Dead Man's Cell Phone

Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

“Ruhl writes in a poised, crystalline style about things that are irrational and invisible . . . In her plays, Ruhl contends with the pressing existential issues; her stoic comic posture is a means of killing gravity, of taking the heaviness out of her words in order to better contend with life . . . Her plays are bold. Her nonlinear form of realism—full of astonishments, surprises and mysteries—is low on exposition and psychology . . . She writes with space, sound and image as well as words; her goal is to make the audience live in the moment, to make the known unfamiliar in order to reanimate it.
Dead Man's Cell Phone
is a mad pilgrimage of an imagination as it is invaded and atomized by the phone, which transforms private as well as public space.”

—JOHN LAHR,
New Yorker

“After you're gone, how will you be remembered? In her new oddball comedy, Ruhl chews on that question in a smartly entertaining way. Ruhl's fascination with death never feels morbid, because satire is her oxygen. She is a keen observer of social custom, and there is something forever vital in her lyrical and biting takes on how we behave.”

—PETER MARKS,
Washington Post

“Ruhl's zany probe of the razor-thin line between life and death offers some enjoyable insights into modern-day ironies.
Dead Man's Cell Phone
delivers a fresh and humorous look at the times we live in.”

—PAUL HARRIS,
Variety

“A captivating, dark-edged romantic comedy with an extraordinarily creative premise.”

—MELISSA ROSE BERNARDO,
Entertainment Weekly

“Ruhl makes acute observations about how being surrounded by wireless devices has eroded public-private boundaries and made our lives ghostly, atomized and impermanent.”

—DAVID COTE,
TimeOut New York

BOOKS BY SARAH RUHL AVAILABLE FROM TCG

 

INCLUDES:
The Clean House
Eurydice
Late: a cowboy song
Melancholy Play

 

Many thanks to Rebecca Taichman and to Howard Shalwitz for all of the love you brought to the first incarnation of this play, for putting your full faith in it. To Anne Bogart and to Tim Sanford for finding the play's second legs with such beauty. And to Jessica Thebus and Martha Lavey for understanding that a play needs a third production to finish the thing—and to Jessica for reading the first, second, third . . . twelfth drafts, of this play, and all the others. To the extraordinary actors who helped me crack this play—to Mary-Louise, forever Z; to Polly, the conscience of the play; to Bill for finding Gordon before he had to leave; to T. for memorizing twelve pages in two days; to Kathleen for the divine spark; and to David, Carla, Kelly, the WADS, Sarah, Jennifer, Naomi, Rick and Bruce for being so open to fabulation. Thanks to all the designers, and to Scott for the open mouth and paper houses. This play was written with the support of the Djerassi Foundation, was commissioned by Sonya Sobieski and Tim Sanford at Playwrights Horizons, and had a reading at the Lark and at New Dramatists early on in its life. Thanks to Annie Cheney for her book
Body Brokers.
Thank you to Sarah Curtis,
Yang Zom, Melissa Crespo, Jojo Karlin and Gia Marotta, for being my eyes and ears while I was at rehearsals. Thanks to Paula for coming to New York and checking in on me during previews. In my last book I thanked my writer friends. I feel remiss for not thanking non-writer friends, because, truth be told, a writer needs non-writer friends to stay sane as much as or more than she needs writer friends. Thank you to Sarah Hinkel, Erin Crowley, Sarah Geraghty, Jeremy Giller, Kirsten Deluca, Andy Goldman and Nicole Rose for being the kind of people who show up to a wake, and stay late. Thanks to Masha Paramonova, because you wanted your name in a book, and here it is for all time. Thanks to the nameless woman who worked at the Holocaust Museum who returned my cell phone to me. Oh, and thanks to the cowboy who sold me my first cell phone at the base of a mountain in a far off land.

The world premiere production of
Dead Man's Cell Phone
was produced in June 2007 by Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company (Howard Shalwitz, Artistic Director) in Washington, D.C. The production was directed by Rebecca Bayla Taichman; the set design was by Neil Patel, the costume design was by Kate Turner-Walker, the lighting design was by Colin K. Bills, the sound design was by Martin Desjardins, the choreography was by Karma Camp; the properties master was Jennifer Sheetz; the dramaturg was Elissa Goetschius and the stage manager was Taryn Colberg. The cast was as follows:

 

The New York premiere of
Dead Man's Cell Phone
was produced in March 2008 by Playwrights Horizons (Tim Sanford, Artistic Director; Leslie Marcus, Managing Director). The production
was directed by Anne Bogart; the set and costume design were by G. W. Mercier, the lighting design was by Brian H Scott, the soundscape was by Darron L West and the production stage manager was Elizabeth Moreau. The cast was as follows:

 

Dead Man's Cell Phone
was produced in March 2008 by Steppenwolf Theatre Company (Martha Lavey, Artistic Director; David Hawkanson, Executive Director). The production was directed by Jessica Thebus; the set design was by Scott Bradley, the costume design was by Linda Roethke, the lighting design was by James F. Ingalls, the sound design and original music were by Andre Pluess, the choreography was by Ann Boyd, the fight choreography was by Joe Dempsey and the stage manager was Christine D. Freeburg. The cast was as follows:

1. a woman, Jean

2. a dead man, Gordon

3. Gordon's mother, Mrs. Gottlieb

4. Gordon's widow, Hermia

5. Gordon's brother, Dwight

6. the Other Woman/also plays the stranger. Has an accent.

1. a moveable dining room table and chairs

2. a moveable café table

3. a cell phone

4. light

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it! Something of the awfulness, even of Death itself, is referable to this. No more can I turn the leaves of this dear book that I loved, and vainly hope in time to read it all . . . It was appointed that the book should shut with a spring, for ever and for ever, when I had read but a page . . . My friend is dead, my neighbor is dead, my love, the darling of my soul, is dead . . . In any of the burial-places of this city through which I pass, is there a sleeper more inscrutable than its busy inhabitants are, in their innermost personality, to me, or than I am to them? . . . The messenger on horseback had exactly the same possessions as the King, the first Minister of State, or the richest merchant in London. So with the three passengers shut up in the narrow compass of one lumbering old mail-coach; they were mysteries to one another, as complete as if each had been in his own coach and six, or his own coach and sixty, with the breadth of a county between him and the next.

—CHARLES DICKENS,
A Tale of Two Cities

. . . you have done a braver thing
Than all the
Worthies
did;
And a braver thence will spring,
Which is, to keepe that hid.

—JOHN DONNE, “The Undertaking”

In Hopper's paintings there is a lot of waiting going on . . . They are like characters whose parts have deserted them and now, trapped in the space of their waiting, must keep themselves company.

—MARK STRAND,
Hopper