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Paula Anne Vogel was born on November 16, 1951, in Washington, D.C. though she lived most of her early life in the suburbs of Maryland. Paula was born to Donald Stephen Vogel, an advertising executive, and Phyllis Rita Bremerman, a secretary for the United States Postal Service Training and Development Center. She had two older brothers, Mark Vogel and Carl Vogel who later died in 1988 of AIDS.
When Paula was eleven years old, her parents divorced causing her family to separate, leading to what Paula could only describe as “a very painful adjustment.” Paula and her brother Carl remained with their mother after the divorce and their brother Mark, lived with their father who later remarried.
Carl and Paula grew closer during the divorce. Carl became Paula’s protector and was known to declare that he was her father. It was Carl who cared for, guided, and encouraged Paula to do well in school so that she could attend school. Through this encouragement and support, Paula was awarded a scholarship to Bryn Mawr College in 1969 where she stayed for two years. Her professors described her concentration in dramatic literature “not academically valid” and reduced her scholarship which led to her departure.
Paula transferred to Catholic University of America and earned her Bachelor’s in 1974. Vogel attended graduate school at Cornell University and earned enough credits for her Ph.D. but instead left with an A.B.D. in 1977 after she failed to submit her thesis.
From them on her career as a lecturer began in 1979 in the Women’s Studies and Theater Arts program at Cornell. She also received a playwriting fellowship from the National Endowment for the arts in 1979 and another from the MacDowell Colony in 1981. It was only a year later in 1982 when she would be fired from Cornell for political reasons. This forced leave of absence provided her with the time to work on more theatrical endeavors such as guest lectureships at McGill University and the University of Alaska.
After two years of sustained unemployment she took the position of director of the graduate playwriting program at Brown University in 1984, where she made a home for two decades. During this time, Paula helped develop a nationally-recognized center for education theatre which ultimately culminated in the creation of the Brown/Trinity Repertory Company Consortium along with Oskar Eustis. In 2008, Paula left Brown in order to assume the positon of adjunct professor as well as Chair of the Playwriting-in-Residence at the Yale Repertory Theatre. She is currently working at the Yale School of Drama as the Eugene O’Neill Professor of Playwriting as well as the playwright-in-residence at the Yale Repertory Theatre. Vogel also currently works at the Long Wharf Theatre as an artistic associate.
During her time at Brown she met and ultimately fell in love with Brown University Professor and author, Anne Fausto-Sterling. The two marred on September 26, 2004 at the Pamet Harbor Yacht and Tennis Club in Truro, Massachusetts. The ceremony was led by a friend of the couple.
Paula was an avid and devoted playwright since the late 1970s and her first rise to fame was her dark comedy, The Baltimore Waltz, which she wrote during the summer of 1989. The play later went on to win the Obie Award for Best Play in 1992. The play was her response to her brother Carl’s death in 1988.
“To the memory of Carl –because I cannot sew.”
The play uses the prejudices and misconceptions about the imaginary disease, ATD (Acquired Toilet Disease) to bring forth the negative attitudes and stereotypes about AIDS and those afflicted. Other than the Obie Award for Best Play, The Baltimore Waltz won many writing awards and was at the time, produced by over sixty theater companies in the United States, Europe, and South America.
Although The Baltimore Waltz was her rise to fame, it was not the first play she had written. She had been writing since her twenties. She was quoted from a 1999 interview saying, “the first time I wouldn’t confess to anybody!” Paula’s plays have been produced since 1974; the themes in her plays generally center on making sense of subjects that society finds taboo. Themes such as incest, death, homosexuality, sex and AIDs. Paula is only the tenth woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for playwriting and was the first openly gay woman to do so as well.
She states that in her approach to writing plays she "writes the play backwards," moving from emotional circumstances and character to craft narrative structure. She says, "My writing isn't actually guided by issues.... I only write about things that directly impact my life." She adds, "If people get upset, it's because the play is working." Members of her family, especially her late brother, influences her writings, she 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."
Paula and her works have are well known in the world of theatre and have been awarded numerous awards. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1998 for How I Learned to Drive. The play also was awarded the Lortel Prize, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, New York Drama Critics Awards for Best Play, The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, as well as her second OBIE award.
In 1997, Paula won a Robert Chesley Award, in 1999 she received the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award. In 2003, The Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival created an annual Paula Vogel Award in Playwriting. The award is awarded to the “best student written play that celebrates diversity and encourages tolerance while exploring issues of disempowered voices not traditionally considered mainstream.” She also received the Award for Literature from The American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2004.In 2012 she was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame. Three years later in 2015, Vogel’s literary archive was obtained by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale, making her the first female playwright included in the library’s Yale Collection of American Literature.
Paula and Wife at the Indecent Opening Night at Vineyard Theatre on May 15, 2016 in New York City
Works Cited.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/26/fashion/weddings/paula-vogel-anne-faustosterling.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paula_Vogel
http://www.theatreunbound.com/productions/press_Drive_biography.shtml
http://www.glbtqarchive.com/literature/vogel_p_lit_L.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Baltimore_Waltz