As I try to come to grips with the lack of control I have in terms of my own visibility and commercial success within the American Theater, I remain convinced that I have control in terms of how I see my identity.
How I Learned to Drive gave me that gift.
It felt as if the play was rewriting me, and I will always remember the sensation of lightness I had in the middle of the night as I wrote it.
This is the gift of theater and of writing: a transubstantiation of pain and secrecy into light, into community, into understanding if not acceptance.
-- Paula Vogel, from her Preface Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama , Paula Vogel's How I Learned to Drive is widely recognized as a masterpiece of contemporary drama.
It is published here for the first time as a stand-alone edition.
Paula Vogel is the author of Indecent , The Baltimore Waltz , The Long Christmas Ride Home , Don Juan Comes Home from Iraq and A Civil War Christmas , among many other plays.
She has held a distinguished career as a teacher and mentor to young playwrights, first at Brown University and then at the Yale School of Drama.
Writing | A transubstantiation of pain and secrecy into light into community into understanding if not acceptance |
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