So that one-woman show I saw last Tuesday sadly didn’t do much for me, and did nothing for Nancy since she was fresh off of seeing Jude Law in Hamlet (a Broadway double-header, impressive). However, there was a glimmer of hope in the program. In the Next Room or the vibrator play is a comedy set in the 19th century based on the (true) history of doctors using vibrators to treat hysteria and release “pent up emotions in the womb”.. I guess this was fairly common and not considered a sexual practice. Vibrators didn’t appear in porn films until the 1920s so no one really had any idea about them. The playwright, Sarah Ruhl, sums it up perfectly: “The Victorian bedroom could have been a very radical, experimental place, because who knew what they were doing?”
This sounds hilarious and is something I can definitely sign up for. I love/studied Victorian literature and early feminist American texts; The Awakening, The Clever Woman, The Yellow Wallpaper, and Wild Sargasso Sea (among countless others) are texts I have on memory speed-dial. All my theater-loving friends are living in other countries at the moment (all three of them) so I may have to fend for myself, but I’m excited to go see it!
Update: NYMag loves the story of oh!
1 response so far ↓
nancy rappaport // 12/03/2009 at 09:11 |
I would go to any play with you . I loved the yellow wall paper and the awakening the walk into the sea is like no other. I never thought about it but my mother’s novel, end of freedom where the main character kills herself ends by suicide in the water and that my mother would have been inspired(not the right word) by the awakening. keep writing!!!!