Southern California Premiere September 21 - October 12, 2008 Julianne Argyros Stage DEAD MAN'S CELL PHONE by Sarah Ruhl directed by Bart DeLorenzo Pam & Jim Muzzy, Honorary Producers

Led by Variety (“wondrously mad and moving”) and The New York Times (“beguiling”), the critics—and the entire theatre world—have gone wild over Sarah Ruhl’s writing. The Clean House was seen by SCR audiences before it wowed New York and became a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Her latest comedy is another runaway hit that proves she is, in the words of the MacArthur Fellowship, "a playwright creating vivid and adventurous theatrical works." In this imaginative new comedy, Gordon is dead, but his cell phone keeps ringing. Would you answer? Jean does, and soon she’s telling the callers what she thinks they need to hear, even though it takes her to hell (yes, that’s where Gordon ends up) and back, as she draws them into the surprises and mysteries of their lives—and her own.

Playwright:
Sarah Ruhl has written numerous award-winning plays, including The Clean House (Susan Smith Blackburn Award, 2004, Pulitzer Prize finalist, PEN/Laura Pels Foundation Award), Melancholy Play, Eurydice, Late: a cowboy song, Orlando, Demeter in the City (NAACP Image Award nomination) and Passion Play: a cycle in three parts (Fourth Forum Freedom Award, Kennedy Center). Her plays have been performed at theatres across the country. Her plays have been translated into German, Polish, Korean, Russian and Spanish, and have been produced internationally in London, Canada, Germany, Latvia and Poland. She is the recipient of a Helen Merrill Award, Whiting Writers' Award and a MacArthur Fellowship.

Recommendation and Resources:
Ruhl’s work is poetic while still being funny and conversational, but while younger theatre-goers will be amused by the cell phone as a sort of character, they may miss the deeper themes and subtleties that will be understood by high school students and above.

*Post-show discussion led by SCR literary staff and artists from the show.
**ASL interpreted performance for the Deaf community.