The Ruby Sunrise by Rinne Groff

A glowing dramedy about the women behind television.During the 1920s at a barn in Indiana among the fireflies, a tomboy named Ruby electrifies her new invention: the television. At a New York film studio in the 1950s, a screenwriter named Lulu challenges studio executives to take a stand. During the dawn and golden age of television, both women defy convention and broadcast hard questions about the ways people make and tell history. The Ruby Sunrise is a re-imagining of television’s birth and adolescence inspired by some real-world figures and enlivened by double-casting. Ruby is a self-taught 1920s tinkerer like real-life prodigy Philo Farnsworth; her daughter Lulu is a “script girl” who faces down sexism and McCarthyism not unlike Vera Caspary (writer of the classic noir Laura) or Lillian Hellman (The Little Foxes starring Bette Davis). A 2004 Humana Festival pick that made its 2005 premiere at the Public Theater in New York City, The Ruby Sunrise has featured performers such as Elizabeth Moss, Marin Ireland, and Henry Winkler during its production history.