BWW Celebrates 'The Play That Changed My Life' Day 5 - Sarah Ruhl

A new book by The American Theatre Wing, The Play That Changed My Life, poses the following questions, "What was the play that changed your life? What was the play that inspired you, that showed you something entirely new, that was so thrilling or surprising, breathtaking or poignant, that you were never the same?" In revelatory conversations, nineteen of today's most gifted playwrights respond sharing personal anecdotes and experiences.

BWW celebrates the launch of The Play That Changed My Life by bringing you excerpts of the book from noted playwrights who discuss the play that influenced them and had a lasting impact on their career and personal lives.

See below for an excerpt from playwright Sarah Ruhl whose play The Clean House won a Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and was a finalist for the Pulitzer. Her play In The Next Room or the vibrator play recently had a limited engagement run on Broadway's Lyceum Theatre.

The Play That Changed My Life is edited by Ben Hodges, published by Applause Books and presented by the American Theatre Wing, founder of The Tony Awards. Pulitzer Prize winner playwright Paula Vogel penned the book's introduction.

Excerpt from Sarah Ruhl,

"I am reminded that the concept of play itself...is a primary process, not a luxury, not a hobby, but something all children must do to survive into adulthood. When I watch my toddler play, and she is at one moment a self-proclaimed mean turtle and then a nice turtle and then a grown man, each fiercely and completely, it reminds me of the primary human hope that identity might in fact be fluid, that we are simultaneously ourselves and the beasts in the field, a donkey, a queen, a starlet, a lover - and that identity might be nothing more than dipping our Heraclitan feet in the river, moment to moment. And if identity is fluid, then we might actually be free. And furthermore, if identity is fluid, then we might actually be connected - in Whitman's sense - if we can be the leaves of grass and also the masses on the Brooklyn Bridge, then we can leave the ego behind and be world for a moment. And this is one reason why we go to theatre: either to identify with others, or to be others, for the moment; and in what we call community theatre, the identification might be stronger, because we are more likely to either play the donkey ourselves, or to know the donkey intimately.

I do not mean to write here a treatise on my preference for community theatre over and above professional theatre - clearly I spend more time in professional theatre than I do anywhere else, which I suppose makes professional theatre my community - my version of community theatre. But what I mean to say is, the productions that have had the biggest impact on me have ferreted their way into the most porous, childlike parts of me, winnowed in and stayed there - and so the most primary among them have also been the smallest in scale."

From the book's description, "From Edward Albee's 1935 visit to New York's Hippodrome Theatre to see Jimmy Durante (and an elephant) in Rodgers and Hart's Jumbo, to Diana Son's twelfth-grade field trip in 1983 to see Diane Venora play Hamlet at The Public Theater, from David Henry Hwang's seminal San Francisco encounter with Equus to a young Beth Henley's epiphany after seeing her mother in a Green Bean Man costume, The Play That Changed My Life offers readers a unique peek into the theatrical influences of some of the nation's most important dramatists. The book is filled with tributes, memories, anecdotes and other insights that connect past to present and make this volume an instant must-have for anyone who adores the theatre. Also in the book are pieces by David Auburn, Jon Robin Baitz, Nilo Cruz, Christopher Durang, Charles Fuller, A. R. Gurney, Tina Howe, David Ives, Donald Margulies, Lynn Nottage, Suzan-Lori Parks, Sarah Ruhl, John Patrick Shanley, ReGina Taylor, and Doug Wright, as well as an introduction by Paula Vogel. All together, the playwrights featured here have won more than 40 Tony Awards, Pulitzer Prizes, Obies, and MacArthur genius grants."

Click here to purchase The Play That Changed My Life: America's Foremost Playwrights on the Plays that Influenced Them on Amazon.com.

 

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