Sarah Ruhl, one of the most well-known and prolific female playwrights of the 21st century, was honored with the Mimi Steinberg Playwrighting Award, last night, November 14th.
The Mimi Steinberg Award is given to a playwright every year, whose body of work has influenced and excited the community at large, and are seen to have incredible potential in the future of American Theatre. Not only is an event thrown in their honor, but money is given to the winner, in order to fund their future works, and lifestyle as a playwright in New York City.
This year, the celebration took place at Lincoln Center, where Ruhl was surrounded by her friends, family and colleagues from years past. When asked what this award meant to her, Ruhl said, “The award is very moving to me because of its focus on longevity and duration, over and above one singular work, that might hit the culture in a particular way…So I’m thinking a lot about endurance, and longevity and the arts and politics and how we can all keep going, how we can all stay in the room.”
Her plays, ranging from Eurydice and Dead Man’s Cell Phone, to the ever-present and echoing The Clean House, all touch on the innate sadness that humans experience throughout their daily lives. It is this melancholy, this needed expression, that allows her work to flourish and push actors to their limits. Maria Dizzia, the second actress to play the title role in Eurydice, spoke of Sarah’s writing, “Her intelligence about the way people interact, and what they’re searching for, so she must in some way know what you’re looking for, and she gives you a little bit of what you need…The writing is actually so simple, but it’s the stuff she is asking you to conjure, is so huge in order to fill the simplicity of the language. And I feel that is what you run into- I love it. I think it makes you better. It’s such a work out.”
Ruhl’s next play, How to Transcend A Happy Marriage, is being produced at Lincoln Center for their 2016-2017 season. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and three children, and continues to teach at Yale School of Drama.
