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When Ruhl was 20, her father died of cancer. "It's very much about my dad, in a way," she says. "His sense of humor as he went through it. And humor being kind of a saving grace."
  Few things are more mundane than cleaning house, but in Sarah Ruhl's luminescent new play, cleaning house becomes a deeply personal meditiation on the jokes and jabs of human existence... and how we make messes out of our lives. In it you'll meet Lena, a doctor who wants a clean house but won't clean it herself; Matilde, a maid who would rather be writing jokes than dusting rafters; and Lena's sister Virginia, who finds house cleaning a transcendental experience. It all works beautifully (Virginia cleans, Matilde jokes, and Lena is none the wiser) until Lena's husband announces he is in love with a patient with a beautiful soul and a serious illness. Suddenly the lives of the four women get very messy indeed. It's a play that will move you, delight you, and remind you that our lives are never as tidy as we deserve.
     





Sarah Ruhl is one of the youngest playwrights ever to be nominated for Pultizer Prize (for The Clean House). She is also the only playwright to be nominated without a New York production of her play.
"Richly rewarding...a dizzyingly
inventive romp in which characters
circle around the truth and one
another before realizing that the
richest moments in life often are
the messiest.
"
   - Eric Bartels, The Portland Tribune


Sponsored By: Dr. Tom Leimert
The Standard

"To remove ink stains from white fabric:
With an eyedropper, put on some rubbing alcohol, then vinegar, also with an eye-dropper. Coat the stain with table salt after the applications of alcohol and vinegar and rinse it under the tap in very hot water, and presto... stain completely gone!"
- Martha Stewart