Sarah Ruhl, LESSONS FROM MY TEACHERS: From Preschool to the Present

[1:38]Zibby Owens: This is Zibby Owens and you're listening to Totally Booked with Zibby. Formerly, moms don't have time to read books. In my daily show, I interview today's latest best selling, buzziest, or underrated authors and story creators whose work I think is worth your time. As a bookstore owner, publisher, author, and obviously podcaster, I get a comprehensive look at everything that's coming out and spend my time curating the best books so you don't have to. Stay in the know, get insider insights, and connect with guests like I do every single day. For more information, go to zibbymedia.com, and follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens. Welcome to Totally Booked with Zibby. I am so excited to be here with Sarah Ruhl, who I've never met in person until now but have been on Zoom with. So exciting. Her new book, Lessons from My Teachers from preschool to the present was so good. I cried, I laughed. I mean, I just, like, loved it. So I'm so excited to Here's talk about a little bit about Sarah that you might not know. Sarah Ruhl is a playwright, essayist, and poet. Her 15 plays include In the Next Room or The Vibrator Play, The Clean House, and Eurydice. Eurydice? I mean, who knows how the Greeks said it, but I say Eurydice. Eurydice. Sorry, Eurydice. She is a two time Pulitzer Prize finalist, a Tony Award nominee, and the recipient of the MacArthur Genius Fellowship. Her books include Smile, a Memoir, and 100 Essays I Don't Have Time to Write, a New York Times notable book. You can read more about her work at sarahruleplaywright.com.

[3:23]Sarah Ruhl: Welcome, Sarah. Thank you for having me. It's delightful to meet you in person. Delightful to meet you in person too.

[3:30]Zibby Owens: You have so many lessons you share here which really serve to illustrate your whole life, what you've learned, who you've loved, all the things. Tell me about the inspiration for starting the collection, and how did you even start?

[3:46]Sarah Ruhl: It's always a good question. How did one start? Because the writing process sort of covers all the process up and you forget, like childbirth. I teach this class at Yale called Lessons from My Teachers, and the inspiration for that was I wanted my students to know there was more than one way in, that there were many entry points in terms of how to write a play. So in that class, I taught four playwrights who I learned from and I tried to teach not only their work, but how they taught. And then at a point I just thought, maybe there's a book in this notion or this title, Lessons from My Teachers. And I probably started with my most sort of formidable teacher, Paula Vogel, who is the reason I write plays. And then at a point, I worked my way backward because I thought about elementary school, preschool, and my mother, who I really consider a first teacher, and my father and my dog. I have lots of teachers who are not inside the classroom. Talk a little bit about your relationship with your mother. My mom is an actress in Chicago, and she's a total delight. She's very eccentric, and she used to kind of run down the stairs repeating monologues from E and ESCO. If I didn't have a babysitter, she would just take me to her rehearsals and I would sit in the dark in the back and take notes, which sometimes she would pass along to the director. She taught English at a Catholic high school where I grew up in Illinois. She taught me a huge amount about theater and writing just by osmosis and by example. My mom is a great conversationalist. She could talk to a stump. I'm much more reserved. But she was always asking questions, she's interested in the life of the mind, she's still acting. She's 82, and she's going to be in Marsha Norman's Night Mother in Chicago pretty soon.

[5:58]Zibby Owens: And can you just take everybody back to how you became a playwright and author and everything? Where did this come from? Yes, you had this example of your mom, but just

[6:09]Sarah Ruhl: a little bit more to fill everybody in. I mean, I guess I was one of those weird kids who knew I wanted to be a writer from an early age. Almost before I could write in a funny way, my mother used to take dictation and she would write down stories that I would come up with. So And I mostly wanted to be a poet and a short story writer or novelist. I think at a point I wanted to write great philosophical novels. That was the dream when I was 18. What did I know of life? And then my mother having influenced me and brought me into the theater, it was always there. I sort of understood actors and I knew how plays were made, but it didn't occur to me to write them. I sort of thought playwrights were dead people whose plays fell from the sky through the Sam French portal and landed on actors' desks. But then I met Paula Vogel at Brown when I was, I think, 19. She's such an incredible teacher, and it was really her inspiration that caused me to switch over to playwriting. Amazing. And what is the play you're running to right after this? Oh, I'm running after this to rehearsals for this play Eurydice, which I wrote twenty five years ago. It was done in New York eighteen years ago, and I'm doing it at the Signature Theatre. One thing that's kind of amazing is the director is now 71 and I'm 51, the age he was when he first directed it. And Maya Hawke, who's playing Eurydice, is 26, the age when I wrote it. So it's sort of all of these cycles of time converging.

[7:56]Zibby Owens: So I talked to you about your memoir Smile, and there is a coda to it in this book where we learn a little bit more about some of the health things that caused all of that to happen. Do you want to talk a little bit about that? Sure.

[8:13]Sarah Ruhl: I have three kids, and I had a high risk pregnancy with twins, and after I gave birth, this side of my face was paralyzed and they diagnosed me with Bell's palsy, which usually goes away quickly. And in my case, it just lasted and lasted and lasted. It turned out that I actually had Lyme disease on top of pregnancy, which I didn't know until I wrote a book about it. And a doctor reached out and said, I think you have neurological Lyme disease. And I said, Oh, no, no. I mean, she found this out last year, like a couple of Yeah. It was insane. And how old are your kids? They're old now. My oldest is 19 and I have twins who are 15. So this saga with my health was fifteen years ago and I didn't want to talk about it for a while. It felt private and as a writer, I think we're not used to thinking much about our bodies, much less writing about them. And then at a point, I found it occupied so much of my internal life, thinking about not being able to smile or, at the time, express emotion, and it was such a life changing event that ultimately I did want to make sense of it by writing about it. And how do you feel now that you know that it was misdiagnosed? I was really angry for a while, angry at doctors who missed it and angry at, Lyme is so politicized, I think, that people miss it partly because they don't believe, like half profession probably over diagnosis it and the other half under diagnosis it because they're at war about whether chronic Lyme is even a thing. So I was really angry for a moment. And then I was just very grateful to get treatment. I got IV antibiotics and I felt a lot better. And I was grateful to the reader who reached out. Was like literally, it was like the healing power of literature was this guy called me out of the blue

[10:15]Zibby Owens: and diagnosed me. We should all write books about all of our issues. Yeah. No, this is such a blessing, obviously, that you were able to have some closure on it and finally figure it out. Oh my gosh. Talk a little bit about some of the teachers that you were like, Yes, these people have to go in, but how should I tell the story? There's so much we learn from every teacher. Yeah. And it's partly

[10:41]Sarah Ruhl: the teachers I chose to include, there was a story involved with the teaching. I mean, because I've had even more wonderful teachers that aren't in the book, that there just didn't happen to be a specific story that I remembered. So, like, I I wouldn't have expected to write about Paul Nielsen, my elementary school principal, because I didn't know I was carrying that lesson with me. So Paul Nielsen was this principal in Wilmette, Illinois, and the first kid with HIV in the state was at our public school, and there was Ryan White had been denied entry in Indiana, and there was sort of a kerfuffle in the community as to whether there would be a group of parents who wanted to deny entry to this child in Wilmette. And Paul just really stood up to parents and was like, I'm not disclosing their identity. They belong here. Only the teachers who are teaching him will know his identity. And I had seen him as kind of a bullying mean principal because he was, I think, unjust to me at a school food fight. So that was my perception of him. And then years later, I learned what a hero he was,

[12:00]Zibby Owens: and so I was trying to make sense of how I saw him as a young person and what I knew about him as a grown up. That's amazing. There are other teachers you reached out to, too. You have the one older gentleman who you sent a letter to, and he was so surprised to hear from you. Can you talk about that? David Constan? Yes, yes. Yeah, so David Constance was a classics professor of mine, speaking of Eurydice,

[12:22]Sarah Ruhl: and he taught the ancient tragedy and its influence class at Brown. My husband and I were both in the same class, but it was nine in the morning. I was probably half asleep. We were in different sections. I never met my husband then, but I became really close with David. My father was diagnosed with cancer when I was a freshman in October, and I thought often of just leaving, but it was really professors like David who kind of took me under their wing and would cook food at their home and invite students so that it felt I felt like I was literally being fed by him, both by the books he was having me read and also by making baba ghanoush with roasted eggplant in his fireplace. David died last year and I wasn't aware that he had cancer, and I had sent him the essay. I sent all the teachers the essays I was working on before publishing them, and so I was so grateful that I'd done that because I think teachers aren't thanked that much. That was my experience writing the book because I would constantly send these essays out, and sometimes it would hit a teacher on their birthday or when they were ill, and they would say, God, I'm so moved to get this. I didn't know I had an impact. I would think, How could you not know? Because some of these teachers, to me were just legendary. And then I realized they don't get thanked very much. And I've been reflecting on that a lot and thinking about how sometimes the people who affect us the most, it's we almost think they have telepathy. We think they're all powerful because they've had such an impact. So it doesn't occur to us that actually they're separate people, and we should track them down and thank them. Today's episode is sponsored by Quince.

[14:14]Zibby Owens: Summer always makes me rethink what I'm reaching for every day. Lighter fabrics, better materials, pieces that just feel good the moment you put them on and look effortless. That's why I keep coming back to Quince. They focus on high quality essentials. Think breathable linen, soft organic cotton, washable silk, but without the luxury markup. It's that rare balance where everything feels elevated, but still easy. Quince has beautiful everyday pieces like 100% European linen pants, dress, and tops with styles starting at $32. Their denim is soft and easy to wear. I wear my jean jacket all the time. And their organic cotton sweaters are perfect for layering on cool summer nights. Everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. Quince works directly with ethical factories and cuts out the middlemen, so you're paying for quality, not brand markup. And it's not just clothing. Quince has really become a destination for elevated essentials across home, kitchen, bedding, and beyond, making it easy to bring a more premium feel into everyday life. In addition to my jean jacket, I recently got a white tank top dress with a beautiful cotton skirt that is absolutely gorgeous, and I can't wait for it to be warm enough so I can wear it every day, but it has been a cool spring. Elevate your summer wardrobe. Go to quince.com/zippy for free shipping on your order and three hundred and sixty five day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's quince.com/zibby for free shipping and three sixty five day returns. Quince.com/zibby.

[16:56]Zibby Owens: Are you going to do a campaign for us all to write our teachers? I think I should. I think it would be good. Could do letters to my teachers with the same font. Oh, I like it. There you go. Yeah. Because you're encouraging me. I've had so many teachers, and your book then, of course, makes me think about what has gone on in my life that has really informed me, and do those people know? Not even just teachers. I mean, your book is not exclusively nor even mostly about actual teachers. They're about other people in your life or things, and things like So many people can be our teachers and we can learn from.

[17:32]Sarah Ruhl: I think it's so important to do it quickly because three of my teachers who I wrote about died in the last six months, so I might have thought that I had a longer time to share the essays about them, and sometimes we just don't have as long as we think we have.

[17:51]Zibby Owens: Tell me a little bit more. You wrote about the loss of your father-in-law to COVID. Talk about that time a little bit more.

[17:58]Sarah Ruhl: Oh, was crazy. He died in early March, and we couldn't go back for the funeral, and so we watched his funeral on Zoom. And I remember my kids aren't actually that close with that particular grandfather. He was a little bit estranged, and so my daughter asked to eat popcorn during the Zoom service, and I was like, It's not a movie. We're not eating popcorn at your grandfather's funeral. But it really caused me to reflect on presence and ritual. There's a family in our building that we do Shabbat with, and we did it more and more during the pandemic because we were a little bubble. So those neighbors brought over food when my father-in-law died, and I just thought, Oh, now it's marked. Now his death has been marked. I didn't feel his death was marked on Zoom, but I felt it was marked when neighbors brought food over. And I feel like it was a real lesson for me from the pandemic that seems so obvious, particularly being a playwright and knowing how important gathering is, but that these milestones of celebration and mourning, it's very hard to celebrate on your own. It's very hard to mourn on your own. I feel so grateful that we're back in space with each other. I unfortunately had a number of Zoom funerals with It people I

[19:34]Zibby Owens: was just not being able to have other people reach out and give you a hug and mourn collectively and all of that. It's like, did it even happen? Did it even happen? Yeah.

[19:46]Sarah Ruhl: I do think there's something about memory too, that we don't remember things as well on Zoom. They don't sort of imprint. And I don't know if it's the smell of people, the touch of people mean, of it. All of Zoom just goes into one big

[20:00]Zibby Owens: category versus all the different experiences we have in life. That sounds so obvious, of course.

[20:05]Sarah Ruhl: Well, it's like the difference between reading a book and the materiality of it and reading it on Kindle. I do read books on Kindle, but I sometimes don't remember them as well as book books. I wonder if it's something about holding the book, I can remember where I was when

[20:23]Zibby Owens: I was reading the book. Yep. And then every time you see it from then on, you remember again. It's like this repeated exposure in a way versus a file that you're never going to see again. Yeah.

[20:36]Sarah Ruhl: It's like, remember that time I read that book on Kindle in my bed before Oh I fell

[20:45]Zibby Owens: my gosh.

[20:47]Sarah Ruhl: What do you think you've taught someone? That's interesting. I tried in the book to focus less on what I was teaching than on what I was learning, but I hope that I've taught one or two things at this point in my life. What have I taught? I mean, I think as a teacher at Yale, I inherited, in a way, the class of Paula Vogel, who was on sabbatical. She had her play in Decent on Broadway, and so I came as a substitute teacher. I had three little kids and I thought, How can I possibly? But then I thought, How can I not? I don't want to let Paula down and I would love to teach. And then it turned out I loved teaching and it turned out Paula loved having writing time, so we switched and I stayed. And I think it took years in the classroom to feel as though I wasn't just passing down the lessons of my teachers, but had my own lessons to give and years to create my own specific practice. I made up a course last semester called Poetry and Playwriting, where I tried to encourage the writers to really merge the practice of poetry with playwriting, which is kind of how I write plays. And I realized I had been withholding that information from them, not consciously, but it didn't occur to me to really lay bare my process and give it to them.

[22:17]Zibby Owens: So it's interesting to me that it was over a decade in the classroom before I shared that. I feel like you have something to share really about essay writing because having read your last collection and this, you distill each moment and each essay to such a point that it doesn't even take you very long to get across. Some of these excerpts are quite short, but you somehow encapsulate everything and evoke so much feeling. How do you approach an essay, and how can the rest of us do it better? Well, I do love distillation

[22:51]Sarah Ruhl: processes in cooking and in writing, like taking a broth and distilling it and distilling it until it's just a really clear broth. And that's how I feel about poems and essays. And I do love short form for that reason, where there's just not fat, the distraction of too much wasted material. I love the poems of Ada Limon so much, and I feel like in her poems there's always an epiphany, and the poem is just leading in this very clear way towards this insight. When I wrote really short essays when my kids were little, I chose short form by accident because I was so tired and I had no time, and I thought, Well, if I can remember this thought by nightfall or until nightfall and write it down, I'll be good. And it never occurred to me a book would be made of it. And it turned out the essays were then very distilled and short because they were written for the spaces I had to write them. So I guess my advice would be you don't have to build it out. You can be really spare. I also find writing haiku a really instructive practice because you only get a certain amount of syllables, five, seven, five. And it just becomes a practice for all kinds of writing where you think, Oh, actually, you can say it better with fewer words. I realize you never make anything worse by cutting. Very rarely. And if you do, there it is. You just plop it back in.

[24:33]Zibby Owens: All right. Remind me, haikus. It's been about thirty years since I've written a haiku. Five, seven, five, and that's the only rule? Isn't there another rule? I mean, if you really want to get into it,

[24:45]Sarah Ruhl: there might be rules about talk about a season or talk about a change, but no, it's really just five, seven, five. Can you do one on the fly? Oh my gosh. Maybe. I mean, I teach this one way of writing haiku, which is where you meditate and you breathe in for five, you breathe out for seven, you breathe in for five, which is also a meditation I learned to make the breath longer, which relaxes your nervous system. So I'll have my students meditate and then just write about what's in front of them. So if I were to write about what's in front of me, mean, white hydrangeas are against purple flowers and a teacup. I mean, I'm too I'm too short. I I'm two syllables short. If I if I weren't embarrassed to be doing it on file, I could I could maybe

[25:41]Zibby Owens: I'm really sorry. I don't know what possessed me to ask you to do that. I that was not a plan. I mean, none of was planned. I like the challenge. I don't know. I mean, it's always fun watching authors write in some way, seeing the way the world works in your brain.

[25:56]Sarah Ruhl: Yeah. So, like, ideally, with that haiku, I the last couple syllables would be a little switch. Like, I would be writing about the flowers and what's in front of me, and then I would have some other insight about the experience of sitting here talking that I would put into three syllables. Timeless talks. There you go. There we go. Perfect.

[26:17]Zibby Owens: Now we'll publish it and we'll be Is all good to there anything you're really looking forward to? I know the book's about to come out.

[26:25]Sarah Ruhl: Well, I am looking forward to sharing it with friends and neighbors and family and students and former teachers. I think one good thing about being a playwright and a book writer is if I'm nervous about one genre, I can tack to the other because I have this opening of Eurydice at the same time. I can't be a ball of nerves about either of them because I just am busy and then I'll just pay attention to the other one. But I suppose why does either have to be nerve racking? I already wrote Uridacy 25 ago, so it's it's good to go. It's it's ready.

[27:01]Zibby Owens: Yeah. Well, is good advice. Anytime anyone feels nervous about a book coming out, they can just go write a play, and it'll be fine. Switch genres. Switch genres. Yeah. Sarah, thank you so much. Thanks for coming on, and thanks for here today. Nice to see you. Thank you for listening to Totally Booked with Zibby, formerly moms don't have time to read books. If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zippy Owens, and spread the word. Thanks so much. Oh, and buy the books.