Fuckin’ Ruthie

Shortlisted for the Alpine Fellowship Theatre Prize 2025, winner to be announced in October.

In the spirit of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead and A Doll's House, Part 2, Fuckin’ Ruthie is a darkly comic tale inspired by David Mamet’s seminal play American Buffalo, peering into that world via a slyly queer-feminist lens.

Image by Richard Sandler.

In Mamet’s piece, the foul-mouthed, misogynist, small-time card sharp Teach makes his entrance with one of the most famous opening salvos in the modern-theater canon—he rants, “Fuckin’ Ruthie, fuckin’ Ruthie, fuckin’ Ruthie, fuckin’ Ruthie, fuckin’ Ruthie,” cursing his frenemy Ruthie, who trounced him at poker the previous night. But just who is this much-maligned Ruthie?

I’m glad you asked: Fuckin’ Ruthie brings her onstage to answer that question in her own funny and ferocious way. The coarse and ruthless crew at the show’s center includes ringleader Ruthie, sweet-but-dim Grace (her lover and sometime accomplice), and Ignacio “Iggy” Suarez, a two-bit hustler who horns in on the couple’s double-crossing heist, a scam that Ruthie believes will finally teach the guys back at the pawn shop the humiliating lesson they so richly deserve.

Now in development.