Sarah Ruhl is a multi-award-winning American playwright, author, essayist, and professor, whose plays include The Clean House (Pulitzer Prize finalist, 2005; Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, 2004), In the Next Room, or the vibrator play (Pulitzer Prize finalist, 2010), and Eurydice. Her work has been produced on Broadway, across the country, as well as internationally, and translated into fourteen languages. Originally from Chicago, Ruhl received her MFA from Brown University where she studied with Paula Vogel. She has won the MacArthur Fellowship, a Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award, a Helen Merrill Emerging Playwrights Award, Whiting Writers’ Award, a PEN Center Award for mid-career playwrights and a Lilly Award. She proudly served on the executive council of the Dramatists Guild for three years. Ruhl currently lives in Brooklyn with her family and teaches at Yale School of Drama.

Learn more about Sarah Ruhl on her website.

Fran acted in both theatre and film for many years before turning her attention to directing. She received her MFA in directing from UBC in 2001. For UVic she directed The School For Scandal, Crackpot, Wreckage, Midsummer Nights Dream, and Les Liaisons Dangereuses and 7 Stories. Favourites for other theatres include As You Like It, For The Pleasure of Seeing Her Again, Much Ado About Nothing and The Importance of Being Earnest. Fran has had a long association with the development of new Canadian work, and served as the Program Head of the

Playwrights Colony at the Banff Centre for many years.

Acting is Fran’s first love and her most memorable roles include: Brutus in Julius Caesar, Lady Wishfort in The Way of the World, Elizabeth in Richard III, Joanne in Norm Foster’s Jupiter in July, and Martha in Joan MacLeod’s Amigo’s Blue Guitar. She regularly performs her one-woman show Looking For Kitty and has hosted her own radio and TV talk shows. Film and TV credits include appearances on The Chris Isaak Show, Stephen King’s Dead Zone, Friday’s Curse and Moment of Truth. She played Bette Davis’ daughter-in-law in A Piano For Mrs. Cimino and was nominated for a Genie award for her work in Blue City Slammers. Fran also performed in As You Like It and The Fantasticks during Blue Bridge Repertory Theatre’s inaugural season.

Teaching has become a focus in Fran’s life – she loves sharing her passion for theatre with the next generation of talented and energetic theatre professionals.