lust, and unwanted pregnancies

36 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012 and throws in a charismatic world leader into each act (Queen Elizabeth I, Hitler, and Reagan) for good measure. In an interview with The New York Times, Ruhl noted a life long interest in the Passion and explained that: “I’ve been obsessed with the Passion play since I was a child. Maybe it was being raised a Catholic, but I was definitely also interested in how whole towns would get involved, or religiosity could be used as a cloak for other things. In that sense my play is much more about theater than it is about religion” (McGee, “Sarah Ruhl’s Sunday School

Lessons”). The staging for Passion Play is much less prescriptive than some of her other plays. For Passion Play, Ruhl prescribes “a suggestion of the sea, a forest, or a tollbooth” and an open playing space respectively for the three acts and relies on minimalistic staging to convey her message.

Part I: A Village in Northern England, 1575

Passion Play is divided into three parts. Part I takes place in a village in

Northern England in the spring of 1575. Ruhl suggests that the setting of the first part be suggestive of the sea and also include an open playing area. In Passion

Play, Ruhl uses prologues and epilogues to bookend each act and each enactment of The Passion. For her part, Ruhl attempts to transport the audience to each location and time. For instance, the purpose of the prologue in Part I is to direct the audience’s attention to the social and political implications of the day as well as the lack of technological advances:

We make our play in England in the north

37 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012

by the sea in the open air of England. The Virgin Queen is on her throne. The Catholics are mostly done. Take pity on our simple play— we’ve no fancy lights only bare light of day. The good Lord tells us, to be most simple is to be most good so here is honest rough‐hewn wood. We ask you, dear audience, to use your eyes, ears, your most inward sight for here is day (a painted sun) and here is night (a painted moon). And now, the play (Ruhl, Passion Play, 11).

The prologue reminds the audience of the religious strife during the rule of Queen Elizabeth I, where Catholics were sought out, tortured and put to death in favor of Protestantism. The opening scene of the play focuses on the tradition of the actors who perform in the Passion plays; for instance, Carpenters 1 and 2 measure John (who plays Jesus) for the cross since he had grown taller than when he played the part the year before. During the scene, the sky turns red for the first time. Each time the sky turns red, it indicates an ominous undertone of mortal sin, which scenically propels the action of the play forward. In this first scene, John is lamenting that he had grown too tall for the part and that, perhaps, his cousin Pontius should play the role instead. Carpenter 2 stays behind to

38 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012 directly audience, telling them that each member of the company plays his/her part year after year and that his father’s father was also a carpenter. This is all done in the glory of God (15).

Ruhl also focuses primarily on the development of character traits in

Passion Play, more so than in some of her other plays because she explicitly states the character’s innermost desires within the scenes. This approach to psychological and motivational character development is unusual for Ruhl but really establishes both the similarities and differences between the groups of actors in each era performing their plays.

In the next scene, Pontius the Fish Gutter (who plays Pontius Pilate and

Satan) laments that he has always wanted to play Jesus, but his cousin John the

Fisherman gets that privilege. He comes upon a Visiting Friar (in disguise) who notes that staging the Passion is against the law. Pontius responds that the town is slow to change. The Friar has heard that the town is known for having a very good Jesus; The Friar seems only interested in meeting Pontius’s cousin John.

Using audience address, Pontius explains that he is not pleased that his cousin

John is so favored (18). Interestingly, the character that portrays Jesus in this section of the play is not named for the part he plays in the Passion (as are

Pontius, Mary 1, and Mary 2—all character names that denote the roles they play.) Unfortunately, there is no really clear answer for this, unless Ruhl deemed it taboo that a person be named Jesus during this time of political and social unrest.

39 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012

In the next scene, John and the Friar sit down over breakfast. The Friar asks if any in the town are Catholic. John replies that most are Catholic in secret.

John asks the Friar if he is in hiding. The Friar affirms that he is, and John offers to hide him. The Friar is invited to rehearsal.

Several of Ruhl’s scenes take place at rehearsals that are happening off stage; the primary action focuses on the actors’ ultimate desires and not on the actual staging of the Passion. For instance, at a choir rehearsal the Village Idiot irritates the Director of the play with his nonsensical tirade. The director becomes so incensed that he ties the Village Idiot to a stump. The Village Idiot threatens to turn the sky red. As if on cue the sky turns red again, signifying mortal sin. In this instance, the sin is the Village Idiot being confined, which possibly indicates that the heavens are displeased with such treatment of another human being (22). In another rehearsal, one for the Crucifixion scene, Mary 1

(who plays the Virgin Mary) and Mary 2 (Mary Magdalene) discuss their parts.

Mary 2 wants to switch parts and nearly convinces Mary 1 to do so because Mary

Magdalene has more scenes with Jesus (and Mary 1 desperately loves John, who plays Jesus.) The director steps in and reminds them of their contracts. He also informs Mary 2 that Mary 1 looks more like a virginal saint and that she looks more like a whore. The Friar overhears their exchange and invites either of them to come to confession. Mary 2 agrees to join him (23‐26). In the next scene, Mary

2 confesses to the Friar that she often has dreams about women kissing her full on the lips. He attempts to give her penance, but she says she enjoys the dreams

40 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012 too much to repent. The sky turns red, symbolizing both the impurities of Mary

2’s thoughts as well as her unwillingness to repent her sins (28).

Once the characters have been established, “The Desired” and “The

Undesired”, “The Virgin” and The Whore,” Ruhl uses the next two scenes to develop a love triangle between Pontius, Mary 1 and John. In the next scene,

Pontius tells the audience that he had surgery as an infant, and the doctor did not sew his stomach up properly; this has left a gaping hole. While Pontius is a fish gutter who doesn’t shy away from the gruesome things in life, his cousin John, on the other hand, only catches the fish, which makes Pontius think that he is more of a man than John (30). This competitive relationship between Pontius and

John is established early in Ruhl’s script but has weighty implications that will be reinforced in the third act as well. Mary 1 tells the audience that she hates to sleep alone and often goes out into the night to find bedtime companions. She has never been pregnant and is grateful for that fact. She has her eye on John.

She furtively asks John to help her capture fresh air in a jar for her mother who is ill and cannot go outside. She really just wants to spend time with him. Pontius watches them together. He likes Mary 1 and is upset to see John take her from him too. Mary finds out that John is chaste (31‐34). Later, Pontius watches Mary

1 in the moonlight and wonders if she would kiss a poor fishmonger. Mary approaches and they begin to speak. She pities him and kisses him (37‐40).

In a shift of the action, Ruhl inserts a short direct address in which the

Village Idiot wakes up from a dream and informs the audience that the Queen,

41 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012 standing naked and pregnant, is going to arrive from heaven to stop the Passion

(41). This monologue foreshadows and is directly related to the next section of the play that begins with Mary 1 telling Mary 2 that she thinks she is pregnant.

She wants to keep her role. She dreams night after night that she gives birth to a fish. The fish is a reoccurring metaphor in Passion Play, signifying the journey of

Ruhl’s protagonist, Pontius. In this instance, the appearance of the fish indicates that Mary 1 is pregnant with Pontius’s child (42‐45). Later, Mary 1 tells Pontius that she is pregnant. He wants to take care of her and the baby but she wants to keep her role and refuses to marry him (51‐54). Desperate to keep her part,

Mary 2 has an idea and whispers it into Mary 1’s ear. Mary 1 tells the Visiting

Friar that God impregnated her to better play the Virgin Mary through

Immaculate Conception (55‐56). During the rehearsal of the death of Pontius

Pilate, The Visiting Friar interrupts to announce that Mary 1 is with child (58). In the next scene, Mary 1 is home lying in bed and is visited by John, who is in awe of the miracle. She asks if he would help take care of her and the baby. He asks her to marry him so that they can care for the baby together (59‐60).

During the rehearsal of the Scourging, Carpenter 1 and 2 speculate that

Mary 1 was impregnated by someone else and made up the Immaculate

Conception story. Mary 1 is too ill to rehearse, and Mary 2 plays her part (61‐63).

In the next scene, Pontius asks John if he believes Mary. When the baby is born, he bets that the child looks more like him (64). Mary 1 and Mary 2 talk about the rumors and about running away together. The sky turns red, potentially

42 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012 signifying the deceitful nature of their lies and their preference to run away from their problems instead of admitting to their transgressions (65‐66). The Village

Idiot sings a song about Mary 1’s departure.

The Visiting Friar asks the Director to stop the Passion. The Director refuses and asks the Village Idiot to play the Virgin Mary. She agrees to take the role (67‐68). Before the performance of the Passion, John prays that he will perform Jesus well. Under his breath, Pontius threatens harm to him (69).

The performance of the Passion begins but is interrupted by Queen

Elizabeth, who shuts down the production and orders a search for priests in the town (70‐72). John says goodbye to the Visiting Friar, who is forced to flee to

France (73). Several actors are attempting to sell costume pieces in the town square. John enters with the body of Mary 1, who drowned herself by walking into the sea. He sets her down in the square (75‐76). Distraught by Mary’s death,

Pontius Pilate commits suicide with a knife. The sky turns blue, which serves as a mark of absolving the world of their sins as well as bringing the first act of the play to a close (77‐78).

Ruhl’s interest in creating actors who play biblical characters that, somewhat ironically, fall into temptation despite their best intentions to keep their parts, is a large component of the theme in the first part of Passion Play.

Also, the use of the charismatic leader, the Queen, establishes the socio‐political regime as one ruled with a staunch, Protestant fist. These elements continue to be present in the second and third parts of Passion Play; however, Ruhl finds

43 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012 incredibly clever ways to amend some elements to fit within their own socio‐ political environment.

Oberammergau, Bavaria, 1934

In Part II, which takes place in Oberammergau, Bavaria in 1934, Ruhl indicates that the setting for this part should suggest a sort of a forest and an open playing space. Ruhl shows a different side to the purpose of the Passion

Play enacted in Oberammergau as depicted in this part’s prologue:

Oberammergau, 1934! The Passion Play’s three‐hundred‐year anniversary. Special Passion Play trains— One‐third the usual cost! Visit the Oberammergau Carving Shop. Crucifixes of every style. Made to Order. Cheapest Prices. Good Service. Visit our biggest hotel. Exceptionally hygienic. Near the woods and free from dust. Price, out of Passion season, 4 marks. Price, during Passion season, 12 marks (81).

Instead of the socio‐political landscape that marked the preceding prologue, this prologue highlights the Passion play as the traditional money making venture, one that has been performed for three hundred years. In the opening scene, the

Visiting Englishman writes a letter to his wife about his travels to Oberammergau and meets a little precocious girl named Violet, whom the members of the town call the Village Idiot (82‐85).

44 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012

In the next scene, parallel to its counterpart in the first part, the

Carpenters measure Eric (who will play Jesus) on the cross. Eric is trying to learn his lines because he has just assumed the role from his father, who is too old and ill to perform the role (86‐88). Ruhl emphasizes that actors play the same role until they are no longer able to perform it. Since Eric’s father is too ill to perform the role, the legacy of portraying Jesus has passed from father to son.

The next scene reveals the socio‐political landscape of the time. Eric

(Jesus) has a conversation with the Foot Soldier (Pontius) who is about to go off to war. They talk about their parts and their differences (89‐96). The exchange is innocent but hints that there may be some romantic interest under the surface.

In the next scene, the Visiting Englishman interviews Eric’s sister, Mary 2, for the book he is writing about the theater. They talk of her father, who is very ill and had to give up his part of the Christ (97‐100).

Just as in the first part of the play, several scenes take place during the rehearsal of the Passion. In one such rehearsal, Eric (as Jesus) cannot remember his lines, and Violet, who doesn’t like the play, puts on a loud production of her own play to amuse herself (101‐106). In another scene backstage, Elsa (who plays the Virgin Mary) is in her dressing room with a German soldier. He tries to seduce her. Elsa is fearful that discretions of the flesh would result in a pregnancy and would not be able to keep her part of the Virgin Mary. She quickly changes her mind and allows herself to be seduced (107‐110). Her character, like her counterpart in the first act, Mary 1, enjoys the attention of men. Ruhl’s use of the

45 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012 temptation in the characters of Elsa and Mary I, shows the fallibility in their choices and also the consequences each may potentially face because of their sin.

The character of Eric is significantly different than that of John in the first part. He is restless with his life and wants to move on. He is having difficulty learning his lines, and he simply doesn’t see himself as an actor. He is enthralled by the idea of joining the army (111‐114). In the scene for the Rehearsal for the

Last Supper, Eric can’t remember his lines. Eric is caught up in the pressure of performing Jesus as magnificently as his father did, and he is succumbs to the pressure by not being able to learn his lines efficiently. Violet begins to feed him lines under the table until she is caught and put in a box for a week without food.

She threatens to make the sky turn red and closes her eyes. The sky does not turn red, proving that Violet is not an omnipotent God‐like figure who can turn the sky red at her will (118‐121). Immediately after, Mary 2 and Eric argue about

Eric not learning his lines. They hear a thump in the other room. Their father has died (122‐125).

As the performance rapidly approaches, the German soldier’s presence becomes more and more frequent, foreshadowing the end of Part II, the dawn of the Hitler regime. In the next scene, Violet is in her box. Eric enters to rehearse his lines. He sets Violet free and she runs away. The Foot Soldier comes up behind him and covers his eyes. They hug, unobserved by the German Soldier

(126‐129). He also appears in the next scene with the Foot Soldier as Elsa is

46 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012 getting ready backstage. The German Soldier orders the Foot Soldier to fondle

Elsa and swear that he loves the feel of women’s flesh (130‐133).

It is finally the day of the performance. Eric prays he won’t forget his lines and dishonor his father’s memory. The performance of the Passion begins but is interrupted by Hitler, who gives a small speech about Pontius Pilate and how he

“had the right idea.” Ruhl uses Hitler’s own remarks about Oberammergau:

HITLER One of our most important tasks will be to save future generations and to remain forever watchful in the knowledge of the menace of the Jews. For this reason alone it is vital that the Passion Play be continued at Oberammergau; for never has the menace of the Jews been so convincingly portrayed as in this presentation of what happened in the times of the Romans. There one sees Pontius Pilate a Roman racially and intellectually superior, there he stands out like a firm, clean rock in the middle of the whole muck and mire of the Jews (138).

He finishes his speech and orders the play to go forward. There is a sound of a passing train. The Visiting Englishman writes a letter to his wife with glowing reviews of the Passion and the peculiar interruption by Herr Hitler (139).

In the next scene, the Foot Soldier and Eric say their goodbyes in the forest. The Foot Soldier is headed off to war. They kiss (140‐141). These few scenes of illicit desire are a bit jarring within the rest of the act, although they serve as a more assertive counterpoint to Mary 2’s secret desires for women in

Part I. Ruhl is gently seeking to point out an undercurrent of unspeakable

47 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012 desires in a socio‐political climate that does not allow for them. According to the

Yad Vashem,, the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority website, homosexual men and women were among the non‐Jewish victims who were persecuted during the Holocaust because homosexuality was viewed as being seriously detrimental to the nuclear family and the German state. Over

15,000 homosexuals were captured and placed in concentration camps.

Thousands perished (Yad Vashem 1.)

In the final scene, time has passed. Violet, now older, sits talking to a bird.

Eric enters in a Nazi uniform. He takes her away because she is Jewish. A final violent train sound effect is heard, and Violet is pushed into a pool of light as if she is being pushed into a train heading for a concentration camp (142‐145).

As before, Ruhl’s continues to be interested in shaping her characters to have dissension and desire within themselves in juxtaposition to the biblical characters they are playing, although this time, their environment is the capitalistic venture at Oberammergau. Also, the use of the charismatic leader

Hitler, and his enthusiasm for showing the Jews in an unfavorable light, foreshadows the Holocaust for the audience. Ruhl completes her trilogy by bringing the Passion to the United States and the present, by marrying the familiar forms of contemporary society with Ruhl’s own poetic writing style.

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Part III: Spearfish, South Dakota 1969‐Present

In the third part of Ruhl’s Passion Play, Ruhl simply asks for the suggestion of a tollbooth, an open space and a horizon line. The opening scene of Act One is the prologue. Like its counterparts in Parts I and II, it sets the stage for Spearfish,

South Dakota:

Spearfish, South Dakota, 1969! Picture red earth dead tribes knickknacks, ghost towns— big signs for miles telling you, something’s coming— the corn palace— a real palace made entirely out of corn, that’s right, corn— Ever been to the badlands? You could go crazy one stretch of rock looks just like another stretch of rock. In French the badlands means something like this land is not so good for living in but not many people speak French out here anymore Keep going, keep driving— You’ll pass the Battle of Wounded Knee wasn’t really a battle, more like a massacre— it snowed a lot that day—the blood got covered up Drive past the Harley convention, People riding with their beards

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flapping in the wind. Keep going, keep driving— you’re smack dab in the middle of this country— the Black Hills all around— then you’ll hit exit twelve: The Passion Play of South Dakota (153‐154).

Ruhl departs from the socio‐political landscape, or even a capitalistic one, for a much more psychological landscape in South Dakota, complete with language, colloquialism and local sights. Among the few things that Ruhl prescribes regarding the double casting of actors is that the actor playing the Visiting Friar in Part One Play the VA Psychiatrist in Part III to signify the “secularization of the western world.” Ruhl also continues the use of the backstage device more frequently in this act and utilizes other methods such as anachronistic characters

(the Queen from Part I, for example) out of sequence scene; she takes advantage of several locations outside of the theatre as well. The primary reason for the shift of focus in Part III comes from the fact that the act spans at least 15 years

(1969‐1980s), the largest duration of time depicted in an act in the trilogy.

The first scene takes place backstage after a performance. It is P’s final performance before leaving for war. The other actors enter, including Mary who wears her Virgin Mary costume and is carrying an early birthday cake. P blows out the candles and drops to one knee and proposes in his Pontius Pilate costume. She agrees. The scene freezes and, to further the contrast and to create a sense of juxtaposition of the modern actors in biblical dress, the Queen (from

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Part I) enters and formally blesses their union and P’s military service to come.

She makes a formal procession across the stage and exits. No one notices (155‐

159). The Queen’s presence highlights the primary juxtaposition of a religious society (hers) and a secular society (The United States at present) and her presence and the juxtaposition between the religious and the secular reoccur throughout Part III.

The action of Part III also moves back and forth through time, which does not give a firm sense of reality or chronological time. The next scene takes place out of time, in the early 1970s. Mary 2 (Mary Magdalene) gives a backstage tour and recounts the proposal from the previous scene to the tour‐goers (audience members.) She also reveals that her father and mother played Christ and the

Virgin Mary and that she works at the tollbooth. Ruhl reinforces her theme of secularization when Mary states: “I like to think of myself as a beacon of light on a dark night. Funny, huh? Sometimes, I press a quarter into a stranger’s hand and think it’s kind of like communion. Who knows if they get it. They just drive off, into the night” (161). The next scene briefly returns to 1969 as Mary 1 kisses P goodbye as he goes off to war. She gives him a small token to remember her by, a statuette of the Virgin Mary to keep in his pocket. (162‐163.)

The next brief section begins to suggest transgressions of the flesh—that

Mary 1 is going to stray from P. In the next scene from backstage, Mary 1 and

Mary 2 talk before a show while putting on makeup. Mary 1 hates sleeping alone.

Her feet get cold. Mary 2 suggests getting a cat, but Mary 1 is allergic. As they

51 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012 walk onstage, the actor playing Satan delivers his lines tantalizing Eve to bite the apple (164‐165.) In the very next scene, Mary 1 and J (P’s brother) are alone together and become closer. They begin kissing (166‐173).

In a complete break from the action and location, the next scene takes place on a battlefield with a red sky. P is bleeding from the head. Queen

Elizabeth enters and makes a speech about the loyalty a monarch has to her country:

THE QUEEN

I cannot fathom why any subject would be willing to die for any leader other than a monarch. What man would die for a leader who was not rushing to the battlefield with him—their blood soaking into the dust together. On the battlefield the monarch and the nation’s blood are one! (She touches P) Are you wounded, soldier? (174)

She speaks to P with great care and has him carried off the battlefield by

Elizabethan courtiers (175). Again, Ruhl equates the presence of Queen Elizabeth

I with the honor of serving one’s country for the great love and honor of their queen. Ruhl devises this scene as an attempt to juxtapose the sentiments of serving in a war for a secularized nation. The setting of Part III during the

Vietnam War seems particularly appropriate for Ruhl’s juxtaposition, especially considering the alienating effects those who served in Vietnam have been purported to feel upon returning from war.

52 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012

Returning again to the primary action of the play, Mary 1 visits Mary 2 in the tollbooth where she struggles to “confess” to her that she is pregnant (176‐

179). Ruhl even prescribes that a car appears and that Mary 1 ducks so that it appears that she is at confession. Ruhl strategically uses this as an opportunity to equate a religious act with a single, secular gesture. In the final scene of Act I, J and Mary 1 are in rehearsal. J tells Mary 1 that he loves her and always has (180‐

186).

At the beginning of Act II, approximately four years have passed. P comes home from war to Mary 1 and meets Violet, who is three years old. He is traumatized by Vietnam and winces whenever he is touched (187‐193). He is the first character in Part III (besides Queen Elizabeth I) to break the fourth wall by directly addressing the audience. The sky is red from then on, marking the psychological trauma that has occurred on foreign soil. Violet, like her counterpart in Part II, is very precocious for her age and joins P when he insists on sleeping outside to be on watch for intruders.

The next few scenes follow P as he attempts to re‐enter civilian life. He returns to rehearsals and learns that the once amateur performances are turning much more professional in nature, with professional actors, stage managers and technical equipment (194‐195). P becomes frustrated in rehearsals and punches the director in the face. Mary 1 is warned that P has one more chance before he is fired (197‐202). Mary 1 finds P, and he reveals how much he has seen at war, how those things have irrevocably changed him, and how damaged he is from his

53 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012 experience (203‐208). In the very next scene for a rehearsal of the Passion, P snaps and drives a nail into his left hand to show “real sacrifice” in front of the entire company (209‐212).

Ruhl then uses the next scene to jump forward eleven years to 1984.

This scene takes place at a VA Hospital where P is being examined by a VA doctor. Ruhl reinforces the idea of religious/secularization using the VA

Psychiatrist as a stand‐in for organized religion. P is divorced, a wanderer, a drug seeker and slightly delusional; he makes repeated biblical references although he notes that he does not believe in God. He even accuses the VA

Psychiatrist of thinking that he is some sort of priest by saying:

P

Look—I didn’t come here to confess my sins to you. Unless you can absolve me of my sins, and I don’t think you’re qualified to do that, and I don’t see any holy water in your office, just give me a pill, a pill for my troubles, a pill please. I have a really big king‐sized headache. I thought about shooting myself to make my headache go away but I thought you might have like a really really big aspirin.

VA I’ll see what I can do.

P Is this all we’ve got now? A bunch of white coats? No priests to

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say, yes, son, your suffering meant something, no kings on the battlefield to say, yes, soldier, your suffering meant something. Just give me a pill, a God‐shaped pill, please (216).

P is desperately seeking something, anything that makes his current miserable state bearable. He is drawn in by the ideal of some God‐like being that would absolve him of all of his guilt and transgressions and cannot be thwarted by his own delusions.

In the next scene, P returns to Mary’s house. When she allows him to sleep on her couch because he has nowhere to go, he tries to seduce her. He says he is going to get his part back. She explains that the town actors have been replaced with professional actors. J arrives to see Mary and to see if he can sleep on her couch. He and P argue in front of Violet. A permanent rift between the brothers is created when Violet says “Dad” and they both answer (218‐27). Ruhl never clears up the subject of paternity, but the scene between Mary and J kissing, insinuates that he may actually be the father of Violet, although Mary was married to P at the time. J has also, in effect, raised Violet while P has been at war and considers her his daughter. P simply assumes (or potentially has been told by Mary) that Violet is his daughter.

The final scene in Part III opens at the performance of the Passion with the last few strains of “The Star Spangled Banner” and with President Ronald

Reagan’s speech calling for a spiritual revival. Reagan notes that the play is about the things America loves: baseball, family, and God. The play begins: a polished

55 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012 professional version that is musical in nature. Ruhl inserts two short speeches as direct addresses: in the first, P contemplates jumping on stage to deliver his former lines, and in the second, President Reagan delivers a speech about baseball, his first love. P stands up and stops the play. P pulls out a gun and points it at himself (228‐233).

The epilogue of the play takes place in the present. P stands before the audience and tells them that he did not kill anyone that day; he simply sat in his seat and hoped that Mary would end the performance. He left South Dakota after the performance and continues to wander. He gives a brief update on each member of the family: Mary continues to live in the town with Violet and give backstage tours, J is a soap opera star, and Violet draws birds and looks like J but acts crazy like P, so he still doesn’t know who the father is (234). Leading the play to a close, P says:

P I’ll summon the wind for you, so you can sleep better. (The good people at the VA hospital got rid of most of my delusions but I like to keep one or two around.)

Now: Wind. (He conducts the wind) From the south. To the west. There. Good night. Sweet dreams. Sleep with the angels, Violet.

The wind machines. The boats. The couriers. Big, beautiful fish puppets. The sky turns white. P gets on an enormous boat.

56 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012

He opens his left hand to the sky. He sails off into the distance (235).

Regarding these specific images, Ruhl provides extremely helpful notes in the appendix of the play to assist individual production teams with the staging of the play. She notes other productions of the play with varying budgets, which also highlights her delight with designers and their ingenuity:

As for the boat that P gets on at the end of the play…at Arena Stage,

P rigged himself into flying gear and ascended, with no boat. At the

Goodman Theatre, where we had a fairly large budget, they

constructed a massive boat that P got onto and sailed away. In

Brooklyn, on our modest budget, we had a moving ladder (the large

kind you hang lights with); and P climbed it, a sail was attached to

it and the chorus moved him off stage. I was very fond of the “poor

theater” version in Brooklyn, as it allowed the audience to fill in the

metaphor with their own imagination, and it used the simple tools

of theater to create transformation: a little height, a little

movement, a simple sail—and suddenly—an enormous boat (240).

Sarah Ruhl’s fondness for marrying weighty themes in her plays with poetry and whimsy and interesting stage effects is very apparent in this analysis of her work.

In this instance, Passion Play melds all of these elements through the course of her quite expansive play intelligently and masterfully, showing the magnificent transformative nature of her trilogy from Elizabethan to the Hitler regime to

57 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012 modern America.

Ruhl’s use of three disparate times reinforces her idea that although these characters may assume the roles of Biblical characters, their secular acts still seek spiritual approval and traditionally and performatively invoke such acts in completely normative and ordinary ways. Each group of actors responds to the play in different yet similarly human ways, providing an opportunity to see the reflection of the doubts of individual faith within one’s own socio‐political regime.

Like The Clean House and Eurydice, Ruhl poeticism, wit and lyrical style shine through in these works, however different they may be in content. The next two chapters, the first of which centers on Dead Man’s Cell Phone, will denote a significant break in the markings of Ruhl’s writing style and the weightiness of her subjects.

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CHAPTER V

DEAD MAN’S CELL PHONE

As with each of the plays in this study, the inspiration of Sarah Ruhl’s plays takes on interesting forms and shapes. In one of her latest plays, Dead Man’s Cell

Phone, Ruhl examines the fragility of life and human connectivity (and ultimately, love) when a woman takes it upon herself to put a stranger to rest when he dies next to her in a café. The intent of this chapter is to examine the nature of Ruhl’s inspiration and writing style as it applies to Dead Man’s Cell Phone.

Dead Man’s Cell Phone premiered at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre

Company in Washington, DC in June 2007. It was directed by Rebecca Bayla

Taichmann and starred Polly Noonan as Jean. The show premiered in New York and Chicago in March 2008. The New York production was at Playwrights

Horizons. It was directed by Anne Bogart and starred Mary Louise Parker. The

Chicago production premiered at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, under the direction of Jessica Thebus with Polly Noonan reprising her role.

The set of Dead Man’s Cell Phone is doesn’t require much, just a phone and some tables and chairs. The play’s action takes place in multiple locations and the action must move fluidly from location to location.

In the opening scene, Jean is sitting in a nearly empty café when a cell phone starts to ring. Ruhl’s stage directions so often capture the appropriate mood of what is to be portrayed by the actor; here she prescribes:

59 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012

An almost empty café A dead man, Gordon, sits on a chair with his back to us. He doesn’t look all that dead. He looks—still. At another table, a woman—Jean— sits, drinking coffee, and writing a thank‐you letter. She has an insular quality, as though she doesn’t want to take up space. She looks over at the man. She stares back at her coffee. She sips. A cell phone rings. It is coming from the dead man’s table. It rings and rings. The caller hangs up and calls again. Jean looks over at him. She sighs. The phone keeps ringing (Ruhl, Dead Man’s Cell Phone, 11).

Jean waits for the man to answer the phone but he does not. It continues to ring.

She attempts to get his attention, to no avail. Finally, she answers the phone and takes a message for Gordon from his mother. Jean realizes that Gordon is dead and calls 911. The phone rings again and she answers it. She then tells Gordon that everything will be all right and that she will always be with him. Jean decides to hold onto to the cell phone to remain connected to Gordon, this man she has never met (12‐14).

60 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012

Jean’s decision sets in motion the action of the entire play. Ruhl attempts to forge a particular theme about human connectivity and the way that human relationships are forged through electronic devices. Ruhl reinforces this theme by writing several exchanges and monologues about cellphones. She explores how the invention of the cell phone has encroached on the very way we live our lives as a society as well as our ability to connect with other people. She introduces characters that simply cannot live without the technology as well as those who shun the electronic device and prefer old‐fashioned communications instead.

In the next scene, Jean attends Gordon’s funeral. The cell phone rings during Mrs. Gottlieb’s (Gordon’s Mother) eulogy. Jean answers it and is asked to meet a female stranger. She agrees. The cell phone ring sends Mrs. Gottlieb into a small tirade during the eulogy about cell phone usage and how there are only a few places left where there is no ringing: “the theater, the church and the toilet.”

She then asks the congregation who among them furtively urinates while talking on the phone. Disgusted by those who have raised their hands, she attempts to return to her eulogy but has lost her place because she is reminded of the fact that Gordon too was addicted to his cell phone (15‐17).

Once Jean has made the decision to carry the cell phone with her, she also decides to take it upon herself to console Gordon’s loved ones during their difficult time. In the next scene, Jean arrives to find the Other Woman, Gordon’s mistress. The Other Woman has asked to meet her because she wants to know

61 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012

Gordon’s last words. Jean quickly consoles her; she lies and tells her that Gordon mentioned her before he died and that he loved her very much. The woman is taken aback because Gordon never spoke those words to her before. Jean quickly recovers and tells her that he once told her that she (the Other Woman) could stop time by simply walking into the room. This satisfies the Other Woman because it is a true observation about her.

The cell phone rings again. It is Gordon’s mother, asking if Jean will come and meet her. Jean agrees (18‐21). This entire exchange is both bizarre and revealing. The only description Ruhl provides of Jean is that she is an “insular” character. In this scene, Jean finds herself riveted by the beautiful woman, who seductive teaches her how to apply lipstick sexily. Jean is simply lonely and she herself yearns for human closeness, which leads her past the point of no return: to connect with the grieving family of a man she has never actually met.

Jean finds herself in several awkward situations the moment she agrees to meet Mrs. Gottlieb, Gordon’s mother, at her home. Mrs. Gottlieb admits that she called Gordon out of habit and had forgotten that he was dead but that she plans to mourn his death every day until the very day she dies. Mrs. Gottlieb asks how

Jean knew Gordon. Jean lies and says that they worked together. Mrs. Gottlieb finds this very off‐putting because Gordon’s line of work was very “toxic.” She politely asks Jean if she works in “incoming or outgoing.” Jean quickly responds that she works in “incoming.” She invites Jean to come back for dinner that very evening (22‐25).

62 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012

In the next scene, Jean arrives at Mrs. Gottlieb’s house and meets Gordon’s wife, Hermia and his brother, Dwight. Hermia is immediately suspicious of Jean and calls her an odd duck when Jean leaves the room. Jean swiftly lies and tells them that Gordon had decided to leave each of them something from the café just moments before he died. Hermia and Dwight are touched by their gifts, but Mrs.

Gottlieb is offended when given a spoon for her cooking (she is apparently not a great cook) and retreats upstairs with Hermia. Dwight and Jean are left alone.

At this point in the script, Ruhl inserts actual human connectivity between two characters. In terms of personality, Dwight and Jean are quite similar. Both have been marginalized in life and have been somewhat ignored. Dwight talks a bit about Gordon and asks Jean about her position in the company. Her lies don’t seem to come as easily with Dwight, but she tells him that she resigned after

Gordon’s death and went back to her old job working in the office at the

Holocaust museum. She seems to want to get back to the truth as soon as possible. Dwight works at a stationery store and thinks it important to remember things on paper and not profess one’s love on cell phones or other methods of the digital age. They decide to leave the house and head off into the night (26‐34). Here again, Ruhl brings up the expression of communication and human connectivity in a yearning way, with Dwight and Jean speaking about their shared love of the feel and weight of paper as the proper method of communication and emotional intensity. This scene serves as a direct contrast to the cell phone and all that it stands for (the fast paced world of technology and

63 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012 information.) In this moment of the play, the high arc of romantic love, it is interesting to note that Ruhl’s usual pairing of ideal love so often found in her plays is found here too, but this time it is found in the passion they share for old‐ fashioned communication.

In the next scene, Dwight takes Jean to the stationery store supply closet.

They are examining the feel of embossed invitations. Jean confides that she has never had a cell phone but holding on to Gordon’s helps her to feel the connectivity to others, a sense of belonging (35‐36). She notes:

JEAN …But when Gordon’s phone rang and rang, after he died, I thought his phone was beautiful, like it was the only thing keeping him alive, like as long as people called him he would be alive. That sounds—a little—I know—but all those molecules, in the air, trying to talk to Gordon—and Gordon—he’s in the air too—so maybe they all would meet up there, whizzing around—those bits of air—and voices (36).

Dwight asks her how long she plans to answer his cell phone, and she says that she will continue charging its battery as long as she lives. They kiss. At this moment, Ruhl prescribes that a man (Gordon) enters. This stage direction interrupts the largely conventional feel of Part I, since all of the scenes have been comprised of traditional scenes and monologues. Jean and Dwight do not see or do not acknowledge the man who has joined them on stage. He opens his mouth as if to speak to the audience, and Part I ends (36‐37).

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In the first scene of Part Two, Gordon directly addresses the audience in a monologue about the day he died. Jean, who has spent the entire first half of play answering his phone, has idealized him as a good and virtuous man. Gordon quickly smashes this glowing and wonderful faux depiction of himself by informing the audience that he sells black market human organs and that he hates his family—especially his wife—and is indifferent to his mistress. In particular, he thinks his mother is out of touch. He cruelly recounts every moment of his day and breaks down for the audience what it is he does for a living: he “brings people together.” “Morality” is overrated (39‐40).

Gordon describes his encounter with Jean in the café and his final moments of his life:

GORDON

Suddenly I feel my heart – compressing – like a terrible bird in my chest. And I think – I am finally punished. Someone is going to sell my heart to someone in Russia. Then I think – use your cell phone. Call your wife. Tell her to give you a decent burial, organs in tact. But the wife’s not supposed to know you sell organs for a living. So just call the wife and say good‐bye. But no – she doesn’t love you enough to have the right tone of voice on your death bed. The kind of voice you’d like to hear – indescribably tender. A death‐bed voice… So call your mistress. Or mother. No – mother would say – what a way to die, Gordon, in a café? No, not mother. Dwight? A man doesn’t call his brother on his death‐bed – no – he wants a woman’s voice – But the heart keeps heaving itself up – out of my chest – into my mouth – and I’m thinking‐that bitch over there ate

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all the lobster bisque, this is all her fault – and I look over at her, and she looks like an angel – not like a bitch at all – and I think – good – good – I’m glad she had the last bite – I’m glad. Then I die. Light on Gordon’s face, transfigured. Gordon dies again. And Gordon disappears (41‐42).

This monologue encapsulates many different elements and is highlighted for a couple of important reasons. First, Ruhl engages in an unusual writing style to bring the voice of Gordon to life. Gordon’s language is expressive, rushed, and coarse but is also comprised of several “streams” of consciousness. From the point of view of the reader/performer, Ruhl also forgoes what is considered the standard structure for recounting dialogue within a monologue: she eliminates the use of most standardly diacritical marks used in playwriting to denote who says what. Ruhl’s roadmap to Gordon’s brief character provides very specific clues as to how he should be portrayed in production.

The second reason that this portion of Gordon’s monologue is important is that it provides Gordon’s real thoughts about Jean, a stark reversal to Jean’s optimistic and idealized version of the recently departed Gordon. His view of her before he dies is as a non‐descript and pale bitch who has taken the last portion of the food that he wanted for himself. (He only later changes his mind about her because she provides the simple solace that he needs in his final moments of his life.) Finally, Gordon’s monologue reinforces Ruhl’s reoccurring theme of the

66 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012 prevalence of cell phones standing in the way of human connectivity. Gordon knows that he is about to die and seeks comfort, but he also is an extremely narcissistic and idealistic person. Given the choice between calling a family member and dying alone in a café, he chooses the latter.

Since Gordon’s family is introduced to the audience in Part I, (and none of them are narcissistic, phone‐crazed businessmen) it is clear that Gordon is a product of his society. This is relevant because of the point that Ruhl is making regarding Gordon’s unconscionable choices and because of the “power” the cell phone provides him. The fact that he conducts these conversations by phone and not in person does not reduce the horror of the act; in fact, it might indicate that he is not as mighty as he purports himself to be. Gordon is not a man of “action,” he is simply a man that “makes horrible things happen.”

In the next scene, which picks up where Part I left off, Ruhl again attempts to reinforce human connectivity in a duologue scene between Dwight and Jean.

This time, Dwight and Jean are together in the stationary store in what Ruhl calls

“a love haze.” Dwight tells Jean about a dream he had where she was the letter Z, signifying “two lines connected by a diagonal.” He tells her that if they are ever parted by death or some other reason, that she should just say the letter Z to him as their password. He confesses his love to her and is very hurt when Jean insists on answering Gordon’s cell phone when it rings again. She fields a call from a business associate who is calling to inquire about “incoming matters” (someone who is looking to sell a human organ for money.) When she hangs up, Dwight

67 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012 forbids her to answer any more calls. The phone rings again. Dwight begs for

Jean not to answer it, to put Gordon behind her, and to stay with him. She answers the phone anyway and Dwight is crushed. It is Hermia; she needs a ride home (42‐45).

In the next scene, Jean meets Hermia over cocktails. Hermia is extremely bitter and speaks harshly about the horrible person Gordon was: she knew about the affairs, she knew that he trafficked organs. She speaks openly about their marital problems. She was repulsed by what he did for a living and could no longer look at him the same way. Ruhl again inserts a monologue about cell phones, this time about how silence no longer exists since there is always a cell phone ringing somewhere. Jean lies easily with Hermia and tells her that Gordon was working on a draft of a letter to her when he died and that he knew that they didn’t always connect but he did love her deeply. This also marks the first time that Jean hears what Gordon actually does for a living. Jean is shocked but decides that she can make up for Gordon’s past wrongs. The phone rings: it is a business call regarding a kidney harvest in Johannesburg, South Africa. Jean asks

Hermia to tell Dwight where she has gone and exits immediately (46‐50).

The next segment of the play jumps from location to location extremely rapidly. The next scene takes place in the Johannesburg airport. The cell phone rings, Jean answers it. Speaking into the phone, the Stranger (the Other Woman in Disguise) tells her that she is right behind her but not to look at her. They remain on the phone even though they are within speaking distance. The

68 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012 stranger demands that she hand over the money and the phone. Jean refuses and the Stranger comes over, knocks her unconscious with the gun, and takes

Gordon’s phone (51‐52).

In the next scene, Jean finds herself with Gordon in the café where they met. He tells her that they are in the hell reserved for people who do horrible things and the people who loved them the most. Jean was sent to him because

Gordon believes that she cared the most for him. The café is significant because the location of each person’s special hell takes him or her back to the moment in which the condemned person determines that his or her person loved him most.

It was in the café that he decided to look at Jean instead of calling one of his family members. He is also aware of all of the lies she told about him to make him a “better” person, so he believes that she did care for him the most. Jean realizes that Gordon is a horrible person and that she liked him better when she idealized him and he couldn’t talk. By including this scene in the play, Ruhl addresses the larger question of whether or not electronic communications allow someone to avoid moral judgment because all of the horrible acts Gordon was committing were not happening in his own personal presence. In this case, Ruhl decides that Gordon is to be punished for his sins on Earth, those committed in his physical presence and those committed over the telephone lines.

Ruhl introduces a “cell phone ballet:” brief snippets of cell phone conversations that reverberate in the heavens:

A cell phone ballet.

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Beautiful music. People moving through the rain with umbrellas, talking into their cell phones, fragments of lost conversations float up. Jean listens (57).

When Jean informs him that his mother actually loves him the most, Gordon is sucked out of the room and into another room where he will find his mother waiting for him. Jean immediately thinks of Dwight. She tries to call him and leave him an imaginary message to tell him that she loves him. It doesn’t work.

She imagines the letter “Z” and she also disappears from one room and into another. Dwight appears in front of her (53‐59).

In the final scene of the play, Dwight takes Jean back to his mother’s house where (unsurprisingly) Mrs. Gottlieb fills them in on the long chain of bizarre events that have transpired in the months that Jean has been gone, although Jean insists she has only been gone one day. Dwight has closed the stationery store to publish propaganda, and he is on the government watch lists. Carlota, Gordon’s mistress, has taken over Gordon’s business and is flourishing. Hermia has returned to the stage in the “ice follies.” Jean tells Mrs. Gottlieb that Gordon is waiting for her, and Mrs. Gottlieb decides to join him immediately, leaving Jean and Dwight alone. They contemplate a love so deep that they will never have to question whether or not they loved each other. They kiss and the play ends (60‐

63).

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Dead Man’s Cell Phone is unusual in that it breaks from most of Ruhl’s oeuvre by being delivered in a more conventional theatre style. The Clean House,

Eurydice, and Passion Play all express a certain element of uniqueness within the structure of the text, either by depicting some sort of prescribed element of a metaphysical nature, traversing the line between Greek and contemporary myth, or finding the common threads of the human condition throughout the tradition of over five hundred years of actors. Although Dead Man’s Cell Phone, by comparison, is relatively straight forward, it still conveys a message through meaningful and powerful language, unique staging and undeniable charm. It is important to note that with Dead Man’s Cell Phone, however, Ruhl does not employ deeply poetic language or metaphor, two devices that serve as primary hallmarks in as her earlier plays.

Dead Man’s Cell Phone’s message about human connectivity, primarily between the differences of electronic and more conventional communications, ultimately culminates with Jean choosing true human connectivity over the perceived connectivity through cell phones. By doing do, Jean finds true love, which trumps all of the unusual things she has encountered in her short time on the “dark” side: living a life that is dictated by cellular phones. The ending of this play has some similarities to the grand sweeping gesture at the end of The Clean

House, where Ruhl tidily devised ways to deal with infidelity and death in rather light and humorous ways. With Dead Man’s Cell Phone, Ruhl is sweeping away

71 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012 the larger discussion of how the technology of cellular phones are taking over our lives and simply leaves the audience with an image of two people madly in love.

The next chapter centers on Sarah Ruhl’s latest commercial success and the last play in this study: In the Next Room or the Vibrator Play. Ruhl’s play is a whimsical look at the dawn of many inventions: electricity, paroxysm, and

Victorian marital intimacy, but it shows some of the many signs as Dead Man’s

Cell Phone, with Ruhl opting for a piece with a largely conventional feel and only sprinkling in her early hallmarks every so often.

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CHAPTER VI

IN THE NEXT ROOM OR THE VIBRATOR PLAY

Sarah Ruhl’s play, In the Next Room or the Vibrator Play, is her greatest commercial triumph to date, with accolades that surpass even her first play, The

Clean House. The play continues to capture critical attention as it is produced across the nation. This chapter will examine the primary action and writing strategies employed in the play.

In the Next Room or the Vibrator Play was originally commissioned and produced by the Berkeley Repertory Theatre in February 2009 and was later produced at Lincoln Center Theater with Les Waters directing both productions.

After the play closed at Lincoln Center, it had its Broadway premiere at the

Lyceum Theatre in November 2009 and closed in January 2010 after 60 performances (this production was also directed by Les Waters.) The play received three nominations for the 2010 Tony Awards: Best Play, Best Actress nomination for Maria Dizzia for her portrayal of Mrs. Daldry, and Best Costume

Design for designer David Zinn. It was also a 2009 finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in

Drama.

In the Next Room or the Vibrator Play explores human sexuality taboos and desires as they pertain to the introduction of the vibrator into an affluent

Victorian society. Scenically, the play is Ruhl’s most prescriptive, and requires two separate rooms of a box set to be built on stage; the “operating theater” and

73 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012

Dr. and Mrs. Giving’s sitting room, where patients wait for their appointments.

There are also several set items needed to indicate Victorian opulence (furniture, piano, etc.) as well as Dr. Givings’ medical equipment (large electrical vibrators, an examination table, etc.) Ruhl suggests that the play takes place circa 1880s in

“a prosperous spa town outside New York City.”

Just as in Dead Man’s Cell Phone, the action of In the Next Room… is largely conventional. In fact, this play is much more conventional and palatable than

Dead Man’s Cell Phone, as the later play reveals bizarre circumstances over the course of several disparate scenes in multiple locations. The action of In the Next

Room… takes place in a standard, well‐made play structure. It is comprised of two acts with two scenes in each act. Ruhl prescribes continuous action on both sides of the door to the “operating theater.” This continuous action can be described as similar to the nature of the device used in the play Noises Off that prescribes a sense of continuous action both backstage and onstage and allows to the audience to see both sides one side for each act. In Ruhl’s play, the audience sees all of the action simultaneously.

A Time Out New York Interview with Raven Snook, which was conducted in September 2009, brings to light several key components of the thought process behind In the Next Room… Ruhl was asked about critical assertions that In the

Next Room… was fairly naturalistic in comparison to her usual otherworldly, fantastical plays. Ruhl responded with the following:

I’ve been compelled to be less naturalistic because I’m not

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interested in the way people talk in the contemporary world. I find

it boring and not emotionally forthcoming. So I began writing plays

set in other times, and whenever I have a play that’s not set in the

present, I feel linguistic permission. So I think this play is

deceptive. It seems more naturalistic in that there’s one set, we

don’t go to the afterlife or some strange metaphysical place; it all

takes place on Earth in two rooms. The subject matter is so

challenging—you know, orgasms, vibrators—that I wanted the

form to be stable. But I wouldn’t say that the way people talk in this

play is particularly naturalistic (Ruhl and Snook).

Ruhl was also asked in the same interview if she considers the play “a period piece commenting on Victorian sexual mores, or does it have relevance today?”

Ruhl replied:

I think it’s actually—and this sounds so pretentious—ontologically

impossible to write about the past and not write about the present,

because I’m in the present, so I’m always commenting from a

distance. Even if I set out to write a play purely about the 19th

century, I’m actually writing about myself living in New York in this

moment in time. In a way, I feel like sexuality’s been flipped: In the

past, they compartmentalized and were so repressed, but today

pornography has taken over the language of our sex lives and made

75 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012

it so public that it actually splits our bodies off from our emotions.

We have no privacy. Selling jeans is pornography, Sarah Palin’s

pornography, everything’s pornographic, so what does that do to

our intimate private lives? (Snook, Time Out New York).

At the beginning of Act I, Scene 1, Mrs. Givings shows her infant the new electrical lamp, which establishes that electricity is new in their household. The advent of electricity is important because it also establishes the time period.

(Electricity was invented in 1879 by Thomas Edison and slowly began making its way into richer homes in the early 1880s.) Another reason that electricity is significant is that all of Dr. Givings’ treatments rely on the use of an electrical current. Without the advances of electricity, Dr. Givings would not be able to provide clinical relief to his patients to cure their maladies.

Certain character traits are quickly established about Dr. and Mrs. Givings.

The first is that Mrs. Givings is unable to nurse the baby, and she and her husband are seeking a wet nurse. She coos to the baby girl that she will soon gain weight like other babies. This makes Mrs. Givings feel extremely inadequate as a mother but she promises to find a nurse who does not have a child of her own. The second thing that is learned about Mr. and Mrs. Givings in the opening exchange is that Dr. Givings is very clinical and professional in nature and that he demands that his wife leave the room before any of his patients arrive, due to the hysteric nature of his patients. Like clockwork, Mr. and Mrs. Daldry ring the doorbell and

76 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012

Mrs. Givings hides behind the piano so as not to be noticed (Ruhl, In the Next

Room or the Vibrator Play, 9‐10).

Dr. Giving’s nurse, Annie takes Mrs. Daldry into the “operating theater” and begins to ask questions about Mrs. Daldry’s condition, just as Dr. Givings enters the room. Apparently, Mrs. Daldry is sensitive to light and cold, and speaks to their green curtains. Mrs. Daldry’s mother cleaned her dusty curtains excessively when Mrs. Daldry was a child, and it seems to have provided some sort of complex in her daughter as an adult. Mr. Daldry laments that she is a shell of her former self. Small character clues begin to emerge about Mr. and Mrs.

Daldry as well. Mr. Daldry is frustrated by his wife’s in ability to meet his needs and seeks treatment for her so that she may revert to the woman she once was, the woman Mr. Daldry fell in love with in the first place. Mrs. Daldry does admit that she is a shell of her former self, a women who used to play the piano but now cannot due to her fits of crying and depression. Extremely demure, she becomes embarrassed when her husband indicates that he is sexually dissatisfied. She leaves the “operating theatre” and returns to the sitting room to recompose herself and examine the electric lamp. Electricity is still a new enough occurrence in a common household that Mrs. Daldry finds herself taken with the invention. Mrs. Givings re‐enters the sitting room with the baby, the women have a very brief conversation and they bond over the infant (11‐12).

Back in the “operating theater” Dr. Givings reassures Mr. Daldry and diagnoses Mrs. Daldry with hysteria. He suggests a new treatment that he can

77 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012 offer in his “operating theater” that produces a paroxysm, a delicate, Victorian word used to explain the effects of the orgasm. Mr. Daldry is happy to try anything that will return his wife to him. The men exit to the sitting room and find the women together. Dr. Givings recommends that Mr. Daldry walk around the grounds while his wife undergoes the treatment. Mr. Daldry is not allowed to be present during the treatment, which Ruhl uses as a sign of how “women’s issues” were dealt with privately. As Dr. Givings, Annie and Mrs. Daldry are preparing for their session in the “operating theater,” Mrs. Givings decides to join

Mr. Daldry for his walk around the grounds. It is raining and Mrs. Givings delivers a speech about how you can tell a person by whether or not they use an umbrella in the rain. She discovers that both Mr. Daldry and Dr. Givings use umbrellas. Mr. Daldry says that his wife hates to get wet. Mrs. Giving finds this horribly unromantic but blanches when Mr. Daldry asks what type of person she is. Mrs. Givings thinks for a moment before realizing that her husband always holds the umbrella and therefore she doesn’t have a choice in the matter. Ruhl inserts this exchange to point to the fact that Mrs. Givings has no idea who she is as a person, which will lead to an awakening of self and desires later in the play.

They exit the house promising a “madcap adventure” (14‐16). Very little else is revealed in this small scene; however, structurally Ruhl is establishing interest between Mr. Daldry and Mrs. Givings, both of whose spouses are inadequate to meet their physical or emotional needs. Ruhl explores the fate of the pairing of these characters later on in Act II.

78 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012

During the session in the “operating theater” Mrs. Daldry is very apprehensive about the procedure. Dr. Givings attempts to reassure her, but it is the presence of his nurse, Annie, that provides her the most comfort (16). Annie holds her hand and Mrs. Daldry has a quiet paroxysm and begins to weep afterward. Ruhl inserts critical notes about Mrs. Daldry’s orgasm for the actor/reader:

She has a quiet paroxysm. Now remember that these are the days before digital pornography. There is no cliché of how women are supposed to orgasm, no idea in their heads of how they are supposed to sound when they climax. Mrs. Daldry’s first orgasms could be very quiet, Organic, awkward, primal. Or very clinical. Or embarrassingly natural. But whatever it is, it should not be a cliché, a camp Version of how we expect all women sound when they orgasm. It is simply clear that she has some kind of release (17‐18).

Ruhl’s stage direction is similar to other stage directions that have been highlighted in this study in other chapters because of the prescriptive and imaginative ways she sees the scene playing out in her head. She inserts them anytime that she feels clarification is needed to convey what she ultimately intends to be played on stage. In this instance, her instructions deal

79 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012 predominately with the portrayal of an orgasm on stage. In other examples, Ruhl explains critical staging or blocking that need further clarification. In any instance, what is so interesting about these stage directions is that she takes the time to engage in dialogue with the reader (whether it be the director, designer, performer, reader) to convey what she intends. She also writes footnotes and endnotes at the end of her plays as well, but usually she interlaces instruction in the moment as if the reader is an active component of the process and not an afterthought.

Mrs. Daldry feels very weak and Annie stays with her until she recovers, after being asked repeatedly to hold her hand. Mrs. Daldry takes great interest in

Annie, asking about her work with Dr. Givings (19). Again, structurally, Ruhl is planting interest here regarding a pairing between Annie and Mrs. Daldry, by highlighting the several encounters in which Mrs. Daldry seeks physical comfort from Annie. These moments will continue to be explored further in Act II, when

Annie and Mrs. Daldry will find themselves on the precipice of discovering their own unexplored desires.

After Mrs. Daldry’s session, Dr. Givings come back into the sitting area to find Mr. Daldry and Mrs. Givings drenched from being caught in the rain while walking around the grounds. Mr. Daldry is quite taken with Mrs. Givings because she everything his wife isn’t: she is full of life; she walks so briskly that he cannot keep up, and she is a delightful creature. Mrs. Givings reveals that they need a wet nurse and is embarrassed that she has revealed too much to Mr. Daldry. For

80 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012 the first time, a man is interested in what she has to say, and she gets caught up in that feeling. Mr. Daldry notes that their housekeeper, Elizabeth, has just lost an infant and that she has plenty of milk. He offers to bring her the next day when

Mrs. Daldry comes for her session with Dr. Givings. Mrs. Givings hesitates because Elizabeth is black, and she is determined that her daughter’s milk come from a “Christian source”. She is immediately assured that Elizabeth is a very devout woman. After they borrow an umbrella, Mr. and Mrs. Daldry exit into the rain and leave Dr. and Mrs. Givings alone in the sitting room. Dr. Givings gives

Mrs. Givings a small kiss on the cheek before returning to his work (20‐24). In this exchange, Ruhl is planting discontent in the relationship between Dr. and

Mrs. Givings. There is no perceived sense of intimacy or care here. Dr. Givings treats his wife as clinically as he treats his patients. This discontent will grow even more and will be explored later in Act II.

In Act I, Scene 2, which takes place the next afternoon, Elizabeth arrives at the Givings’ with Mrs. Daldry. She is examined by Dr. Givings and interviewed by

Mrs. Givings (although Mrs. Daldry speaks on behalf of Elizabeth, her black housekeeper, for the majority of the interview.) The Givings’ decide to hire

Elizabeth and bring the baby down for a feeding. Elizabeth and Mrs. Givings both cry silently when the baby begins to nurse immediately, and Elizabeth asks if she should take the baby to the nursery. Mrs. Givings immediately agrees and is relieved when her husband comes in to the sitting room so that she may talk through her feelings. He rebuffs her again for science, leaving her for his

81 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012 experiments (25‐29). Mrs. Givings feels unloved by her husband because he refuses to listen to her feelings. Again, Ruhl is structurally allowing these feelings to mix with the sense of empowerment that she is gaining “in the other room” as well as the attention she is gaining from other men. All of these feelings will come to fruition during the climax of the play later in Act II.

Meanwhile, in the “operating theater” an electrical failure interrupts Mrs.

Daldry’s treatment, so Annie, Dr. Givings’ nurse, provides a successful manual treatment. Ruhl used Rachel Maine’s, The Technology of Orgasm, “Hysteria,” the

Vibrator and Women’s Sexual Satisfaction as primary historical research for her play. In the chapter titled, “Inviting The Juices Downward,” the author discusses the historical implications of manual massage of the clitoris:

Western physicians have in general found physical therapies

annoyingly labor intensive, an attitude that eventually resulted in

an occupational split between doctors and physical therapists in

the twentieth century. There had been earlier efforts in this

direction, as we have seen; massage was often a lower‐status task

relegated to semiprofessionals at ancient and medieval bathhouses

and at spas in the modern period. Until the nineteenth century,

pelvic massage of women, useful in childbirth as well as in the

treatment of hysteria, was not uncommonly the responsibility of

midwives, whether or not under the supervision of a physician. As

a mode of therapy, massage rarely was harmful, often was

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beneficial, and achieved results, if any, only with patience, which

meant that from the Galenic physician’s point of view it lacked the

heroic character of surgery, venesection, and purging. In this

context, it is hardly surprising that physicians sought technologies

that would allow them to reap the economic benefits of pelvic

massage, as delegating it to another therapist did not, while

avoiding a wearying and costly investment of the doctor’s time and

skill (68.)

Maine’s note that a physician’s disinterest in manual treatment because historically many physicians found it so tedious or menial in light of technological advances one could make in his field is very interesting. Ruhl uses this note directly to her advantage as an opportunity to fortify the character choices and relationships in the scene between Dr. Givings, Annie and Mrs. Daldry. When the technology fails to give Mrs. Daldry what she needs, Dr. Givings becomes disinterested and hands the menial task over to his nurse/midwife.

Mrs. Daldry leaves after her session. Elizabeth also leaves during this time although no one recognizes how painful it is for her to be nursing another woman’s child. Dr. and Mrs. Givings are left awkwardly alone just as the lights return but are soon interrupted by Mrs. Daldry who has forgotten her hat. She is quite weak, and Dr. Givings takes her back into the “operating theater.” Dr.

Givings uses the apparatus, but it fails to bring Mrs. Daldry to paroxysm, so he also somewhat reluctantly tries the manual treatment. In a moment of ecstasy,

83 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012

Mrs. Daldry calls out Annie’s name. Dr. Givings’ treatment is successful, Mrs.

Daldry is now able to express her intimate feelings, but they are not for her husband, they are for Annie. She quickly composes herself and leaves the house a second time. After Mrs. Daldry’s second treatment, Mrs. Givings is curious about the sounds she heard coming from the “operating theater.” She asks her husband about his invention and asks him to experiment on her. He refuses to speak to her about his work and leaves for the club in a huff (30‐37).

Mrs. Daldry comes back again, this time for her gloves. Mrs. Givings asks her about her treatment and what Dr. Givings does during their sessions. They pick the lock to the “operating theater” door on the premise that they will just retrieve Mrs. Daldry’s gloves, but they enter the room and begin to experiment with the apparatus. The interaction between the two women provides the impetus for several discoveries, including the ideas of female bonding and sexual exploration. They explain their feelings as “the love of electricity.” It all comes to a climax with Ruhl’s stage direction that closes Act I:

Mrs. Givings puts the vibrator in Mrs. Daldry’s private parts. They look heavenwards. The steady hum of the vibrator. Transcendent music. A curtain falls. The end of the act (41).

At the beginning of Act II, Scene I, Dr. Givings is in the “operating theater” with Leo, a romantic, woman‐loving painter who is no longer able to paint

84 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012 because of his condition. Dr. Givings diagnoses him with hysteria and recommends treating him with his new invention. Leo wonders how Dr. Givings may treat him with his vibrator, which is primarily used on women. Dr. Givings makes a small gesture with the apparatus to Leo’s posterior side, meaning that since Leo does not have a vaginal area, Dr. Givings must use the anus to execute the treatment. Dr. Givings intent is to use the apparatus to treat Leo’s symptoms similarly to how he would conduct the same treatment with a woman. They begin treatment immediately, and Leo soon has an anal paroxysm, which Ruhl simply indicates in the stage directions without further instruction or explanation. In the sitting room, Mrs. Givings hears Leo cry out and is surprised to hear a man’s voice coming from the “operating theater.” Leo dresses and leaves the “operating theater” to find Mrs. Givings in the sitting room. He speaks to her for a few minutes, and she finds him irresistibly poetic and different from any other man she has ever met (43‐50). Ruhl is again planting discord and a potential pairing between two characters that are not married, revealing Mrs. Givings’ dissatisfaction in her own marriage and her inability to come into her own as a woman.

Mrs. Daldry arrives for her appointment. Mrs. Givings quickly speaks to her about her symptoms after using the invention:

MRS. GIVINGS Mrs. Daldry, I have been wanting to speak to you ever since our adventure with the hat‐pin. You told me that you saw light when my husband treats you, and then you got drowsy and wanted to

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sleep. Well, I had such different sensations I wonder if it can be the same instrument at all. I was not the least bit drowsy afterwards. In fact, I was overcome by the desire to walk, or run, or climb a tree! How could one device cause such opposite reactions.[sic] Perhaps it is because I am well and you are ill (51).

MRS. DALDRY I do not know. I have been so worried that your husband might find out and get super upset with us and suspend the treatment.

MRS. GIVINGS I do not care. I am determined to use the device again and unlock the mystery as to why it makes you drowsy and makes me very excitable. Why, I feel like a scientist! (51)

The bond between the two women has been strengthened both by their shared experience of using the vibrator and by the secret they must keep from Dr.

Givings. Mrs. Givings is enthralled by her discoveries; Mrs. Daldry’s fear of Dr.

Givings’ knowledge about the experimentation overtakes any curiosity or joy she may otherwise have. Her remark that Dr. Givings might “get super upset” seems too modern of a phrase for a Victorian woman at the turn of the century to say.

In Ruhl’s notes that precede the play, she notes that she pulled from several sources, books on midwifery, hysteria, and vibrators and that she took great pains to historical accuracy in these regards. However, she also notes that anything that seems out of sorts or context is an oversight on her part. In the instance of Mrs. Daldry’s fears of Dr. Givings, it is speculative that the phrase that

Dr. Givings will “get super upset” is not a strategic term of language or an

86 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012 opportunity for Mrs. Daldry to bridge the gap from Victorian times to the present but indeed a small oversight.

Dr. Givings comes in to summon Mrs. Daldry to the “operating theater” but not before he gives his wife an annoyed look for speaking to his patient (51).

Mrs. Givings’ quest for information about sexual gratification shows a woman on the verge of coming into her own. In order to become her own person, she is openly testing her boundaries in her own home and doing things that she knows will make her husband extremely angry.

The doorbell rings and Mrs. Givings answers; Leo has come back for his scarf. Elizabeth comes down from the nursery and is introduced to Leo. Leo immediately asks to paint Elizabeth nursing the baby. Elizabeth is hesitant but agrees after Leo offers her ten dollars an hour. Her only request is that he not tell her husband and that he disguise her features (52‐53). Elizabeth has very little agency or opportunity to speak for herself as an African American housekeeper.

A portrait seems to have interested Mrs. Givings more that it did Elizabeth so she agrees to it, albeit with some small provisions. She does not agree to sit for the portrait because she feels liberated as Mrs. Givings is beginning to, but because she will keep from losing her job.

Dr. Givings and Mrs. Daldry have returned from the “operating theater” and Dr. Givings is dismayed to find Leo there. He does not like his patients to meet. Mr. Daldry arrives to take Mrs. Daldry home. He is very pleased with her progress and thinks that Mrs. Daldry could stop treatments. Mrs. Daldry objects

87 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012 immediately and insists that she is not cured (54‐55). Her reasons for continuing treatment despite marked improvement are very simple: the suspension of treatments would mean that she would no longer be able to see

Annie.

After everyone leaves, Mrs. Givings pleads with her husband to allow her to use the apparatus. Dr. Givings reluctantly agrees and begins treatment. Mrs.

Givings asks to be kissed during the procedure, and Mr. Givings stops the treatment saying that it was a mistake to perform it on a healthy woman. Dr.

Givings thinks it is unethical to use the apparatus for pleasure and intimacy because it becomes masturbation; he is able to explain away the same behavior for unhealthy patients under the banner of science because he is helping those patients to become healthier. Mrs. Givings is angry and storms out, saying that she needed a walk along the grounds. Dr. Givings calls his nurse in to take down the apparatus so that he can invent another vibrator that produces a paroxysm with water. Dr. Givings is fascinated with science and is always looking to improve on his methods. Mrs. Givings re‐enters the sitting room with Leo and asks him of his treatment with her husband. Being a gentleman, he refuses to answer. Mrs. Givings, taken by the handsome painter, places her hand on his cheek. Dr. Givings enters and sees this. Leo immediately says that he found Mrs.

Givings in the snow without a wrap and leaves very quickly. Dr. Givings asks his wife about what he saw. She acknowledges that it happened but gets angry when her husband is not jealous and storms out (56‐63). The metaphor of snow is a

88 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012 sign of renewal or change: Catherine is found in the snow making a vow to change and improve her place in the world. When Leo finds her and brings her inside, she feels drawn to him because he has taken so much interest and care in her. So she places her hand on his cheek in an intimate manner.

Act II, Scene 2 takes place a few days later. At rise, Leo is painting

Elizabeth as she nurses the baby and as Mrs. Givings looks on admiringly. Dr.

Givings enters the sitting room and is shocked to find such a scene before him.

Elizabeth quickly covers herself. Dr. Giving notes that Leo is early for his appointment but can take him now and exits to the “operating theater.” Dr.

Givings provides Leo his treatment and questions him about his “friendship” with

Mrs. Givings. Once he successfully completes his treatment, Dr. Givings pronounces Leo cured and suspends all future treatments (64‐67). Despite Dr.

Givings’ earlier proclamations that he is not jealous of his wife’s encounter with

Leo in the previous scene, Dr. Givings is proving that he indeed wants to discourage future encounters with Leo as quickly as possible. Dr. Givings seems to be having a small awakening of his own. It has taken the perceived interest of another man for him to realize how alluring his wife may actually be.

Meanwhile, Mr. and Mrs. Daldry arrive in the living room and Mrs. Daldry asks her husband to take a walk around the grounds so that she may speak to

Mrs. Givings. They begin again to talk about their different experiences with the apparatus in the “operating theater.” Elizabeth comes down from the nursery, and Mrs. Givings and Mrs. Daldry ask her if she knows anything about their

89 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012 symptoms. Elizabeth tells them that all of those things sound like things that could happen “while having relations with their husbands.” Mrs. Daldry and Mrs.

Givings dismiss her comment as being completely incorrect, and Elizabeth begins to leave (68‐70). Throughout the play, Ruhl’s use of Victorian euphemisms indicates a society that is largely uncomfortable with the ideas of marital and sexual intimacy. The use of euphemism regarding medical procedures

(paroxysm, “the operating theatre”) is peculiar but their continued use throughout the play provides a sense of naturalness within the context of the world of the play. In an interview with Brendan Lemon for the Lincoln Center production, Ruhl talked about the critical importance of writing a play that is set during a specific period and how to incorporate information that is known during that time:

The play is set in the 19th century, so there are some details I want

to get right, at least suggestively. When I'm writing the play, I want

to have a firm sense of where and how these characters might have

lived. But I'm a contemporary woman writing with subsequent

knowledge that informs my view of the period. In terms of the

sexuality, I was aiming less for self‐consciousness than for a kind of

innocence. In some ways, people then were innocent of sexuality

compared to the biological knowledge we've acquired about the

subject since. I didn't want the play to be too knowing (Ruhl and

Brendan Lemon).

90 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012

Elizabeth provides the most shocking euphemism in the play when she suggests to Mrs. Givings and Mrs. Daldry that they should seek their orgasms through sexual intimacy with their husbands. Her unlikely assertion is still delicately worded but is immediately dismissed because of the uncomfortable nature of the subject within the context of Victorian marital relations.

Leo enters from the “operating theater” and offers to walk Elizabeth home.

Elizabeth refuses but Leo insists. They leave together (71). This play takes place after the Emancipation Proclamation but well before the Civil Rights Movement.

Elizabeth’s hesitation with walking home, a black housekeeper accompanied by a white man would be deemed socially inappropriate to passersby.

Mrs. Daldry goes into the “operating theater” to undress. Outside in the living room, Dr. Givings and Mrs. Givings begin to argue because she refuses to breakfast with him. She wants more passion from him. Dr. Givings returns to the

“operating theater”(72).

Mr. Daldry enters and finds himself alone with Mrs. Givings. He tells her he is smitten with her and tries to kiss her. She slaps him. Mr. Daldry leaves for the club (72‐73). Meanwhile in the living room, the apparatus is not working on

Mrs. Daldry, who recommends that Annie try the manual treatment again. Dr.

Givings, already flustered, leaves to find his wife listening at the door. They argue again when Mrs. Givings asks him pointedly about his treatments. She asks him to use the apparatus on her. He leaves for the club to avoid discussing the matter further (74).

91 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012

As much time as Ruhl takes in painstakingly setting up each of these unlikely star‐crossed lover pairings, she destroys each of them in a rapid, farcical fashion in just a few pages. After her treatment, Mrs. Daldry and Annie are described by Ruhl to be “sitting in a weirdly compromised post‐coital state of inflection” (75). They have an intimately charged conversation about the Greeks and soul mates but it all remains shrouded behind the pretenses of Victorian sensibility and dignity. Mrs. Daldry leaves the “operating theater” and finds Mrs.

Givings in the living room. Mrs. Givings excuses herself to tend to the crying baby, and Mrs. Daldry sits down and plays a few bars on the piano. Annie enters the living room and sits down next to her on the bench. They kiss. They immediately agree never to see each other again. Mrs. Daldry exits. Mrs. Givings returns downstairs to find Annie crying. Annie dismisses her tears by simply saying that Mrs. Daldry played a sad song on the piano. She quickly exits (76‐

78).

Elizabeth returns to the house to tell Mrs. Givings that she is quitting because Leo insisted on walking her all the way home. Her husband saw them together and was very displeased. He also saw the painting and doesn’t want her working for the Givings’ anymore because it has brought impropriety into their lives. She assures Mrs. Givings that the baby is now at the correct weight and can be supplemented with cereal and the bottle. Elizabeth exits the house for the final time (78‐80). This turn of events is interesting because at the beginning of the play, Mrs. Givings had great hesitation about hiring an African American wet

92 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012 nurse because she wanted “Christian milk.” In the end, it is Elizabeth and her husband who decide that the environment at the Givings’ household is less than

Christian and so they sever ties. It is Elizabeth’s only act of agency in the play and yet it is precipitated by a decision made by her husband.

Leo enters to tell Mrs. Givings goodbye; he has decided to depart for Paris the next day. She begs him to take her with him but he declines. He does not love her; he loves Elizabeth. Leo leaves for the final time (81‐82).

Mrs. Givings goes into the “operating theater” and turns on the vibrator but is unable to use it. She cries. Dr. Givings enters. She tells him that paroxysms can happen between husbands and wives and that she wants him to give up his

“operating theatre” so that he can “love her as his job.” Mrs. Givings means that she does not want to be married to “the good doctor” any longer and she is no longer interested in living within the confines of the Victorian society that constricts the relationship of marital relations. The room dissolves into a snow‐ covered garden and they make love, determining for the first time that Victorian high‐class intimacy is in fact possible (83‐86). Again the metaphor of snow is pertinent because it is a sign of renewal or change; this time there are two people in the snow making a vow to change and be better. Mrs. Givings couldn’t make the change alone; she ultimately needed the support of her husband and for him to want to change as well.

In the Next Room or the Vibrator Play’s message is about the sexual taboo of intimacy, whether it be through masturbation, orgasm, infidelity, or spousal

93 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012 intimacy. Ultimately, the play depicts the invention of the self‐contained woman who seeks all of these things in herself and is able to convince her husband, “a man of science” to step away from the scientific race and to appreciate what is in front of him. The ending of this play has some similarities to Dead Man’s Cell

Phone, where Ruhl’s final image to the audience is of two people in love.

Sarah Ruhl’s In the Next Room or the Vibrator Play’s whimsical and farcical style follows in the path of Dead Man’s Cell Phone in its break from most of Ruhl’s oeuvre. The largely conventional feel of both plays can be seen in the language, content and structures as distinctly different, yet remarkably a certain number of

Ruhl’s hallmarks remain intact. As was discussed in the previous chapter, the three earlier plays in this study (The Clean House, Eurydice, and Passion Play) all manage to express a certain level of unique metaphor, language and poetry through the content that Ruhl chose to take on when she wrote each play. Over time, it seems that her focus has shifted from deeply meaningful prose springing from life’s fateful questions of love, loss, and eternal salvation and instead addressing ideas potentially smaller on the scale of importance to the human condition but that still seem to pique her interest as a playwright in unusual ways.

94 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012

CHAPTER VII

CONCLUSION

Sarah Ruhl’s work is so inventive, mysterious, thought provoking, and beautiful; it is hard to believe that she has written less than twenty full‐length plays, all of which are distinct and diverse in their content but can be woven together in the beautiful ways that Ruhl employs language, poetry, scenic practices and metaphor. What is even more astounding for her young career is that most of her works have been commissioned and produced for many major regional companies. In fact, John Lahr of the New Yorker touts that at just 37 years old, she is one of America’s most produced playwrights. He reports that in the last year alone, two hundred and forty‐four individual productions of her plays were performed around the country, and there are currently plans for eighteen foreign productions, in twelve languages (Lahr, “Mouth to Mouth: Sarah

Ruhl on Attraction and Artifice, The New Yorker, May 2011). Sarah Ruhl has also made the Theatre Communications Group’s list of Top Ten Most Produced Plays for the last five consecutive years. In the Next Room or the Vibrator Play was the third most produced play in the 2011‐2012 play season with eleven productions, and it was the seventh most produced play in the 2010‐2011 play season with eight productions. Dead Man’s Cell Phone was fourth in the 2009‐2010 play season with eight productions, Eurydice came in fifth in the 2008‐2009 play season with eleven productions, and The Clean House tied for the second most

95 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012 produced play with David Lindsay‐Abaire’s Rabbit Hole in the 2007‐2008 play season (Theatre Communications Group website, “A Top Ten”).

Ruhl’s newest play, Stage Kiss, was recently commissioned for the

Goodman Theatre in Chicago. The play opened in April 2011 and closed in June

2011. As Lahr also noted in his article, the action centers on a whimsical tale of ex lovers who are cast to play the romantic leads in a play‐within‐a‐play and deals with the convention of the stage kiss. Ruhl also recently had an adaptation of Anton Chekov’s Three Sisters that opened at Berkeley Repertory Theatre in

April 2011 and later opened at Yale Repertory Theatre in September 2011. Both productions were under the direction of Les Waters.

I look forward to reading much more from Sarah Ruhl. I know that she will continue to find herself among the best and the brightest of playwrights and will be studied and enjoyed for generations to come. Based on the findings of this critical study of five of her most produced and highly critically acclaimed plays, with the last two becoming largely more conventional in nature, and with

Ruhl turning to adaptation, it is difficult to surmise where she may turn next for inspiration. Since she is still so early in her career, I suspect that she will continue to experiment and will ultimately write plays that pique her interest, and speak to her in interesting ways. I also imagine that audiences will continued to be surprised by her use of metaphor, fantastical and metaphysical locations, her unusual subject matter, and her disarming wit and charm. It will be

96 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012 interesting to see what direction her career takes her. I do look forward to finding that out.

97 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012

WORKS CITED

Al‐Shamma, James. Ruhl in an Hour: Playwrights in an Hour Series. Hanover,

NH: Smith and Kraus, 2010. Print.

‐‐‐. Sarah Ruhl: a Critical Study of the Plays. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011.

Print.

Castagno, Paul C. New Playwriting Strategies: A Language Based Approach to

Playwriting. New York: Routledge, 2001. Print.

Goodman, Lawrence. “Playwright Laureate of Grief.” Brown Alumni Magazine.

March/April 2007. Web. 9 July 2011.

Isherwood, Charles. “The Power of Memory to Triumph Over Death”. The New

York Times. Web. 9 July 2011.

l?ref=sarahruhl>

Johung, Jennifer. “Figuring the ‘Spells’/Spelling the Figures: Suzan‐Lori Parks's

‘Scene of Love (?)’” Theatre Journal, Volume 58, Number 1, March 2006,

pp. 39‐52. Project Muse. Web. 22 August 2011.

Lahr, John. “Surreal Life.” The New Yorker. Web. 9 July 2011.

rat_atlarge_lahr?currentPage=2>

98 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012

‐‐‐. “Mouth to Mouth: Sarah Ruhl on Attraction and Artifice.” The New Yorker.

Web. 9 July 2011.

crth_theatre_lahr>

Maines, Rachel. The Technology of Orgasm: "Hysteria," the Vibrator, and Women's

Sexual Satisfaction. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP, 1998. Print.

McGee, Celia. “Sarah Ruhl’s Sunday School Lessons.” The New York Times. Web.

9 July 2011.

ef=sarahruhl>

New Dramatists. “Sarah Ruhl.” Web. 9 July 2011.

Parks, Suzan‐Lori. Venus. New York, NY: Dramatists Play Service, 1995. Print.

Ruhl, Sarah. Dead Man’s Cell Phone. New York: Samuel French, 2008. Pp.

1‐65. Print.

‐‐‐. Eurydice. The Clean House and Other Plays. New York: Theatre

Communications Group, 2006. Pp. 324‐411. Print.

‐‐‐. In the Next Room (Or the Vibrator Play.) New York: Samuel French,

2010. Pp. 1‐86. Print.

‐‐‐. Passion Play. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2010. Pp. 1‐

237. Print.

99 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012

‐‐‐. The Clean House. The Clean House and Other Plays. New York:

Theatre Communications Group, 2006. Pp. 5‐116. Print.

Ruhl, Sarah and Brenden Lemon. Interview. “An Interview with Sarah Ruhl.”

Lincoln Center Theatre Back Stage Blog. Web. 1 February 2012.

Ruhl, Sarah and Raven Snook. Interview. “Sarah Ruhl on In the Next Room or the

Vibrator Play.” Time Out New York. September 2, 2009.

Ruhl, Sarah and Susan Stamberg. Interview. “Playwright Sarah Ruhl Entertains

with Big Ideas.” National Public Radio. October 21, 2005.

Ruhl, Sarah and Wendy Weckworth. Interview. "More Invisible Terrains."

Theater 34.2 (2004): 29‐35. Project Muse. Web. 9 July 2011.

Smiley, Sam, and Norman A. Bert. Playwriting: The Structure of Action. New

Haven; Yale University Press, 2005. Print.

Theatre Communications Group. “Top Ten Most Produced Plays.” Theatre

Communications Group. Web. 1 February 2012.

Vogel, Paula. “Sarah Ruhl”. Bomb Magazine Vol. 99, Spring 2007. Web. 9 July

2011.

100 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012

Yad Vashem: The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority. “Nazi

Germany and the Jews 1933‐1939: Non‐Jewish Victims of Persecution in

Germany.” Web. 15 November 2011.

101 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012

APPENDIX

THE PLAYS OF SARAH RUHL

Original plays

• Melancholy Play (2001)

• Virtual Meditations#1 (2002)

• Passion Play (2003 and 2004)

World Premiere for Part 1 was at Trinity Repertory Company (2003). The

whole cycle (Parts 1,2, and 3) premiered at Arena Stage in 2005.1

• Eurydice (2003)

World Premiere at Madison Repertory Theatre (2003). It has also been

performed Off‐Broadway at Second Stage Theatre, Berkeley Repertory

Theatre and Yale Repertory Theatre.

• Late: A Cowboy Song (2003)

• The Clean House (2004)

Clean House was commissioned by the McCarter Theater. It premiered at

Yale Repertory Theater (2004). It has also been staged at Lincoln Center,

Woolly Mammoth Theatre and South Coast Repertory. Winner of the

2004 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and a 2004 Pulitzer Prize finalist for

Drama.

1 All premiere and production information was taken from the New Dramatists website, where Ruhl has been a resident playwright since 2004. . The above is not exhaustive of the awards she has received nor does it include all of the various regional and professional theatres where her plays have been staged.

102 Texas Tech University, Heather Welch, May 2012

• Demeter in the City (2006)

• Dead Man's Cell Phone (2007)

World Premiere at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre (2007). Off Broadway

premiere at Playwright Horizons, directed by Anne Bogart and starring

Mary Louise Parker (2008).

• In the Next Room or the Vibrator Play (2009)

World premiere at Berkeley Repertory Theatre (2009). Broadway

premiere at the Lyceum Theatre (2009). Nominated for three Tony

Awards.

• Stage Kiss (2010)

World Premiere at the Goodman Theatre (2011)

Adaptations

• Lady with the Lap Dog, and Anna around the Neck (adapted from

Anton Chekhov) (2001)

• Orlando (2003)

• The Three Sisters (2011)

103