In the Next Room (or the vibrator play)

"Best Broadway Play of 2009...Ruhl has defied gender and genre orthodoxy to give us a hilarious and moving meditation on the many factors that complicate communication between (and within) the sexes."---Elysa Gardner, USA Today" "In the Next Room is Ruhl's best play to date. Her play-writing is inspired."---John Lahr, New Yorker" "Ruhl is one of the country's brightest playwrights. In the Next Room is a true novelty: a sex comedy designed for adults with open hearts and minds. Insightful, fresh and funny, the play is as rich in thought as it is in feeling."---Charles Isherwood, New York Times" "It's safe to say that In the Next Room goes where no Broad-way show has gone before. Ruhl presents something a lot more daring than nudity: women's discovery of their own bodies and their own pleasure... A play that's smart, delicate and very, very funny."---Elisabeth Vincentelli, New York Post" "Ruhl has written a smart, charming, iridescently funny-serious jewel."---John Simon, Bloomberg News/Bloomberg.Com" "A breathtakingly inventive addition to Ruhl's singular body of work."---Charles McNulty, Los Angeles Times" "In the Next Room or the vibrator play hovers at the dawn of electricity when enthusiasm for the light bulb gave rise to a handy new instrument to treat female hysteria. Ruhl, with her singular theatrical lyricism, has crafted a masterful new comedy, which went on to become a Pulitzer Prize finalist and Tony Award nominee for Best Play." Sarah Ruhl's plays include, The Clean House (finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and recipient of the Susan Smith Blackburn Award); Dead Man's Cell Phone (Helen Hayes Award for Best New Play); Passion Play (Kennedy Center's Fourth Freedom Forum Play-writing Award); Eurydice; Melancholy Play; Late: a cowboy song and Orlando. She is a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship.

"A fascinating, funny and evocative play. . . . Ruhl develops the story with the enticing blend of irreverent humor and skewed realism. . . . It's beautiful." -San Francisco Chronicle

"[This] breathtakingly inventive addition to Ruhl's singular body of work . . . has the potential to be a modern masterpiece."-Los Angeles Times

Sarah Ruhl made her Broadway debut this fall with her latest effervescent comedy: a play about sex, intimacy, and equality, set in the 1880s, when enthusiasm for the electric light bulb gave rise to a handy new instrument to treat female hysteria. The story revolves around the medical office and home of Dr. Givings, who regularly induces "paroxysm" in his once high-strung patient Sabrina, allowing her to happily return to playing piano. Soon, Sabrina falls in love with the doctor's assistant Annie, and also befriends his wife Catherine, who is dealing with her own neurotic misgivings about not being able to breast-feed her baby. With this new work, Ruhl once again uses playful symbolism and lyrical language as she makes seemingly effortless thematic leaps--crafting a play with tremendous critical and audience appeal, in her singular theatrical voice.

Sarah Ruhl's plays include Dead Man's Cell Phone, The Clean House (a Pulitzer Prize finalist), Passion Play, and Eurydice, all of which have been widely produced throughout the United States and internationally. She is a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship.

Sarah Ruhl received the prestigious Susan Smith Blackburn Prize in 2004 for her play "The Clean House," which has been produced at Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven, Wilma Theatre in Philadelphia, South Coast Repertory Theatre in Costa Mesa, and Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington, DC. Her play Eurydice has been produced at Madison Repertory Theatre and Berkeley Repertory