This tool is unavailable at the moment. Please try again later.
Start planning your production with a cost estimate you can save and share with your team. Just answer a few questions.
This estimator is only for amateur productions. Professional customers should contact the Licensing department directly to enquire about a title's availability: [email protected]
Important: The cost quoted is an estimate only and may differ when you apply for a licence.
A SAMUEL FRENCH, INC. TITLE
Full-Length Play, Drama / 1w, 1m
By Sarah RuhlBased on the book by Sarah Ruhl and Max Ritvo
In this intimate, poetic play, an adaptation of Sarah Ruhl and Max Ritvo’s 2018 epistolary book, Sarah and her former student Max share letters and poems candidly addressing his terminal illness with humor and lyricism.
Image: 2023 Signature Theatre Company Production (Joan Marcus)
Nominee: 2023 Outer Critics Circle Award, Outstanding New Off-Broadway PlayNominee: Two 2023 Lucille Lortel Awards
An adaptation of Sarah Ruhl and Max Ritvo’s 2018 epistolary book, Letters from Max: A Poet, a Teacher, a Friendship, this intimate, poetic play explores the relationship between Sarah and her former student, Max. With humor, lyricism and candour, the two friends share letters and poems as Max faces terminal illness and tests poetry’s capacity to put to words what otherwise feels ineffable.
Letters from Max premiered off-Broadway at the Pershing Square Signature Center’s Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre on 7 February 2023. Directed by Kate Whoriskey, the production featured Jessica Hecht as Sarah, with Ben Edelman and Zane Pais alternating in the role of Max.
A classroom, then a bare stage.
“Warm and literary... a theatrical act of remembrance and a sacrament of grief, but it’s also a comedy.” – The New York Times
“Intimate... a work about art and death and about how art deals with death.” – New York Stage Review
“Affecting... This epistolary play sends the message that a life cut short can call us to embrace our own lives and—as Max tells Sarah in a dream—to feel them swaying.” – Time Out NY
“Ruhl’s warm and literary new play adapted from the book, is in no way a pity narrative. It’s a theatrical act of remembrance and a sacrament of grief, but it’s also a comedy... go see the play, and feel their relationship alive and tingling.” – The New York Times
“Luminous... It is amazing how effortlessly these missives manage to capture their divergent personalities... there's a beautiful honesty to the whole thing... In creating this grief-stricken send-off, Ruhl gets to chat with her friend once more and keep his mind alive for all of us to appreciate — and we are all the better for it.” – TheaterMania
ON BREAKING CHARACTER
In Conversation With… Grief: Shows That Engage with the Healing ProcessBy Dylan Fugel30 April 2026
Sarah Ruhl on Letters from Max
Letters from Max – Sarah Ruhl in Conversation with Mary-Louise Parker
Sarah Ruhl’s plays include In the Next Room, or the vibrator play, The Clean House, Passion Play, Dead Man’s Cell Phone, Melancholy Play, For Peter Pan on her 70th Birthday, The Oldest Boy, Stage Kiss, Dear Elizabeth, Eurydice, How to Transcend a Happy Marriage, Orlando, Late ...
by Sarah Ruhl
Sarah Ruhl
by Adam Rapp
Adam Rapp
Will Eno