Playwright Sarah Ruhl came to Washington University Wednesday, April 3, to meet the cast of “In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play)” and to lead the Performing Arts Department’s annual Helen Clanton Morrin Lecture. Ruhl, author of the play, sat down with Wash. U. students and faculty that morning for an informal chat about her history as a playwright, views on theater and new inspiration for future plays. Below is an interview adapted from a conversation between Student Life reporters and Ruhl.

Student Life: How did you get into playwriting?

Sarah Ruhl: Well, my mom’s an actress in Chicago, and so I used to go to the theater a lot. Then I wrote poetry and short stories, mostly. Then I went to [Brown University] and was still writing mostly poetry. I took a class with Paula Vogel, and she convinced me to write plays. So really, the story is all about finding the right teacher at the right time in your life who inspires you. I was probably not that different from your age; I met Paula when I was 19.

SL: What inspires you to write a play? Tell us about your process.

SR: I do not plan it out. Here’s what happens…[I’m] like, “That’s a good idea for a play!” So I would see if I still remembered that idea in a year. Like, I wouldn’t write it right away. I would see if I came back to it in my head, see if it intrigued me, see if it stayed with me because usually I’m working on something at the moment, so the next play’s an idea for later. But I think it’s also nice to see if it has staying power, and if it doesn’t, get rid of it. Because truly, start to finish, to work on a new play, you’re going to devote anywhere from, you know, two to seven years of your life on the life cycle of a play from the inception to the research to the writing of it, the rewrites, the first production—and maybe you finish it in the second or third production. So it has to have some staying power to devote that amount of time to it. And then, sometimes I will write a first draft kind of quickly of the first act, and then I’ll take a little time off to think about what the end of the play is. And then I’ll write the second act, and then I’ll hear it out loud, maybe in my living room, with friends who are actors before doing it at a theater as a reading. Because the first reading’s always humiliating, and it has to be because you have to hear it at that exposed juncture when it’s not done, when it’s humiliating, but it must be done. And then I usually hear it read with an audience. But some people—like, Edward Albee claims that he can just think about it, and then he writes it all, and then it’s done, and he doesn’t revise it. I revise; I don’t tend to change the essential story, but I definitely will revise.

SL: Does it feel less humiliating to feel your play read aloud the second time?

SR: Yes! The fear factor decreases through repetition. It’s like any exposure therapy. You just have to do it again and again. Like, if you’re afraid of elevators, just go on a bunch of elevators. But the weird thing is, I believe, anyway, the humiliation restarts for the new play. It’s not as though you feel less humiliated when you’re—well, I don’t know about Sophocles at 90—but for me, anyway, I don’t feel any less humiliated at the age of 39 reading a play than I did at 22 because it’s still new. It’s like a baby.

SL: What makes a play? What are the components of a killer play?

SR: For me, and I think it’s different for everyone, it’s language that is theatrical and meant to be heard on the stage; passion for the material, material that needs to be told, that should be told; and then the elements of the production that make it a killer play. There’s the play on the page, and then there’s the production. And the lifeblood of that is so ineffable. In the most transcendent plays I’ve seen, you don’t know why they moved you; you don’t know why your knees are trembling. To me, there’s something really ineffable about the rehearsal process, the relationship with the audience to the work.

There’s no more reason it’ll happen on Broadway with a glossy set than it will with a theater in the back of a donut shop.

SL: When you write, do you think about when people are going to analyze it?

SR: Oh no. God no. For one thing, I object to objectives. I just don’t really believe in them so much but certainly not for the writing process. I think they’re useful later, but yeah, you can’t analyze your work while you’re working on it. And I don’t even think it’s that useful to do it later. [Laughing.] I don’t know—is that terrible?

SL: Do you write for character or plot?

SR: It’s not plot. Plot is this irritating thing that has to be taken care of, at least for me. So it’s usually character or idea or theme or language or voice or image or the notion of transformation.

SL: So, anything but plot, essentially?

SR: Yeah, I mean, I believe in the power of story, absolutely. I think stories are really powerful. But that’s not the first thing that comes to me, usually.