CLIFT | Comic mixes with dramatic in 'Vibrator' play at K-State

The theater wing of K-State’s School of Music, Theater and Dance is currently presenting a play that represents a moment of sociological inquiry that readers may remember. Do you recall a late 20th century flurry of commentary about a late 19th century treatment for female “hysteria”?

Sarah Ruhl’s play “In the Next Room, or The Vibrator Play” was inspired by that public discussion, one that seemed to interest people looking for evidence that Victorian doctors assumed that some of the poor health suffered by their women patients was caused by a failure of sexual function. The time — the 1880s that we see so well represented in the Wolf House Museum on Juliet —was also marked by the introduction of consumer-level electric power.