Totally Booked: LIVE! In this special episode of the podcast (in-person at the Whitby Hotel with a live audience!), Zibby chats with critically acclaimed author, MacArthur genius, two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, and Tony Award-nominated playwright, Sarah Ruhl, about her tender and thoughtful essay collection, LESSONS FROM MY TEACHERS. Sarah reveals the figures—inside and outside the classroom—who shaped her life and work, from her eccentric actress mother to her legendary mentor Paula Vogel. She also talks about memory, grief, her writing process, unexpected health journeys, the healing power of literature, and the impact of honoring teachers while they're still with us.

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome to Totally Booked with Zibby. I am so excited to be here with Sarah Rule, 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, I mean, I just like loved it. Um, so I'm so excited to talk about it.

Sarah: Thank you. 

Zibby: Uh, here's a little bit about Sarah that you might not know. Sarah Rule is a playwright, essayist, and poet. Her 15 plays include in the next room or the Vibrator Play the Clean House and Yuradies?, Youradies?

Sarah: I mean, who knows how the Greek said it, but I say Eurydice. 

Zibby: Eurydice. Sorry. Eurydice. Uh, she is a two time Pulitzer Prize finalist, a Tony Award nominee and the recipient of the MacArthur Genius Fellowship.

Her books includes 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. Welcome, Sarah. 

Sarah: Thank you for having me. It's still, it's delightful to meet you in person. 

Zibby: It's delightful to meet you in person too. Um, 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? 

Sarah: 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. Um, 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, you know, 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. Um, and then at a point I just thought maybe there's, there's a book, um, 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.

Um, and then at a point I, I worked my way backward because I thought about. Elementary school, preschool, and my mother, who I really consider a, a, a first teacher and my father and my dog, I mean, I, I have lots of teachers who are not inside the classroom. 

Zibby: Talk a little bit about your relationship with your mother.

Sarah: My mom is an actress in Chicago and um, she's a total delight. She's very eccentric. Um, and she used to kind of run down the stairs repeating monologues from Ian Esco, and if I didn't have a babysitter, she would just take me to rehears rehearsals and I would sit in the dark in the back and. Take notes, which sometimes she would pass along to the director.

Um, and she taught, uh, English at a Catholic high school where I grew up in Illinois. And so she taught me a huge amount about theater and writing just by sort of osmosis and by example. And my mom is a great conversationalist. She could talk to like a stump. Um, I'm much more reserved. Um, but she, she was always asking questions.

She's interested in the life of the mind, and, and she's still acting. She's 82. Um, and she's gonna be in Marsha Norman's night mother in Chicago, uh, pretty soon. 

Zibby: And can you just take everybody back to how you became a playwright and author and everything? Like where did this come from? Yes. You had this example of your mom, but just a little bit more to fill everybody in.

Sarah: I mean, I guess I was one of those weird kids who knew I wanted to be a writer from an early age. Like 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. Um, and I. So I mostly wanted to be a poet and a short story writer or, or novelist.

I, I think at a point I, I wanted to write great philosophical novels. That was the dream when I was 18. Um, what did I know of life? Um, and then my mother having influenced me. And brought me into the theater. It was always there. I, 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, you know, actors. Um. Desks. Uh, but then I met Paula Vogel at Brown when I was, I think 19. Uh, and she's such an incredible teacher, and it was really her inspiration that caused me to switch over to play rating.

Zibby: Amazing. And what is the play you're running to right after this? 

Sarah: Oh, I'm running after this to rehearsals for this play, which, uh, I wrote 25 years ago. It was done in New York 18 years ago, and I'm doing it at the Signature Theater. And one thing that's kind of an amazing is the director is now. Uh, you know, 71 and I'm 51.

The age he was when he first directed it, and Maya Hawk, who's playing tics is 26, the age when I wrote it. So it's, it's sort of all of these cycles of time, rouging. 

Zibby: So I talked to you about your memoir, smile and. There is a, you know, coda to it in this book where we learn a little bit more about some of the health things that, that caused all of that to happen.

Do you wanna talk a little bit about that? 

Sarah: Sure. So I have three kids and I had a high risk pregnancy with twins and after I gave birth, um, this side of my face was paralyzed. And, uh, they diagnosed me with Bell's Palsy, which usually goes away. Um. Quickly. And in my case, it just lasted and lasted and lasted.

Uh, and it, 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

Zibby: mean, she found this out like. Last year, like a couple. Yeah. Yeah. It was 

Sarah: insane.

So. 

Zibby: And how old are your kids? 

Sarah: They're old now. Uh, my oldest is 19, uh, and, and I have twins who are 15. So the saga with my health was 15 years ago and I didn't want to talk about it for a while. It felt private and, um, 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, you know, at the time express emotion. And it was such a life changing event that ultimately I did wanna make sense of it by writing about it. 

Zibby: And how do you feel now that you know that it was misdiagnosed?

Sarah: I was really angry for a while. Uh, angry at doctors who missed it and angry at lyme is so politicized. I think that, um, people miss it, partly because they don't believe like half the half the profession probably over diagnoses it and the other half under diagnoses it because they're at war about whether chronic Lyme is even a thing.

So I was really. Angry for a moment. Uh, and then I was just very grateful to get treatment. I got IV antibiotics and I felt a lot better and, and I was grateful to the reader who reached out. You know, it, it was like literally, it was like the healing power of literature was this guy called me out of the blue and diagnose me.

Zibby: We should all write books about all of our issues. Yeah, no, this is such a blessing obviously, that, that you were able to have some closure on it. Yeah. And finally figure it out. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Um, 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?

Like, there's so much we learn from every teacher. 

Sarah: Yeah. And it's partly. The, the teachers I chose to include, there was a story involved with the teaching. I mean, because I've had even more kind of wonderful teachers that aren't in the book, that there just didn't happen to be a specific story that I remembered.

Um, 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. Um. But, so Paul Nielsen was this principal, um, in Wilmette, Illinois. And, uh, the first kid with HIV, um, in the, in the state was at our public school.

And, um, there was Ryan, Ryan Wright, Ryan White had been denied entry in Indiana. And there, there was sort of a kerfuffle in the community as to whether there would be, uh, a group of parents who wanted to deny entry to this child and we met and Paul just really stood up to parents and was like, I'm not disclosing their identity.

They belong here. Um, only the teachers who are teaching him will know his identity. Uh, 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. 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 grownup.

That's amazing. 

Zibby: 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, 

Sarah: David Constance? 

Zibby: Yes. Yes. 

Sarah: Yeah. So David Constance was a classics professor of mine, speaking of literacy. Um, and he taught the, um, ancient tragedy and its influence class at Brown.

And my husband and I were both in the same class. Uh, but it was nine in the morning. I was probably half asleep. I, we were in different sections. I never met my husband then, but I became really close with David and my father, uh, was diagnosed with cancer when I was a freshman in October. And I thought often of just leaving.

Um, 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 ganus, you know, with roasted, um, eggplant in his fireplace.

And David died, uh, last year, and I, I wasn't aware that he had cancer. Um, 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, uh, when they were ill or, um, and they would say, God, I'm so moved to get this. I didn't know I had an impact. And I would think, how could you not know? Because some of these teachers to me were just legendary. Uh, and then I realized they don't get thanked very much. And I, 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.

They, 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. 

Zibby: Are you gonna do a campaign for us all to write our teachers? 

Sarah: I think I should. 

Zibby: You should. 

Sarah: I think it would be good. 

Zibby: You could do letters to my teachers with the same font.

Sarah: Ooh, I like it. There you go. 

Zibby: Yeah, because you're encouraging me, like I've had so many teachers and your book then of course makes me think about the what has gone on in my life that has really informed me and do those people know? And 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 can, we can learn from, but. 

Sarah: I think it's so important and to do it quickly because, you know, three of my teachers who I wrote about died in the last, you know, six months.

Um, so I, I might've 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. 

Zibby: And 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. 

Sarah: Oh, it was crazy. He. Uh, he died in early March and we couldn't go back for the funeral.

Uh, and so we watched his funeral on Zoom. Um, and I remember my, my, my kids aren't actually that close with that particular grandfather. He was a little bit estranged. Um, and so my daughter asked to eat popcorn during the Zoom service, and I was like, it's not a movie like, we're not eating popcorn at your grandfather's funeral.

Um, but it really caused me to reflect on presence and ritual. And there's a family, um, in our building that we do Shabbat with, and we, we did it more and more during the pandemic because we were a little bubble. And so those, those neighbors brought over food when my, when my father-in-law died, and I just thought, oh, now.

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, it was a real lesson for, 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, um.

It's very hard to celebrate on your own. It's very hard to mourn on your own. Um, so I feel so grateful that we're, that we're back in space with each other. 

Zibby: I unfortunately had had a number of zoom funerals 

Sarah: Yeah. 

Zibby: With people I loved, and it was just not being able to have other people reach out and give you a hug.

Sarah: Yeah. 

Zibby: And, um, mourn collectively and 

Sarah: Yeah. 

Zibby: All of that. It's like, did it even happen? 

Sarah: Did it even happen? Yeah. 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 pe, I mean all of it, the whole thing.

It's 

Zibby: like all of Zoom just like goes into one big. Category. 

Sarah: Yeah. 

Zibby: Versus all the different experiences we have in life. 

Sarah: Yeah. 

Zibby: That sounds so obvious. Of course, but 

Sarah: Well, it's like the difference between reading a book and the materiality of it and reading it, um, on Kindle. And I do read books on Kindle, but I sometimes don't remember them as well, uh, as book books.

And I wonder if it's like something about holding the book. I can remember where I was. When I was reading the book. 

Zibby: Yep. And then every time you see it from then on, you remember again, it's like this repeated exposure in a way. 

Sarah: Yeah. 

Zibby: Versus a file that you're never gonna see again. 

Sarah: Yeah. It's like, remember that time I read that book on Kindle in my bed before I fell asleep?

Zibby: Oh my gosh. Um, what do you think you've taught someone? 

Sarah: That's interesting. I, I tried in the book to focus less on what I was teaching than on what I was learning. Um, but I hope that I've taught one or two things, uh, at this point in my life. Um, I. What have I taught? I mean, I think as a teacher at Yale, I, I inherited, in a way the class of Paula Vogel, who was on sabbatical.

She had a, her playing decent on Broadway. And so I, I came as a substitute teacher. Uh, and I, I. Had three little kids and I thought, how can I possibly, but then I thought, how can I not, I don't wanna 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 sort of 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 kind of, um, create my own specific practice. Uh, I made up a course last semester, uh, called Poetry, 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, uh, not consciously, but I just didn't, it didn't occur to me to really lay, bare my process. And give it to them. So it's interesting to me that it, it was, you know, over a decade in the classroom before I, before I shared that.

Zibby: 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 like, how can the rest of us do it better? 

Sarah: Well, I do love distillation processes, um, in cooking and in writing. You know, 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 like just not fat, um, the distraction of too much, uh, waste wasted material. And so, like I love the poems of Ada Limon so much. And I feel like in her poems there's always an, an epiphany and the poem is just leading in this very.

Clear way towards this insight. And when I wrote really short essays when my kids were little, it was, it was, 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, I. Or until nightfall and write it down. I'll, I'll be good.

And it, it never occurred to me a book would be made of it. And it, and it turned out the essays were then very distilled, um, and short, because they were written for the spaces I had. To write them. So I, I, I guess my, my advice would be you don't have to build it out. You know, you can, you can be really spare.

I also find writing haiku a really instructive practice because you only get a certain amount of syllables, 5, 7, 5, and it just becomes a practice for all kinds of writing where you think, oh, actually you can say it better with fewer words. 

Zibby: Yeah, I, I realize you, you never make anything worse by cutting.

Sarah: Very rarely. And if you do, there it is, you just plop it back in. 

Zibby: All right. Remind me, haikus, it's been like about 30 years since I've written a Haiku. 5, 7, 5. And that's the only rule. Isn't there another rule? 

Sarah: I mean, I, if you really wanna get into it, um, there might be rules about. Talk about a season or talk about a change, but no, it's really just 5, 7 5.

Zibby: Can you do one on the fly? 

Sarah: 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.

Um, and then just write about what's in front of them. So if I were to write about like, what's in front of me, and I mean, white high drains are against purple flowers and a teacup. I mean, I'm too, I'm too short. I, I'm too syllable short. If I, if I weren't embarrassed to be doing it on file, I could, I could maybe.

Zibby: I'm really sorry. I don't know what possessed me to ask you to do that. I, that was not a planned, I mean, none of it's planned. 

Sarah: No, I like, I, I like the challenge. 

Zibby: 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. 

Sarah: 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 that about, about the experience of sitting here talking that I would put into three syllables 

Zibby: Timeless talks. 

Sarah: There you go. 

Zibby: There we go There. 

Sarah: Perfect. You did it. 

Zibby: Now we'll publish it and we'll be all good to go.

Um, is there anything you're really looking forward to? I know the book's about to come out. 

Sarah: Well. I am looking forward to sharing it with friends and, and neighbors and family, um, and students and former teachers. And 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 URA to see at the same time, I can't get too.

I can't be a ball of nerves about either of them 'cause 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 wracking? I already wrote 25 years ago, so it's.. 

Zibby: It's good to go. 

Sarah: It's, it's ready. Yeah. 

Zibby: Well, this is good advice. Anytime. Anyone feels nervous about a book coming out, they can just go write a play and it'll be fine.

Sarah: Switch genres. 

Zibby: Switch genres. 

Sarah: Yeah. 

Zibby: Sarah, thank you so much. Thanks for Thanks coming on, and thanks for being here today. 

Sarah: Thanks. So nice to see you.