A Witching Hour with Sarah Ruhl

Sarah Ruhl’s theatre career is a bridge. Particularly in her most experimental work, she builds on an artistic lineage that includes her teachers Mac Wellman and Paula Vogel, writers with poetic backbones and haunted brains. Ruhl’s plays—which have been nominated for Pulitzers and for the Tony Award—include the eerie technological fever dream “Dead Man’s Cell Phone,” the magic-in-everyday-things reverie “Melancholy Play,” and the epic, erudite triptych “Passion Play.” Her work delights in odd stage pictures, metaphorical flights, and slippery, lyrical logic. In “Melancholy Play,” characters overcome by grief sometimes turn into almonds.