Eurydice

Sarah Ruhl was born in Wilmette, Illinois in 1973, where her father instilled in her a love of music and a fascination with language. She initially aspired to specialize in poetry while studying at Brown University. However, her father’s untimely death instead inspired her first play, The Dog Play. She earned a BA in 1997 and an MFA in 2001. Eurydice was written in 2003 and saw productions at Circle X Theatre, Georgetown University, Berkeley and Yale before

making it to New York’s Second Stage Theatre in 2007. While Eurydice was making this journey, Ruhl found success with shows such as Melancholy Play,Virtual Meditation #1, and Passion Play: a Cycle, which won the Pen American Award and the Fourth Freedom Forum Playwriting Award from The Kennedy Center. The Clean House (2004) won the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. In 2006 she received a MacArthur Fellowship “genius grant” for “creating vivid and adventurous theatrical works that poignantly juxtapose the mundane aspects of daily life with mythic themes of love and war.” More recently, her play Dead Man’s Cell Phone (2008) explored the personal disconnection that stems from the progression of modern technology, and In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play) (2009) examined the early history of the vibrator and its use as a clinical device for the treatment of “hysteria.” In the Next Room was Ruhl’s Broadway debut and earned three Tony Award nominations, including Best Play. It was also her second play to be named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama. Her newest play, Stage Kiss, debuted in Chicago in May of 2011.