Paula Vogel
Encyclopedia
Paula Vogel is an American playwright
and university professor. She received the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Drama
for her play, How I Learned to Drive
.
to Donald Stephen Vogel, an advertising executive, and Phyllis Rita Bremerman, a secretary for United States Postal Service
Training and Development Center. She is a graduate of The Catholic University of America
(1974, B.A.) and Cornell University
(1976, M.A.). Vogel also attended Bryn Mawr College
from 1969 to 1970 and 1971 to 1972.
-related seriocomedy
The Baltimore Waltz
, which won the Obie award
for Best Play in 1992. She is best known for her Pulitzer Prize-winning play How I Learned to Drive
(1997), which examines the impact and echoes of child sexual abuse
and incest
. Other notable plays include Desdemona, A Play About A Handkerchief (1979); The Oldest Profession (1981); And Baby Makes Seven (1984); Hot 'N Throbbing
(1994); and The Mineola Twins
(1996).
Although no particular theme or topic dominates her work, she often examines traditionally controversial issues such as sexual abuse and prostitution
. Asserting that she "writes the play backwards," moving from emotional circumstances and character to craft narrative structure, Vogel says, "My writing isn't actually guided by issues.... I only write about things that directly impact my life." Vogel adds, "If people get upset, it's because the play is working." Vogel's family, especially her late brother Carl Vogel, influences her writings. Vogel says, "In every play, there are a couple of places where I send a message to my late brother Carl. Just a little something in the atmosphere of every play to try and change the homophobia in our world." Carl's likeness appears in such plays as The Long Christmas Ride Home
(2003), The Baltimore Waltz, and And Baby Makes Seven.
"Vogel tends to select sensitive, difficult, fraught issues to theatricalize," theatre theorist Jill Dolan comments, "and to spin them with a dramaturgy
that’s at once creative, highly imaginative, and brutally honest." Her work embraces theatrical devices from across several traditions, incorporating, in various works, direct address, bunraku
puppetry, omniscient narration, and fantasy
sequences. Critic David Finkel finds this breadth in Vogel's career to be reflective of a general tendency toward stylistic reinvention from work to work. "This playwright recoils at the notion of writing plays that are alike in their composition," Finkel writes. "She wants each play to be different in texture from those that have preceded it."
Vogel, a renowned teacher of playwriting, counts among her former students Susan Smith Blackburn Prize
-winner Bridget Carpenter
, Obie Award-winner Adam Bock
, MacArthur Fellow Sarah Ruhl
, and Pulitzer Prize-winners Nilo Cruz
and Lynn Nottage
.
During her two decades leading the graduate playwriting program and new play festival at Brown University
, Vogel helped developed a nationally-recognized center for educational theatre, culminating in the creation of the Brown/Trinity Repertory Company
Consortium with Oskar Eustis
, then Trinity's artistic director, in 2002. She left Brown in 2008 to assume her current posts as adjunct professor and the Chair of the playwriting department at Yale School of Drama
, and the Playwright-in-Residence at Yale Repertory Theatre
. Vogel previously served as an instructor at Cornell University
during her graduate work in the mid-1970s.
Recently Second Stage Theatre
announced that they would be producing How I Learned to Drive as a part of their 2011-2012 season. It will be the first New York City production of this show in 15 years.
, founded by their father Don Vogel. The Center is a service provider for people living with HIV
.
Vogel married Brown University professor and author Anne Fausto-Sterling
in Truro, Massachusetts
, on September 26, 2004.
in 2004.
She won the 1998 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize
.
In 2003, the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival
created an annual Paula Vogel Award in Playwriting for "the best student-written play that celebrates diversity and encourages tolerance while exploring issues of dis-empowered voices not traditionally considered mainstream."
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
and university professor. She received the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Drama
Pulitzer Prize for Drama
The Pulitzer Prize for Drama was first awarded in 1918.From 1918 to 2006, the Drama Prize was unlike the majority of the other Pulitzer Prizes: during these years, the eligibility period for the drama prize ran from March 2 to March 1, to reflect the Broadway 'season' rather than the calendar year...
for her play, How I Learned to Drive
How I Learned To Drive
How I Learned to Drive is a play written by American playwright Paula Vogel. The play premiered on March 16, 1997 off-broadway at the Vineyard Theatre...
.
Early years
Vogel was born in Washington, D.C.Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
to Donald Stephen Vogel, an advertising executive, and Phyllis Rita Bremerman, a secretary for United States Postal Service
United States Postal Service
The United States Postal Service is an independent agency of the United States government responsible for providing postal service in the United States...
Training and Development Center. She is a graduate of The Catholic University of America
The Catholic University of America
The Catholic University of America is a private university located in Washington, D.C. in the United States. It is a pontifical university of the Catholic Church in the United States and the only institution of higher education founded by the U.S. Catholic bishops...
(1974, B.A.) and Cornell University
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
(1976, M.A.). Vogel also attended Bryn Mawr College
Bryn Mawr College
Bryn Mawr College is a women's liberal arts college located in Bryn Mawr, a community in Lower Merion Township, Pennsylvania, ten miles west of Philadelphia. The name "Bryn Mawr" means "big hill" in Welsh....
from 1969 to 1970 and 1971 to 1972.
Career
A productive playwright since the late 1970s, Vogel first came to national prominence with her AIDSAIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
-related seriocomedy
Tragicomedy
Tragicomedy is fictional work that blends aspects of the genres of tragedy and comedy. In English literature, from Shakespeare's time to the nineteenth century, tragicomedy referred to a serious play with either a happy ending or enough jokes throughout the play to lighten the mood.-Classical...
The Baltimore Waltz
The Baltimore Waltz
The Baltimore Waltz is a play by Paula Vogel.Essentially a series of comic vignettes underlined by tragedy, the farce traces the European odyssey of sister and brother Anna and Carl, in search of hedonistic pleasure and a cure for her terminal illness, the fictitious ATD she contracted by using...
, which won the Obie award
Obie Award
The Obie Awards or Off-Broadway Theater Awards are annual awards given by The Village Voice newspaper to theatre artists and groups in New York City...
for Best Play in 1992. She is best known for her Pulitzer Prize-winning play How I Learned to Drive
How I Learned To Drive
How I Learned to Drive is a play written by American playwright Paula Vogel. The play premiered on March 16, 1997 off-broadway at the Vineyard Theatre...
(1997), which examines the impact and echoes of child sexual abuse
Sexual abuse
Sexual abuse, also referred to as molestation, is the forcing of undesired sexual behavior by one person upon another. When that force is immediate, of short duration, or infrequent, it is called sexual assault. The offender is referred to as a sexual abuser or molester...
and incest
Incest
Incest is sexual intercourse between close relatives that is usually illegal in the jurisdiction where it takes place and/or is conventionally considered a taboo. The term may apply to sexual activities between: individuals of close "blood relationship"; members of the same household; step...
. Other notable plays include Desdemona, A Play About A Handkerchief (1979); The Oldest Profession (1981); And Baby Makes Seven (1984); Hot 'N Throbbing
Hot 'N Throbbing
Hot 'N Throbbing is a 1994 one-act play written by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and Yale University professor Paula Vogel. The play is a confrontational statement on the intersection of pornography and domestic violence which includes adult language, violence and full frontal male...
(1994); and The Mineola Twins
The Mineola Twins
The Mineola Twins is a play by Paula Vogel.The play opened on February 18, 1999 and closed on May 30, 1999 at the Laura Pels Theatre in a Roundabout Theatre production. Directed by Joe Mantello, the cast included Swoosie Kurtz and Mo Gaffney...
(1996).
Although no particular theme or topic dominates her work, she often examines traditionally controversial issues such as sexual abuse and prostitution
Prostitution
Prostitution is the act or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute and the person who receives such services is known by a multitude of terms, including a "john". Prostitution is one of...
. Asserting that she "writes the play backwards," moving from emotional circumstances and character to craft narrative structure, Vogel says, "My writing isn't actually guided by issues.... I only write about things that directly impact my life." Vogel adds, "If people get upset, it's because the play is working." Vogel's family, especially her late brother Carl Vogel, influences her writings. Vogel says, "In every play, there are a couple of places where I send a message to my late brother Carl. Just a little something in the atmosphere of every play to try and change the homophobia in our world." Carl's likeness appears in such plays as The Long Christmas Ride Home
The Long Christmas Ride Home
The Long Christmas Ride Home is a one-act full-length play by American playwright Paula Vogel that was first performed in 2003. It dramatises a road trip by two parents and their three young children to visit grandparents for the Christmas holiday, as well as the emotional turmoil undergone by...
(2003), The Baltimore Waltz, and And Baby Makes Seven.
"Vogel tends to select sensitive, difficult, fraught issues to theatricalize," theatre theorist Jill Dolan comments, "and to spin them with a dramaturgy
Dramaturgy
Dramaturgy is the art of dramatic composition and the representation of the main elements of drama on the stage. Dramaturgy is a distinct practice separate from play writing and directing, although a single individual may perform any combination of the three. Some dramatists combine writing and...
that’s at once creative, highly imaginative, and brutally honest." Her work embraces theatrical devices from across several traditions, incorporating, in various works, direct address, bunraku
Bunraku
, also known as Ningyō jōruri , is a form of traditional Japanese puppet theater, founded in Osaka in 1684.Three kinds of performers take part in a bunraku performance:* Ningyōtsukai or Ningyōzukai—puppeteers* Tayū—the chanters* Shamisen players...
puppetry, omniscient narration, and fantasy
Fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...
sequences. Critic David Finkel finds this breadth in Vogel's career to be reflective of a general tendency toward stylistic reinvention from work to work. "This playwright recoils at the notion of writing plays that are alike in their composition," Finkel writes. "She wants each play to be different in texture from those that have preceded it."
Vogel, a renowned teacher of playwriting, counts among her former students Susan Smith Blackburn Prize
Susan Smith Blackburn Prize
The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize established in 1978, is for English-language women playwrights. Named for Susan Smith, alumna of Smith College, who died of breast cancer.-Winners:* 1978-79 Mary O'Malley* 1979-80 Barbara Schneider...
-winner Bridget Carpenter
Bridget Carpenter
-Life:She holds an M.F.A. from Brown University, and has taught playwriting in grammar school, high school, college, and prison.Most recently, she was a playwright-in-residence at the Royal National Theatre in London. Her plays have been produced across the country. She is working on new play...
, Obie Award-winner Adam Bock
Adam Bock
Adam Bock is a Canadian playwright currently living in the United States. Adam was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He is an artistic associate of the Shotgun Players, an award-winning San Francisco theater group. His play Medea Eats was produced in 2000 by Clubbed Thumb, who subsequently...
, MacArthur Fellow Sarah Ruhl
Sarah Ruhl
Sarah Ruhl is an American playwright. She is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship.-Biography:Ruhl was born in Wilmette, Illinois. Originally, she intended to be a poet. However, after she studied under Paula Vogel at Brown University , she was convinced to switch to playwrighting...
, and Pulitzer Prize-winners Nilo Cruz
Nilo Cruz
Nilo Cruz is an Cuban-American playwright and pedagogue. With his award of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play, Anna in the Tropics, he became the first Latino so honored.-Early years:...
and Lynn Nottage
Lynn Nottage
Lynn Nottage is an American playwright whose work often deals with the lives of women of African descent, African Americans and women. She was born in Brooklyn and is a graduate of Brown University and the Yale School of Drama. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005, and a MacArthur Genius...
.
During her two decades leading the graduate playwriting program and new play festival at Brown University
Brown University
Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...
, Vogel helped developed a nationally-recognized center for educational theatre, culminating in the creation of the Brown/Trinity Repertory Company
Trinity Repertory Company
Trinity Repertory Company is a non-profit regional theater located in Providence, Rhode Island. The theater is a member of the League of Resident Theatres. Founded in 1963, the theater is "one of the most respected regional theatres in the country"...
Consortium with Oskar Eustis
Oskar Eustis
Oskar Eustis is the artistic director at the Public Theater and has worked as a director, dramaturg, and artistic director for theaters around the country.-Career:...
, then Trinity's artistic director, in 2002. She left Brown in 2008 to assume her current posts as adjunct professor and the Chair of the playwriting department at Yale School of Drama
Yale School of Drama
The Yale School of Drama is a graduate professional school of Yale University providing training in every discipline of the theatre: acting, design , directing, dramaturgy and dramatic criticism, playwriting, stage management, sound design, technical design and production, and theater...
, and the Playwright-in-Residence at Yale Repertory Theatre
Yale Repertory Theatre
The Yale Repertory Theatre at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut was founded by Robert Brustein, dean of the Yale School of Drama in 1966, with the goal of facilitating a meaningful collaboration between theatre professionals and talented students. In the process it has become one of the...
. Vogel previously served as an instructor at Cornell University
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
during her graduate work in the mid-1970s.
Recently Second Stage Theatre
Second Stage Theatre
Second Stage Theatre is an award-winning contemporary Off-Broadway theater company.-Mission:The theatre's mission is to give new life to contemporary American plays and to produce the world premiers of new plays by both established and emerging playwrights...
announced that they would be producing How I Learned to Drive as a part of their 2011-2012 season. It will be the first New York City production of this show in 15 years.
Personal life
Vogel had two brothers: Carl, who died of AIDS in 1988, and Mark. Carl is namesake for the Carl Vogel Center in Washington, D.C.Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
, founded by their father Don Vogel. The Center is a service provider for people living with HIV
HIV
Human immunodeficiency virus is a lentivirus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome , a condition in humans in which progressive failure of the immune system allows life-threatening opportunistic infections and cancers to thrive...
.
Vogel married Brown University professor and author Anne Fausto-Sterling
Anne Fausto-Sterling
Anne Fausto-Sterling, Ph. D. is Professor of Biology and Gender Studies at Brown University. She participates actively in the field of sexology and has written extensively on the fields of biology of gender, sexual identity, gender identity, and gender roles.-Life and career:Fausto-Sterling...
in Truro, Massachusetts
Truro, Massachusetts
Truro is a town in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, United States, comprising two villages: Truro and North Truro. Located two hours outside Boston, it is a summer vacation community just south of the northern tip of Cape Cod, in an area known as the "Outer Cape"...
, on September 26, 2004.
Honors and awards
Subsequent to her Obie Award for Best Play (1992) and Pulitzer Prize in Drama (1998), Vogel received the Award for Literature from The American Academy of Arts and LettersThe American Academy of Arts and Letters
The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 250-member honor society; its goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, music, and art. Located in Washington Heights, a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan in New York, it shares Audubon Terrace, its Beaux Arts campus on...
in 2004.
She won the 1998 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize
Susan Smith Blackburn Prize
The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize established in 1978, is for English-language women playwrights. Named for Susan Smith, alumna of Smith College, who died of breast cancer.-Winners:* 1978-79 Mary O'Malley* 1979-80 Barbara Schneider...
.
In 2003, the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival
Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival
The Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival is a national theatre program dedicated to the improvement of collegiate theatre in the United States...
created an annual Paula Vogel Award in Playwriting for "the best student-written play that celebrates diversity and encourages tolerance while exploring issues of dis-empowered voices not traditionally considered mainstream."
External links
- Profile at Brown UniversityBrown UniversityBrown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...
- Paula Vogel - Downstage Center interview at American Theatre Wing.orgAmerican Theatre WingThe American Theatre Wing is a New York City-based organization "dedicated to supporting excellence and education in theatre," according to its mission statement...
- Biographical information on enotes.com
- Profile in innewsweekly.com, March 29, 2007
- 1997 BOMB Magazine interview of Paula Vogel by Mary-Louise Parker