Synopis: Jean becomes annoyed when the man sitting next to her won’t answer his ringing phone, until she finally answers it herself, and in doing so discovers that the man is dead. By taking ownership of his phone, Jean moves into Gordon’s life, meeting his mother, his widow, and falling in love with his brother.  But as Jean clumsily attempts to comfort his grieving relatives and begins to discover more about the nature of Gordon’s unpleasant work, she begins to realize that she may be in for more than she bargained for.

SARAH RUHL's plays include In The Next Room (or the vibrator play); The Clean House (Pulitzer Prize finalist, 2005; Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, 2004); Passion Play, a cycle (Pen American Award, Fourth Freedom Forum Playwriting Award from the Kennedy Center); Dead Man's Cell Phone (Helen Hayes Award for Best New Play); Melancholy Play; Demeter in the City (nine NAACP Image Award nominations); Eurydice; Orlando; and Late: a cowboy song. Her plays have premiered at Lincoln Center Theater, the Goodman Theatre, Playwrights Horizons, Second Stage, Arena Stage, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Yale Repertory Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Cornerstone Theater, Madison Repertory Theatre and the Piven Theatre Workshop, and have been produced across the country. Her plays have also been produced internationally and translated into Polish, Russian, Spanish, Norwegian, Korean, German and Arabic. Originally from Chicago, Ms. Ruhl received her MFA from Brown University, where she studied with PaulaVogel. In 2003, she was the recipient of the Helen Merrill Emerging Playwrights Award and the Whiting Writers' Award. She is a member of 13P and New Dramatists and won the MacArthur Fellowship in 2006. She is a recipient of the PEN Center Award for a mid-career playwright.