Ruhl wins an award for script

Sarah Ruhl, a Santa Monica playwright who received notice last year for her stage version of Virginia Woolf’s “Orlando” at the Actors’ Gang, has won the $10,000 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for her unproduced script “The Clean House.”

The annual prize is for an outstanding new English-language play by a woman. Among the past winners are Caryl Churchill, Marsha Norman, Wendy Wasserstein, Naomi Wallace and Paula Vogel, under whom Ruhl studied while earning a master’s at Brown University.

“The Clean House,” heard thus far only in staged readings, is a fable-like story concerning a Brazilian house cleaner in California who hates her work but excels as a preternaturally funny teller of jokes.

Mike Boehm