In the Next Room, or the Vibrator Play

by Sarah Ruhl

January 26 at 7:30 p.m.

January 27 at 7:30 p.m.

January 28 at 1:30 p.m.

February 2 at 7:30 p.m.

February 3 at 7:30 p.m.

February 4 at 1:30 p.m.

All performances of The Vibrator Play are on the Brunner Theatre Mainstage

In the Next Room, or the vibrator play is a comedy about marriage, intimacy, and electricity. Set in the 1880s at the dawn of the age of electricity, the play centers on a doctor and his wife and how his new therapy affects their entire household. In a seemingly perfect, well-to-do Victorian home, proper gentleman and scientist Dr. Givings has innocently invented an extraordinary new device for treating "hysteria" in women (and occasionally men): the vibrator. Adjacent to the doctor's laboratory, his young and energetic wife wonders exactly what is going on in the next room. Trying to tend to their newborn daughter, Mrs. Givings hires a wet nurse whose physical attachment to the baby gives rise to complicated feelings for both women. When a new "hysterical" patient and her husband bring their own complicated relationship into the doctor's home, Dr. and Mrs. Givings must examine the nature of their own marriage, and what it truly means to love someone.

Directed by Dr. Popple