Paula Vogel
Paula Vogel
Paula Vogelis an American playwright and university professor. She received the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play How I Learned to Drive. Vogel was Chair of the playwriting department at the Yale School of Drama...
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth16 November 1951
art needs translations
In art as in life, some things need no translation.
art art-is subjects
Art is the writer not having control, but the subject having control of the writer.
anticipate arena audience becoming century eagerly effect fast fiercely future hometown major optimistic plays remained sarah singular theatre unique voice witnessed
Sarah Ruhl is fast becoming a major voice in the 21st century American theatre. Having witnessed the transformative effect of her unique and singular plays for over a decade, I have remained fiercely optimistic about the future of American theatre in the century ahead. I eagerly anticipate the transformation of the Arena audience in my own hometown of Washington, D.C.
love reason rehearsal teaching
I think I love teaching for the reason I love being in a rehearsal room,
none starving
we were all starving in New York, and none of us were getting produced, and we were just frustrated.
director grateful high mark played production proud york
I am very high right now. I am so proud of the production of my play we have in New York and grateful to director Mark Brokaw and all the actors and actresses who played the roles.
designers directors love table talking work
I don't like the table work where I'm talking about myself, I'm talking about the play, what I meant. I love when actors and directors and designers say, 'What if we did it this way?' Or 'Did you ever think of doing this?' Or 'I see it in a different way. May I show you?'
memories distance writing
This grant gave me more than memories; it gave me a crucial experience that is formative to all writers: the ability to perceive that we become writers in exile, where what we write is the only link across distance and time…I became a Maryland writer because the community of Juneau took me in.
theatre calling process
Playwriting isn't a calling so much as it is a hazing process.
impossible theater conversation
Theater is perhaps one of the few places left where we are in a dialogue right now. Everything has become so partisan, and the rhetoric has become so heated, that conversation is almost impossible.
pain writing character
My writing isn't actually guided by issues. I know it seems that way, but I don't sit down and think, Oh, there's this issue I'm bothered about. I only write about things that directly impact my life. When I write, there's a pain that I have to reach, and a release I have to work toward for myself. So it's really a question of the particular emotional circumstance that I want to express, a character that appears, a moment in time, and then I write the play backwards.
responsibility issues people
I want to seduce the audience. If they can go along for a ride they wouldn't ordinarily take, or don't even know they're taking, then they might see highly charged political issues in a new and unexpected way. . . . The theatre is now so afraid to face its social demons that we've given that responsibility over to film. But it will always be harder to deal with certain issues in the theatre. The live event - being watched by people as we watch - makes it seem all the more dangerous.