The latest opus of award-winning playwright and Wilmette native Sarah Ruhl takes place in the 19th century, but it’s hardly old-fashioned material.

“In the Next Room (or the vibrator play)” is a new comedy, recently migrated to Broadway that explores the phenomenon of psychotherapists treating hysteria in women through eliciting vibration-induced orgasms. The play is set in the 1880s, right after the invention of electricity.

“A friend had given me a book called ‘The Technology of Orgasm,’” said Ruhl, by phone. “I had no idea about the history behind this practice. I wanted to basically write a costume drama about the 19th century, but include all the details that 19th century novels leave out, about vibrators and wet nurses and other things about sex.”

The play is constructed with two rooms side by side, with the doctor “treating” hysteria in one room and his wife, Mrs. Givings, in the next. Ruhl said she uses this setup as a stand-in for the isolation and secrecy of marital relationships.

“Everything is happening simultaneously,” Ruhl said. “Mrs. Givings has no idea what her husband does in the next room. Meanwhile there’s another woman, Mrs. Daltry, getting this ‘treatment’ from her husband. The next room becomes a metaphor for all the private rooms inside a marriage, the way people are cut off from each other. “

Ruhl said fans have made this connection, as well.

“It’s a very modern play that way,” she said. “I’ve had a lot of people come up and talk to me about their marriage or conversations they’ve had with their spouse after the play, or they’ve even noticed a slight change in their relationship.”

Ruhl said the play is less about the practice itself and more about Mrs. Givings, who comes of age sexually by discovering the machine on her own. And although Ruhl sees her play as primarily a comedy, she sees the importance of the female perspective.

“I don’t necessarily try to put political or social messages in my plays,” Ruhl said. “But I do think that offering the audience a play that’s told from a woman’s point of view is a bold act, a feminist act in itself.”

Indeed, Ruhl’s work has always been multifaceted, even back when she was a teenager studying at the Piven Theatre in Evanston.

“She deals with metaphor with such great depth and imagination,” said theater owner Joyce Piven, whom Ruhl singled out as a major influence on her work. “She always had a marvelous sense of humor.”

Piven said she realized Ruhl’s writing talent when the two women collaborated on an adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s “Orlando.”

“It was quite a production,” Piven said. “It was extremely unusual and exciting to work with a student artist that was evolving how she was.”

Ruhl, who received the MacArthur “genius grant” in 2006 and whose play “The Clean House” was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, recalls this collaboration as formative for her.

“During that Virginia Woolf collaboration, [Joyce] taught me about theatrical language, about story, about transformation,” Ruhl said. “Joyce and her husband, Bern Piven, were real mentors to me.”

Ruhl’s mother, a stage actor, also exposed her to the North Shore theater scene early on. Ruhl remembers her mother being in productions at the North Shore Theater of Wilmette and the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie.

“I once saw her as the nurse in ‘Romeo and Juliet’ at one of these theaters,” Ruhl said. “I remember being so devastated when Juliet died.”

Ruhl started out being an actor, too, but switched to writing later on. She cites the influence of English teachers like Eloise Fink and Beverly Baker at New Trier High School.

“We all looked at her kind of cross-eyed when she said she didn’t want to act anymore,” said Piven. “She had such a lovely, quiet talent. But she knew from a really young age that she was a writer. Her head was never turned by vanity or celebrity.”

Turned or not, Ruhl’s profile is quickly rising; “In the Next Room” is her first play to hit Broadway.

“It’s a whole other set of pressures,” Ruhl said of the Broadway whirlwind. “But when I walk into a rehearsal at Lincoln Center, I just try to focus on the work.”

“In the Next Room” runs through Jan. 10th in New York City.

--by Nona Willis Aronowitz, Triblocal.com reporter