In the Next Room, the vibrator play written by Sarah Ruhl, premiered at the Berkley Repertory Theater in February 2009, and later debuted on Broadway at Lincoln Center in November 2009. Set at the dawn of the electric age circa 1880 in an affluent spa town on the outskirts of New York, this comedy follows the events that take place in home of Mr. and Mrs. Givings. Mr. Givings is a scientist and doctor, who treats women suffering from hysteria outside the home using a clinical vibrating machine to induce paroxysms, or what we now know as orgasms. These induced paroxysms are strictly scientific and are believed to release any congestion in the female uterus, which is believed to be the cause of these hysterical symptoms. His wife, Mrs. Givings, quickly becomes curious about her husband's work, which remains locked up in the next room. As Catherine follows her innocent instincts and her ceaseless thirst for knowledge and human connection, she realizes her desire to find true intimacy with her husband. The result of her detective work to find this intimacy is her first experience with the vibrating machine. It causes his whole world to turn upside down. Sarah Ruhl exposes the thematic issues of the play through this change in Catherine's world and the experiences of her other characters. By repeating the theme of light and darkness, in various ways and forms, visually and textually, Ruhl paints a metaphor for the prevailing struggle to move forward, embrace social practices and new technologies, and preserve current practices. Through this identified struggle, questions arise about the importance of the child in the home and the child's influence on the structure of the marriage, the sep...... middle of paper ......in a timely manner is that they leave “Away from the car. Into the garden” (Ruhl 141). Mr. and Mrs. Givings must actually leave the house, with all its structure and confines, to gain access to their own intimate experience. The characters' stimulation and desire to exploring and pioneering these intimate concepts is what makes In the Next Room so relatable. Catherine and Dr. Givings finally begin to overcome distances and explore their mutual natural and healthy desires to intertwine love and sexuality. The last moment of the play becomes a staging of the unions of comfort, growth, purity, exploration and intimacy, all ideas opposite in nature but consistent with the overriding theme of the work: the struggle to move forward to embrace human intimacy, while at the same time embracing social practices and new technologies and preserving current or traditional practices