Sarah Ruhl (born 1974) is an American playwright. She is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship.

Biography

Ruhl was born in Wilmette, Illinois. She studied under Paula Vogel at Brown University (A.B., 1997; M.F.A., 2001) and did graduate work at Pembroke College, Oxford.[1][2] Her play Late: A Cowboy Song was produced by Clubbed Thumb in 2003[3].

Ruhl gained widespread recognition for her play The Clean House, a romantic comedy about a physician who cannot convince her depressed Brazilian maid to clean her house. It won the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize in 2004. It was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2005.[4]

Her play Eurydice was produced off-Broadway at New York's Second Stage Theatre in June-July 2007. Prior to that it had been staged at Yale Rep (2006), Berkeley Rep (2004), Georgetown University, and Circle X Theatre.[5][6] Ruhl is also known for her Passion Play cycle that opened at Washington's Arena Stage in 2005, and subsequently was produced by the Goodman Theatre and Yale Rep. The Passon Play is scheduled to make its New York City premiere in Spring 2010 in a production by the Epic Theatre Ensemble in Brooklyn, New York.[7]

Her play Dead Man's Cell Phone premiered in New York City at Playwrights Horizons in 2008 in a production starring Mary-Louise Parker. It had its world premiere at Washington D.C.'s Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in 2007.[8][9] It was produced at Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2009.

Other plays include Orlando, Late: A Cowboy Song and Demeter in the City.

In September 2006, she received a MacArthur Fellowship. The announcement of that award stated: "Sarah Ruhl, 32, playwright, New York City. Playwright creating vivid and adventurous theatrical works that poignantly juxtapose the mundane aspects of daily life with mythic themes of love and war."[10]

In February 2009, her play In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play) premiered at Berkeley Rep.[11][12] The play is scheduled to open on Broadway at the Lyceum Theatre with previews starting on October 22, 2009 and an official opening in November 2009. This marks Ruhl's Broadway debut.[13]

Dramatic Comedy / 5m, 2f / Unit Set In Eurydice, Sarah Ruhl reimagines the classic myth of Orpheus through the eyes of its heroine. Dying too young on her wedding day, Eurydice must journey to the underworld, where she reunites with her father and struggles to remember her lost love. With contemporary characters, ingenious plot twists, and breathtaking visual effects, the play is a fresh look at a timeless love story. "RHAPSODICALLY BEAUTIFUL. A weird and wonderful new play - an inexpressibly moving theatrical fable about love, loss and the pleasures and pains of memory." - The New York Times "EXHILARATING!! A luminous retelling of the Orpheus myth, lush and limpid as a dream where both author and audience swim in the magical, sometimes menacing, and always thrilling flow of the unconscious." - The New Yorker "Exquisitely staged by Les Waters and an inventive design team...Ruhl's wild flights of imagination, some deeply affecting passages and beautiful imagery provide transporting pleasures. They conspire to create original, at times breathtaking, stage pictures." - Variety