Betty Dodson with Carlin Ross

Better Orgasms. Better World.

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It isn't often that female history takes center stage (thank you Shula for the link).

Sarah Ruhl has penned a smart, charming, iridescently funny-serious jewel, "In the Next Room or The Vibrator Play."  Presented on Broadway by Lincoln Center Theater, it is about American women at "the dawn of the age of electricity" (circa 1880) achieving sexual emancipation thanks to the vibrator.  Betty and I were at the screening of The Technology of Orgasm at Lincoln Center - a documentary about the vibrator - so it seems that someone over there understands the importance of the vibrator to women's history.

Vibrators were developed by doctors who were tired of using manual stimulation to treat "hysterical" women.  Yes, "hysteria" was really just a severe case of sexual frustration.  Vibrators were applied discreetly to the private parts of undergarmented patients. The doctor would reach under a pristine sheet and administer three to five minutes of electrifying vibration, at the end of which women in paroxysm would achieve something transcendent, for which they had no name let alone full understanding.

The story here is about one of these doctors who is treating patients for hysteria and his ever-increasingly curious wife.  It seems that there's enough "hysteria" to go around and everyone wants a few minutes with one of these vibrators.  Finally, a play that I could sit through ;)