Paula Vogel office files (OF.1UF.V1)

Biographical/Historical note

Paula Vogel (born November 16, 1951) is an American playwright and university Professor. Vogel was born in Washington, D.C. 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.). She first came to national attention with her AIDS-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); The Mineola Twins (1996) and The Long Christmas Ride Home (2006). 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.