Sarah Ruhl's Dead Man’s Cell Phone is a play about cell phones, meditation, death, love, and disconnection in the digital age. It is common to communicate the latest information through mobile phones in this modern era. In this work, the cell phone is a medium for communicating with the world of death as the most advanced communication device ever invented. It is also a reminder of connection that is absent in this world, and it is a medium that fuses reality and surrealism.
Dead Man’s Cell Phone is a comedy, that is anti-Aristotelian in composition and Dionysian in spirit. In this work, reconciliation and healing between the worlds of life and death are driven by the confabulation of the main character Jean. The origin of confabulation, the act of creating a story in the mind, include ‘fables’. Therefore, confabulation has a certain universal truth regardless of whether or not the specifics are true. This play is a story about a dead man, Gordon, and Jean, who witnessed Gordon's last moment in the world. Jean’s confabulation shows that both the living and the dead can heal each other’s wounds and close the gap between the two, so that a person's life can be reconciled even after death.