43 pages 1 hour read

The Clean House

Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 2004

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Summary and Study Guide

Overview

The Clean House, which premiered at Yale Repertory Theatre in 2004 and opened Off-Broadway in 2006, was the first major play by celebrated American playwright Sarah Ruhl, whose other widely recognized works include Eurydice (2004), Dead Man’s Cell Phone (2007), and In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play) (2009). The Clean House received a Susan Smith Blackburn Prize in 2004 and was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Ruhl also earned the 2006 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (also known as the “genius grant”) and a PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award (2008). Her Broadway debut, In the Next Room, was also a Pulitzer Prize finalist (2010) and received a nomination for the 2010 Tony Award for Best Play. Ruhl is known for her distinctive style, which pairs poetic language with absurdism and surrealism. Her plays approach the heaviness of everyday tragedy with lightheartedness.

Ruhl was inspired to write The Clean House when, at a cocktail party, she overheard a woman exclaiming, “My cleaning lady is depressed and won’t clean my house. So I took her to the hospital and had her medicated. And she still won’t clean!” This statement, which blurred text
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