Noted playwright Sarah Ruhl, whose latest work “Becky Nurse of Salem” is having its premiere at Berkeley Rep through January 26, 2020, is interviewed by Richard Wolinsky.
Sarah Ruhl’s plays, The Clean House and In The Next Room (The Vibrator Play) have both been finalists for the Pulitzer Prize, and In The Next Room was also nominated for a Tony. In 2008 she received the Helen Hayes award for Dead Man’s Cell Phone, and has written the screenplay for a new film about Gloria Steinem, The Glorias directed by Julie Taymore. Sarah Ruhl has also written a collection of essays published in 2015 and Letters from Max: A Book of Friendship, published in 2018. A collection, 44 Poems for You, will be published in February, 2020.
From the Berkeley Rep website:
Becky Nurse is an outspoken, sharp-witted tour guide at the Salem Museum of Witchcraft who’s just trying to get by in post-Obama America. She’s also the descendant of Rebecca Nurse, who was infamously executed for witchcraft in 1692—but things have changed for women since then…haven’t they? After losing her job for calling out The Crucible in front of schoolkids, Becky visits a local witch for help. One spell leads to another, and then everything really goes off the rails.
Becky Nurse of Salem was commissioned by Berkeley Rep and developed in The Ground Floor: Berkeley Rep’s Center for the Creation and Development of New Work.