ACT Theatre Announces IN THE NEXT ROOM, 7/29-8/28

A Contemporary Theatre prepares to stage another scintillating Sarah Ruhl modern masterpiece, In the Next Room, or the vibrator play (July 29-August 28) , a finalist for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and nominated for three Tony Awards, including Best Play. The gifted Ruhl weaves real history of the treatment (and mistreatment) of women in the 1880s, and the misunderstandings and fears surrounding female sexuality, into a tender and smart comedy that ponders love, sex, marriage, intimacy, and how electricity came along to fuse them.

At the dawn of electricity, in a prim upper class Victorian home, a gentleman doctor (Jeff Cummings) has invented a most extraordinary and mysterious device for treating "hysteria." When his increasingly despondent wife (Jennifer Sue Johnson) overhears the strange sounds emanating from the operating theatre and sees patients (Deborah King, Connor Toms) leaving in the pink of health, she is compelled to investigate - even if it means risking domesticity for desire.

"The advent of electricity extended man's active life deep into the night. It was immediately used to expand human pleasure as well as productivity, and it filled the language with new expressions: lovers ‘sparked.' A new affair could ‘recharge' you. A certain person ‘turned you on.' Sarah Ruhl's characters, Dr. Givings and Mrs. Givings, are perched on The Edge of a new light, a new consciousness," said Director Kurt Beattie. "Dr. Givings could be thought of as the new hero who would appear in popular literature in the 19th century: the scientist/engineer who would bring rationality to the fore in transforming society. Mrs. Givings has the seeds of the new progressive woman, who will call for equality, intellectual opportunities, and a broad reaching freedom. But in fact, there is a much richer journey underway in this play than simply an evocation of history. They must live with the problem of the ideal of conjugal love, and the reality. And that is where we turn the lights on, and the story begins."

In the Next Room, or the vibrator play was first produced at the Berkeley Repertory Theater in Berkeley, CA in February 2009 directed by Les Waters. In November 2009, it debuted on Broadway, a first for both Sarah Ruhl and director Les Waters. Ruhl's plays include The Clean House (2004 Susan Smith Blackburn Award, Pulitzer Prize finalist, Pen Award, seen at ACT in 2007); Eurydice (seen at ACT in 2008); Passion Play, a cycle (Pen American Award, Fourth Freedom Forum Playwriting Award from the Kennedy Center); Dead Man's Cell Phone (Helen Hayes Award for Best New Play); and Demeter in the City (nine NAACP Image Award nominations). Ruhl is also the recipient of the Helen Merrill Emerging Playwrights Award, the Whiting Writers' Award, the PEN Center Award for a mid-career playwright and a 2006 MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant. Originally from Chicago, Ruhl received her MFA from Brown University, where she studied with Paula Vogel. Her plays have been translated into German, Polish, Korean, Russian and Spanish, and have been produced internationally in London, Canada, Germany, Latvia, and Poland.

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