Each MacArthur fellowship—known as "Genius" grants—is for $500,000, paid out in installments of $100,000 over five years. Since its premiere at Yale Rep in New Haven in 2004, The Clean House has been seen at The Wilma Theater in Philadelphia, the Woolly Mammoth Theatre in Washington, D.C., Chicago's Goodman Theatre, Milwaukee Rep, Denver Theater Company, Cincinnati Playhouse, and San Francisco's TheatreWorks.

The Sarah Ruhl play will begin preview Oct. 5 at Lincoln Center Theater, open Oct. 30 and run until Dec. 17.

Ruhl's work, about a well-ordered household that is turned upside down when an interesting new maid arrives, was a 2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist. It won the 2004 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize.

Honorees are nominated anonymously by leaders in their respective fields and learn of their nomination only when they are selected for the fellowship.

Past recipients of the grants, which have been handed out since 1981, include theatre artists such as Richard Foreman, Bill Irwin, Elizabeth LeCompte, Peter Sellars, Anna Deavere Smith, Ellen Stewart, Julie Taymor, Mary Zimmerman and Naomi Wallace.