In The Next Room, or the Vibrator Play at The Weekend Theater

The Weekend Theater, located at 1001 W. 7th Street, on the corner of Chester Street, in downtown Little Rock, AR, presents In The Next Room, or the Vibrator Play, by Sarah Ruhl, directed by Baleigh Almond. In The Next Room, or the Vibrator Play runs December 2 through December 18, with show times at 7:30pm on Friday and Saturday nights, and 2:30pm on Sunday afternoons. For more information, call (501) 374-3761. Tickets are $20 for general admission, or $18 for seniors and students, and may be reserved online at http://CentralArkansasTickets.com/Organizations/The-Weekend-Theater.

Set in the 1880s at the dawn of the age of electricity and based on the bizarre historical fact that doctors used vibrators to treat ‘hysterical’ women (and some men), the play centers on a doctor and his wife and how his new therapy affects their entire household.

In a seemingly perfect, well-to-do Victorian home, proper gentleman and scientist Dr. Givings has innocently invented an extraordinary new device for treating “hysteria” in women (and occasionally men): the vibrator. Adjacent to the doctor’s laboratory, his young and energetic wife tries to tend to their newborn daughter—and wonders exactly what is going on in the next room. When a new “hysterical” patient and her husband bring a wet nurse and their own complicated relationship into the doctor’s home, Dr. and Mrs. Givings must examine the nature of their own marriage, and what it truly means to love someone.