Paula Vogel Overview

Paula Vogel has reaped success from risk, taking on controversial subjects such as AIDS (notably in 'The Baltimore Waltz,' for which she won an Obie in 1992), gay parenting, pornography, and prostitution. It seems unlikely, but it was her most controversial... [more]

Paula Vogel has reaped success from risk, taking on controversial subjects such as AIDS (notably in 'The Baltimore Waltz,' for which she won an Obie in 1992), gay parenting, pornography, and prostitution. It seems unlikely, but it was her most controversial subject matter that brought her the most mainstream success. Her 1997 play, 'How I Learned to Drive,' about Lil' Bit and her pedophile uncle Peck, won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for drama. Vogel has received ecstatic praise but also criticism, especially from fellow feminists, for her uneasy portrayals of women and their relationships to family and pain. But Vogel counterattacks: "For me being a feminist does not mean showing a positive image of women. For me being a feminist means looking at things that disturb me, looking at things that hurt me as a woman.' She writes with an affinity, not only for the taboo topic itself, but also for the marrow of it, the irony, mystery, and humor buried beneath. She states, "Wherever there is confusion or double, triple, and quadruple standards, that is the realm of theater. Drama lives in paradoxes and contradictions.' Though her work falls in line with the soon-to-be pass' love of irony that has characterized the 1990s, her sincerity gives it balance. Vogel uses humor not to ease the chills, but to make the chills more profound by stripping away the audience's defenses. Although she writes with dark humor about dark subjects, she always seems to redeem her characters' humanity and grace. About 'Learning to Drive' she says, "Without denying or forgetting the original pain, I wanted to write about the great gifts that can also be inside that box of abuse. My play dramatizes the gifts we receive from the people who hurt us." Vogel is at home with taboo, but never at the expense of her craft. She spent her early days in New York meeting with other dramatists (including Anne Bogart, a longtime friend) for support and challenge -- she and her friends once dared each other to write a play in 48 hours. Her sense of fun, her sense of urgency, and her enthusiasm seem just as present in the matured Pulitzer Prize winner as in the young playwright. In the late 1990s, Paula Vogel took a temporary leave from Brown University, where she has been the head of the MFA playwriting program since 1985. She is a revered teacher, who looks to her students as essential artistic compatriots. "Wherever I am, I'm not going to stop teaching. I suspect in some ways it's a talent that I have that's equal to my writing. As all these doors open for me, I want to share those doors with younger writers. I have developed the Cockroach Theory to Playwriting. When I get in those doors to those theaters and those studios, I'm going to bring 10 to 12 younger playwrights with me -- and multiply." [show less]