Paula Vogel (born November 16, 1951) is an Americanplaywright. She is known for her provocative explorations of complexsocial andpolitical issues. Much of her work delves into themes ofpsychological trauma,abuse, and the complexities ofhuman relationships. She has received thePulitzer Prize as well as nominations for twoTony Awards. In 2013 she was inducted into theAmerican Theater Hall of Fame.

Paula Vogel
Vogel in 2025
Born	(1951-11-16)November 16, 1951 (age 73) Washington, D.C., U.S.
Occupation	Playwright,professor
Education	Bryn Mawr College Catholic University(BA) Cornell University(MA,PhD)
Notable awards	Pulitzer Prize for Drama (1998)
Spouse	Anne Fausto-Sterling ​ ​ (m. 2004)​

Vogel started her career with the off-Broadway playHow I Learned to Drive which earned her the 1998Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The play was revived on Broadway in 2022, earning her aTony Award for Best Revival of a Play nomination. She wrote theOff-Broadway playsThe Baltimore Waltz (1992),Hot 'N Throbbing (1994),The Mineola Twins (1996), andThe Long Christmas Ride Home (2003). She made herBroadway debut withIndecent in 2017, which earned her a nomination for theTony Award for Best Play. She returned to Broadway with her latest playMother Play (2024).

A longtime teacher, Vogel spent the bulk of her academic career – from 1984 to 2008 – atBrown University, where she served as Adele Kellenberg Seaver Professor in Creative Writing, oversaw its playwriting program, and helped found the Brown/Trinity Rep Consortium. From 2008 to 2012, Vogel was Eugene O'Neill Professor of Playwriting and department chair at theYale School of Drama, as well as playwright in residence at theYale Repertory Theatre.^[1]

Vogel was born inWashington, D.C., to Donald Stephen Vogel, an advertising executive, and Phyllis Rita (Bremerman), a secretary for theUnited States Postal Service Training and Development Center.^[2] Her father wasJewish, whereas her mother wasRoman Catholic.^[3] She attendedBryn Mawr College from 1969 to 1970 and 1971 to 1972, and is a graduate ofThe Catholic University of America (BA, 1974) andCornell University (MA, 1976; PhD, 2016).

A productive playwright since the late 1970s, Vogel first came to national prominence with herAIDS-relatedseriocomedyThe Baltimore Waltz, which won theObie Award for Best Play in 1992. She is best known for her Pulitzer Prize-winning playHow I Learned to Drive (1997), which examines the impact and echoes of childsexual abuse andincest. Other notable plays includeDesdemona, A Play About A Handkerchief (1993),The Oldest Profession (1981),And Baby Makes Seven (1984),Hot 'N Throbbing (1994), andThe Mineola Twins (1996).

Her playThe Oldest Profession was first read in February 1981 at the Hudson Guild, New York City, directed byGordon Edelstein. The play premiered in April 1988 at Theatre Network in Edmonton, Canada and 25th Street Theatre in Saskatoon, Canada, directed byTom Bentley-Fisher. Subsequent productions include a reading atBrown University in April 1990 and a production by Company One in Hartford, Connecticut in October 1991.^[4] The play premieredOff-Broadway in September 2004 in aSignature Theatre Company production.^[5]

And Baby Makes Seven premieredOff-Broadway in April 1993, produced by theCircle Repertory Company at the Lucille Lortel Theatre. The cast featuredPeter Frechette,Cherry Jones andMary Mara.^[6][7] It was first produced by Theatre with Teeth, New York City, in January 1984, directed by Vogel. It was then produced at Theatre Rhinoceros, San Francisco, in February 1986, directed by Kris Gannon.^[8]Desdemona was first produced by the Bay Street Theatre Festival, Sag Harbor, New York in July 1993 and then was produced Off-Broadway by the Circle Repertory Company in November 1993. The productions starred J. Smith-Cameron asDesdemona and Cherry Jones asBianca.^[9]

Second Stage Theatre producedHow I Learned to Drive in February 2012, the first New York City production of the play in 15 years.^[10]A Civil War Christmas was presented Off-Broadway at the New York Theatre Workshop, from November 13, 2012, to December 30, 2012. The play was directed by Tina Landau and featuredAlice Ripley and Bob Stillman. The play was nominated for the 2013Lucille Lortel Award, Outstanding Director (Landau) and Outstanding Costume Design, (Toni-Leslie James) and won the Lortel Award for Outstanding Lighting Design (Scott Zielinski).^[11]Artists Repertory Theatre, located in Portland, Oregon, presentedA Civil War Christmas: An American Musical Celebration, from November 22 to December 23, 2016.

Vogel's first play with music,Indecent, co-created and directed by Rebecca Taichman, premiered at Yale Repertory Theatre on October 2, 2015, and then ran atLa Jolla Playhouse (San Diego) in November 2015.^[12][13][14]Indecent was a finalist for the 2016 Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama.^[15]

The play premiered Off-Broadway at the Vineyard Theatre, running from April 27, 2016 (previews), officially on May 17, 2016, and closing on June 19, 2016. The play was nominated for the 2016Lucille Lortel Award, Outstanding Play.^[16]Indecent premiered onBroadway at theCort Theatre on April 4, 2017, in previews, and opened April 18.^[17][18] The Off-Broadway cast, featuringAdina Verson andKatrina Lenk, reprised their roles in the Broadway production, with additional cast including Ben Cherry, Andrea Goss, and Eleanor Reissa. The play has music composed by Lisa Gutkin and Aaron Halva.^[19] The play is being produced by Vineyard Theatre in association with La Jolla Playhouse and Yale Repertory Theatre. This marks Vogel's Broadway debut.^[20] The play "is inspired by the real-life controversy surrounding the 1923 Broadway production ofSholem Asch'sGod of Vengeance, the love story of two women."^[21]Indecent was nominated for the 2017 Outer Critics Circle Awards: Outstanding New Broadway Play, Rebecca Taichman as Outstanding Director of a Play, Outstanding Lighting Design, Outstanding Projection Design (Tal Yarden), Outstanding Featured Actor In A Play (Richard Topol), and Outstanding Featured Actress In A Play (Katrina Lenk).^[22] The play was nominated for the 2017Drama Desk Award, Outstanding Play and Outstanding Lighting Design for a Play (Christopher Akerlind).^[23]

Vogel premiered a new work titledMother Play on Broadway as part of Second Stage Theater's 2023-2024 season.^[24]

Although no particular theme or topic dominates her work, she often examines traditionally controversial issues such as sexual abuse andprostitution. 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." These issues appear in Vogel'sDesdemona (1994), where the narrative of a brothel is used to give female characters agency, or "give back toDesdemona power to accompany her activity."^[25] 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 thehomophobia in our world."^[26] Carl's likeness appears in such plays asThe Long Christmas Ride Home (2003),And Baby Makes Seven, andThe Baltimore Waltz.

"Vogel tends to select sensitive, difficult, fraught issues to theatricalize," theatre theoristJill Dolan comments, "and to spin them with adramaturgy that's at once creative, highly imaginative, and brutally honest."^[27] Her work embraces theatrical devices from across several traditions, incorporating, in various works, direct address,bunraku puppetry, omniscient narration, andfantasy 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."^[28]

Vogel, a renowned teacher of playwriting, counts among her former studentsSusan Smith Blackburn Prize-winnerBridget Carpenter,Obie Award-winnerAdam Bock,MacArthur FellowSarah Ruhl, and Pulitzer Prize-winnersNilo Cruz,Lynn Nottage, Dipika Guha, andQuiara Alegría Hudes.^[29][30]

During her two decades leading the graduate playwriting program and new play festival atBrown University, Vogel helped develop a nationally recognized center for educational theatre, culminating in the creation of the Brown/Trinity Repertory Company Consortium withOskar Eustis, then Trinity's artistic director, in 2002.^[31] She left Brown in 2008 to assume her positions asadjunct professor and the Chair of the playwriting department atYale School of Drama, which she held until 2012,^[32] and the Playwright-in-Residence atYale Repertory Theatre.^[33][34] She is currently the Eugene O'Neill Professor (adjunct) of Playwriting at Yale School of Drama and playwright-in-residence at the Yale Repertory Theatre, as well as an artistic associate at Long Wharf Theatre.^[35] Vogel previously served as an instructor atCornell University during her graduate work in the mid-1970s.

Vogel had two brothers: Carl, who died ofAIDS in 1988, and Mark. Carl is eponym for the Carl Vogel Center inWashington, D.C., founded by their father Don Vogel. The center is a service provider for people living withHIV.^[2]

Vogel married Brown University professor and authorAnne Fausto-Sterling inTruro, Massachusetts, on September 26, 2004.^[2]

As a playwright

Subsequent to her Obie Award for Best Play (1992) and Pulitzer Prize in Drama (1998), Vogel received the Award for Literature fromThe American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2004. She won aRobert Chesley Award in 1997. She won the 1998Susan Smith Blackburn Prize forHow I Learned to Drive.^[45] In 1999, Vogel received thePEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award for a playwright in mid-career.^[46]

In 2003, theKennedy Center American College Theater Festival created an annual Paula Vogel Award in Playwriting for "the best student-written play that celebrates diversity and encourages tolerance while exploring issues of dis-empowered voices not traditionally considered mainstream."^[47] In 2013, Vogel was inducted into theAmerican Theater Hall of Fame.^[48]

In 2016, Vogel successfully completed and defended her doctoral thesis at Cornell University, more than 40 years after she began her graduate work. She was awarded her Ph.D. in Theatre Arts in May.^[49] Vogel received the 2017Obie Award for Lifetime Achievement.^[50] Vogel is featured in the book50 Key Figures in Queer US Theatre (2022), with a profile written by theatre scholar Sara Warner.^[51]

In 2015 Paula Vogel's literary archive was obtained by theBeinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, and she became the first female playwright included in the library's Yale Collection of American Literature.^[52]

• Swan Song of Sir Henry (1974)
• Meg (1977)
• Apple-Brown Betty (1979)
• Bertha in Blue (1981)
• The Oldest Profession (Hudson Guild, New York City reading, 1981)

• Profile atBrown University
• Paula Vogel at theInternet Broadway Database 
• Paula Vogel atIMDb
• Paula Vogel at theInternet Off-Broadway Database
• Paula Vogel onCharlie Rose
• Paula Vogel collected news and commentary atThe New York Times
• Paula Vogel –Downstage Center interview atAmerican Theatre Wing.org
• Biographical information on enotes.com
• Profile in innewsweekly.com, March 29, 2007
• 1997BOMB Magazine interview of Paula Vogel by Mary-Louise Parker
• Paula Vogel Papers. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.