The Clean House

Notes from the Director

The Clean House by the hot young playwright Sarah Ruhl was a 2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist. It is a short, funny play that covers a lot of ground - the relationship of hired "help" with the upper middle class, immigrants and social class, the overwhelming power of passion and the injustice of love, the relationship between sisters, the fraught relationship between "working outside the home" women and "working inside the home" women. In its essence it is a play about the meaning of life - why are we here? What is the role of love in our lives? Of humor? Of forgiveness?  Ms. Ruhl's compassionate comedy argues the best things in life - a sublime joke, a fulfilling purpose, a soul mate, even a satisfactory death - are infinitely worth waiting for.

Sarah Ruhl, only in her mid thirties is already a winner of the MacArthur Genius Award. She has a special relationship with the bay area as several of her productions had their premieres right here at the Berkeley Repertory—Euridice—which later went on to win great acclaim on the New York stage, and The Vibrator Play—that production will also be going to New York later this year and might do the same trick as Euridice.

As we are working on the play, it has become apparent the key to this play is Metaphysical love.  Sarah Ruhl is on a spiritual quest. She asks the big questions:  Why are we here? What is the meaning of it all? The answer is the quality or pursuit of our connection to others. When directing the Clean House, I find that the place to begin is with the heart of the characters - opening and exploring the deep vulnerabilities of each character makes the play come to life ... the jokes don't work without this kind of vulnerability.

The play begins with a joke in Portuguese that most of the audience won't understand. I think this metaphor speaks to the whole play: We may never come to a full understanding of the jokes life plays, but the wisest and possibly noblest response is to have a good laugh anyway.

Bios

• Playwright Sarah Ruhl
  • was born in Wilmette, Illinois. She studied under Paula Vogel at Brown University (A.B., 1997; M.F.A., 2001) and did graduate work at Pembroke College, Oxford. Ruhl gained widespread recognition for her play The Clean House, a romantic comedy about a physician who cannot convince her depressed Brazilian maid to clean her house. It won the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize in 2004. It was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2005. Her play Eurydice was produced off-Broadway at New York's Second Stage Theatre in June-July 2007. Prior to that it had been staged at Yale Rep (2006),Berkeley Rep (2004), Georgetown University, and Circle X Theatre. Ruhl is also known for her Passion Play cycle that opened at Washington's Arena Stage in 2005, and subsequently was produced by the Goodman Theatre and Yale Rep. The Passon Play is scheduled to make its New York City premiere in Spring 2010 in a production by the Epic Theatre Ensemble in Brooklyn, New York. Her play Dead Man's Cell Phone premiered in New York City at Playwrights Horizons in 2008 in a production starring Mary-Louise Parker. It had its world premiere at Washington D.C.'s Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in 2007.Other plays include Orlando, Late: A Cowboy Song and Demeter in the City. In September 2006, she received a MacArthur Fellowship. The announcement of that award stated: "Sarah Ruhl, 32, playwright, New York City. Playwright creating vivid and adventurous theatrical works that poignantly juxtapose the mundane aspects of daily life with mythic themes of love and war." In February 2009, her play In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play) premiered at Berkeley Rep. The play is scheduled to open on Broadway at the Lyceum Theatre with previews starting on October 22, 2009 and an official opening in November 2009. This marks Ruhl's Broadway debut.
• Director Jodi Schiller
  • is a playwright, director and drama therapist. She is a founding member and Artistic Director of the Drama Mamas. She worked with Woman’s Will on their 24-hour Playfest and is thrilled to be working them again on such a gorgeous play. She is currently a student in the ma playwriting program at San Francisco State University. She lives in Lafayette with her husband and two children.
• Beth Chastain (Lane)
  • has been performing in the Bay Area for the past nine years. Her favorite roles include Elmire in Tartuffe (Masquers), Nettie in The Subject was Roses (Onstage) and Evie in Gingerbread Lady (Onstage). She has performed with Act Now! (Actor’s Nightmare and Jake’s Women), Role Players (Best Man), and the Actors Ensemble of Berkeley (Exit the King). She received a Shellie Award in 2008 for the best role of all time: that of her sons’ mother in Christenings with Galetean Players. Beth received her ba in theatre in Shakespearean studies and performed for several years with Oak Grove Players in Virginia. She is thankful every day for the unconditional love of her husband, Paul!
• Mayra Gaeta (Matilde)
  • is originally from Brazil. She is a graduated from Drama Centre London where she received a ba in acting with honors and trained for three years under the late Reuven Adiv. She recently appeared at Impact Theatre in Tallgrass Gothic and ‘Tis a Pity She’s a Whore. She was featured in the film Fiona’s Script, which has been well received at both national and international film festivals. She is also very proud of her recent appearance on Psychic Investigators: Season 3 in the murder reenactment. Favorite past productions include Ivanov, Mephisto, Spring Awakening, and The Country Wife (Cochrane Theatre London). Isso é para minha mÃe, que me ensinou rir como uma hiena.
• Marilyn Hughes (Virginia)
  • is delighted to be in her first performance with Woman’s Will. She has performed with theatre groups around the Bay Area, including Ross Valley Players, Marin Classic Theatre, Masquers Playhouse, Actors Ensemble of Berkeley, com and others. Favorite roles include Beatrice in A View from the Bridge, Ouiser in Steel Magnolias and Moxie in Relative Values. Marilyn has appeared in many commercials and industrials, and has provided the voice for a wide range of video game characters. An award- winning actor and playwright, her plays have been produced for stage and radio. In her other life, she is a practicing psychologist.
• Richard Massery (Matilde’s Father/Charles)
  • is delighted to be working with Woman’s Will this fall. This past summer, Richard played the role of Theseus in A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the Livermore Shakespeare Festival; in April he played Niels Bohr in Copenhagen for Shakespeare’s Associates. Other recent credits include Reverend Parris in The Crucible for New Works New Haven, Antonio in Much Ado About Nothing, and Monsieur Bonnicieux in The Three Musketeers for the Elm Shakespeare Company (all in New Haven, Connecticut). Richard studied acting with Sanford Meisner and William Esper in New York in the 1970s.
• Carolyn Power (Ana)
  • portrayed the nurse in the teaser of episode #109 of the hit television show Chuck on nbc. She also played the Nurse in Woman’s Will’s Romeo & Juliet. Other parts include Toby in Neil Simon’s The Gingerbread Lady, Helicanus in Pericles at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art’s London Acting Shakespeare program, Lady Montague in Marin Shakespeare Company’s Romeo & Juliet, and Mrs. Darling/Narrator in Peter & Wendy. Film work includes Greens, Bust a Shalom, Imprint and Planet of the Blacks. Carolyn holds an ma in theatre from San Francisco State University. A member of both sag and aftra, she was named 2004 Storyteller of the Year, and is the voice of Long’s Drugstore’s training program. She wishes to thank acting coach Bobby Weinapple; Marie Diamond, Sonia Fava, Ruth Caspary and Lynne Soffer for sharing the magical music, rhythms and language of Argentina; and husband David Perlstein for 40 wonderful years!
• Rona Siddiqui (Composer)
  • is an award-winning composer and pianist who writes, performs, and teaches music in the San Francisco Bay Area. She was nominated Best Music Director of 2008 by the Bay Area Critics Circle for her work on A New Brain at Custom Made Theatre. She has also received international recognition for her composition Storms and Whispers. Other original scores include the Vagina Monologues at Florida Atlantic University, The Good Person of Szechuan at Woman’s Will, and Orchards at Custom Made Theatre. Recent music directing credits include Spitfire Grill at Altarena Playhouse and Putting it Together at Custom Made Theatre.
• Kristie Leffler (Lighting Designer)
  • has been a jack- of-all-trades in the theater industry for over 10 years. She has designed lights for Woodminster Theater, Oakland Opera, Oakland Public Theater, Oakland Asian Cultural Center and The Marsh Theater, to name a few. In addition to lighting, she loves to stage manage, and has managed for Oakland Opera, Altarena Theater, pen Oakland, Laney College and The Marsh Theater, among others. In her spare time she works as a house technician at the Julia Morgan Center for Young Performing Arts and the Oakland Asian Cultural Center.
• David Moore (Stage Manager)
  • is honored to be working with Woman’s Will for the first time. He received his BA in theater and performance studies from uc Berkeley, and has done production work for Marin Shakespeare Company, Central Works, Another Planet Entertainment and the Marin Fringe Festival.
• Carrie Mullen (Set Designer)
  • is thrilled to be working with Woman’s Will after designing the summer production of Taming of the Shrew. Recent credits include lighting Private Fears in Public Places at Ross Valley Players, and serving as art director for Stage Door Conservatory‘s Footloose and Grease. She holds a mfa in scenic and lighting design from uc Davis, and a ba in technical theatre from Sonoma State University.
• Jessica Peter (Costumer)
  • holds a bachelors degree in costume design from California State University — Long Beach. She has been working actively in the Bay Area, dressing at the Aurora Theater and California Shakespeare Theater, and designing for San Francisco’s Killing My Lobster sketch comedy group and act’s Young Conservatory. This is the second show she has worked on with Woman’s Will.
• LaTonya Watts (Choreographer)
  • trained at Juilliard in New York and the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco. Her training and work with a number of famous choreographers has helped her to pursue her passion. She has choreographed many theatrical performances for some of the Bay Area’s popular theatrical companies. Her work includes Taming of the Shrew, Romeo & Juliet, The Wiz, Grease, Pippin, Oedipus, Cinderella, Macbeth, Dream Girls, Blackballin, Runaways, West Side Story, Bugsy and Once Upon An Island.

Press

Women's Will Shows Bright, Lively 'Clean House'
By Ken Bullock Special to the Planet
Thursday October 08, 2009

"Jodi Schiller has directed her outstanding cast with sensitivity and humanity ...

"Woman’s Will has expertly realized the possibilities in A Clean House ..."

Read the full review

'Clean House': A Lemon-Fresh Shine
By Peter Marks, Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 19, 2005

"The Clean House" is a delicate play for rough times. The promising young playwright Sarah Ruhl offers up a radical set of notions: that human beings are not inherently selfish, that people can ask for forgiveness and be granted it with grace, that we can live without telling lies to each other -- and even die laughing.

Playwright Sarah Ruhl constructs The Clean House in an intriguing way. Ana and Matilde are agents of change, and after encountering them Lane and Virginia will never be the same. The play's action happens among the women. The man's function is to fall in love and then get out of the way, leaving the women to deal.

CurtainUp Review
By Kathryn Osenlund

Ruhl shows that she can get more than one use out of a situation as people and environments are recycled. A supine woman on the stage is dead. The next minute she may be someone else in childbirth. Further, Ruhl fashions an uneasy mix of funny and sad, except the sad parts are more about the concept of sad and the funny parts are not so much funny as they are a demonstration of funny. The play is the opposite of touchy-feely, and the distancing takes place from the first foreign language joke.

Seattlest
By Jeremy M. Barker in Arts & Events on April 17, 2007

An intellectual comedy, The Clean House builds itself around a concept: cleaning. Cleaning, after all, is one of the fundamental ways we relate to our home and personal space, particularly for women. With this as the conceptual core of the work, Ruhl builds a sharp comedy that explores gender, class and ethnicity vis-a-vis cleaning