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Mother Play
- GenresPlays
70 pages, Paperback
Published December 20, 2024
33 people want to read
About the author
Paula Vogel
40 books123 followersPaula Vogel is an American playwright and university professor. She received the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play, How I Learned to Drive.
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.). Vogel also attended Bryn Mawr College from 1969 to 1970 and 1971 to 1972.
A productive playwright since the late 1970s, Vogel first came to national prominence 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); 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."[3] 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.
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 Letters in 2004.
She won the 1998 Susan Smith Blackburn P
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.). Vogel also attended Bryn Mawr College from 1969 to 1970 and 1971 to 1972.
A productive playwright since the late 1970s, Vogel first came to national prominence 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); 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."[3] 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.
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 Letters in 2004.
She won the 1998 Susan Smith Blackburn P
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
October 2, 2025
Absolutely magnificent. One of the best plays of the 2023-2024 season—so glad I was able to see the original production starring Jessica Lange, Celia Keenan-Bolger, and Jim Parsons. The emotional impact doesn’t quite carry through on the page; like others in Vogel’s oeuvre, the visuals and beats of the play are equally as important as the text and are impossibly limited in written form. Though Carl is a key player, the play is at its heart a love letter between mother and daughter.
August 13, 2025
i had a feeling that when the pre play stage directions said the scenes were like “film vignettes” that wouldn’t like this. maybe it’s better in performance with a great director, but as a piece of text it’s not all that interesting. it speeds through a lot of time and scenes feel really rushed because of it. the most impactful piece of text wasn’t even vogel’s own words, but taken from a letter her brother left her (which i will admit, did make me slightly weepy). maybe if you’re writing a play in the format of a screenplay, you should just write a screenplay instead.
February 3, 2025
I did not get a chance to see the play on Broadway so I wanted to read it. There are only three people in the cast and I was able to picture them as I read it, which was great because usually I see plays instead of reading them. I have read this playwright before.
November 25, 2025
My favorite of all the Vogel plays I've read. Neat to come upon all the apartment locations in Maryland. I suspect the play contains quite a bit of autobiography, since Vogel's brother Carl died of AIDS like Martha's brother Carl.
January 18, 2026
Rounded up from 3.5… I love Vogel’s writing. Some great moments. I just found the format of this play strange and it wasn’t quite what I was expecting. The true life letter included was gutting of course
May 28, 2025
2 women, 1 man - drama - Generally adult themed conversations. Dysfunctional family. Explorations of gay identity and coming to terms with life in the 1960s-1980s.
Wonderful play for a small space.
Wonderful play for a small space.
August 7, 2025
I’m not crying, you’re crying😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
January 17, 2026
(CARL whips out a book and buries himself in it. All of his life, CARL can read while talking and hearing every word.)
January 22, 2026
I wanted more in the beginning!! But the end delivered… will be sat for this if it’s ever in my city! Carl has my heart❤️🩹❤️🩹❤️🩹
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews