Her Theater and Her Influence on Nilo Cruz, Sarah Ruhl, Quiara Alegria Hudes, and Lynn Nottage
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Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University English Dissertations Department of English 4-30-2018 The House of Paula Vogel: Her Theater and Her Influence on Nilo Cruz, Sarah Ruhl, Quiara Alegria Hudes, and Lynn Nottage Lee Jones Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss Recommended Citation Jones, Lee, "The House of Paula Vogel: Her Theater and Her Influence on Nilo Cruz, Sarah Ruhl, Quiara Alegria Hudes, and Lynn Nottage." Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2018. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss/192 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of English at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE HOUSE OF PAULA VOGEL: HER THEATRE AND HER INFLUENCE ON NILO CRUZ, SARAH RUHL, QUIARA ALEGRÍA HUDES, AND LNNN NOTTAGE by LEE BREWER JONES Under the Direction of Matthew Roudané, PhD ABSTRACT As both a playwright and a university professor, Paula Vogel has enjoyed a major career in postmodern American drama. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama (How I Learned to Drive 1998) as well as the Obie Award (The Baltimore Waltz 1992), Vogel at age sixty-five made her Broadway debut with Tony-nominated Indecent, a collaborative work with director Rebecca Taichman, inspired by Sholem Asch’s early twentieth-century drama featuring same sex romance, God of Vengeance. After an early closure announcement, Indecent received an unusual extension when Vogel struck back at critics who had given lukewarm reviews and, consequently, ticket sales improved. The play was eventually recorded and shown on the PBS Great Performances series in November 2017. In addition to her own success as a playwright, Vogel has taught several major playwrights at Brown and Yale. These include MacArthur “Genius Grant” winner Sarah Ruhl, Pulitzer winner Nilo Cruz (Anna in the Tropics 2003), and Pulitzer winner Quiara Alegría Hudes (Water by the Spoonful 2012). Among Vogel’s students also is Lynn Nottage, who has won the MacArthur grant as well as becoming the first -- and so far only -- woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice (Ruined 2009 and Sweat 2017). Vogel’s influence as a teacher extends beyond the university classroom into many settings, including women’s prisons and theatre audiences who have participated in an activity she invented, the drama “bake-off,” a timed writing activity that centers on a given theme and requires certain elements. Vogel has opened some workshops and mini bake-offs to the general public, including a May 2017 event at the Off-Broadway Vineyard Theatre, where both How I Learned to Drive and Indecent had their New York premiers. This dissertation explores Vogel’s oeuvre and her influence, from her hardscrabble upbringing outside Baltimore through her Broadway success and including several of her most accomplished students. It also includes a chapter on the playwrights (John Guare, María Irene Fornes, and Caryl Churchill) Vogel considers her “gods” and, throughout, considers the defamiliarization or ostrananië inspired by the Russian formalist Viktor Shklovsky. INDEX WORDS: American drama, Postmodernism, Feminism, Defamiliarization, Shklovsky, Pulitzer Prize THE HOUSE OF PAULA VOGEL: HER THEATRE AND HER INFLUENCE ON NILO CRUZ, SARAH RUHL, QUIARA ALEGRÍA HUDES, AND LNNN NOTTAGE by LEE BREWER JONES A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University 2018 Copyright by Lee Brewer Jones 2018 THE HOUSE OF PAULA VOGEL: HER THEATRE AND HER INFLUENCE ON NILO CRUZ, SARAH RUHL, QUIARA ALEGRÍA HUDES, AND LNNN NOTTAGE by LEE BREWER JONES Committee Chair: Matthew Roudané Committee: Pearl McHaney Chris Kocela Electronic Version Approved: Office of Graduate Studies College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University May 2018 iv DEDICATION To Alyse, who stated in 2012 that perhaps the time had come for me to earn my PhD and then stood by her word. To Eli, Esther, Ethan, and Ezra, who have understood why completing this process mattered so much and who have shown much patience and love. And at long last, to the late Newnan High School teacher "Cap" Goodrum, who hung "Professor Jones" on my eleventh grade self, and to the late West Georgia College professor Dr. Huey Owings, who wrote on my first English 299 essay that I should earn a graduate degree and become a professor. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My first semester at Georgia State University, I mentioned Paula Vogel's importance as both playwright and professor to Dr. Matthew Roudané, who immediately replied that he sensed a topic for a dissertation he would like to direct. Spending the rest of my graduate career knowing my subject and my director proved immensely helpful as I completed coursework and prepared for comprehensive exams. Dr. Pearl McHaney and Dr. Chris Kocela, who served on my committee, also taught me in classes where they helped refine my thinking and my writing. I am grateful to them as well as to GSU professors Dr. Lindsey Eckert and Dr. Randy Malamud for their sage advice on writing well. University of Georgia professor Dr. Fran Teague, whom I have known professionally for more than thirty years, has been an invaluable teacher and mentor. When I was deciding whether or not to become a graduate student again, her simple advice, "It doesn't have to be Shakespeare," helped free me to go where my research interests took me with past as prologue but not binding commitment. As solitary an activity as writing is, I have benefited from a small team who have shared an article or a name when I could most use an idea. They include, in alphabetical order, Deborah Hull, Brian Jones, Becca Parker, Dr. Rick Stallings, Dr. Marc Silverstein, Starshine Stanfield, and Lukas Woodward. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................ V 1 INTRODUCTION..................................................................................................... 1 2 CHAPTER 1: EARLY LIFE AND INFLUENCES ............................................... 2 1.1 Vogel’s “Gods”: John Guare ........................................................................... 9 1.2 Vogel’s “Gods’: María Irene Fornés ............................................................. 24 1.3 Vogel’s “Gods”: Caryl Churchill .................................................................. 35 3 CHAPTER 2: DEVELOPING A UNIQUE VOICE ............................................ 44 4 CHAPTER 3: RECOGNITION AND AWARDS ................................................ 84 5 CHAPTER FOUR: THE HOUSE OF PAULA VOGEL .................................. 139 6 CHAPTER 5: VOGEL IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY ...................... 207 WORKS CITED............................................................................................................ 244 APPENDICES ............................................................................................................... 270 Appendix A: Eden ..................................................................................................... 270 Appendix B: Le Petomane Does America ............................................................... 271 Appendix C: When Lesbian Love Came to Broadway .......................................... 276 1 1 INTRODUCTION On April 12 – 13, 2016, Cornell University welcomed playwright and professor Paula Vogel to campus. Vogel’s long career had already included an Obie Award for The Baltimore Waltz in 1992, the Pulitzer Prize for How I Learned to Drive in 1998, induction into the Theater Hall of Fame in 2012, and three decades of teaching, first at Brown (1984 – 2008) and then at Yale, with Nilo Cruz, Lynn Nottage, Sarah Ruhl, and Quiara Alegría Hudes numbered among her students. In recognition of Vogel’s achievements all the way back in college, the American College Theater Festival’s National Student Playwriting Award, which Vogel won in 1977, had been named for her in 2002. Such an accomplished playwright and professor might have been an honored guest at any university. Vogel was not visiting Cornell as a guest, however, but rather as a supplicant. She had spent several years in Ithaca as a graduate student and, later, an instructor until, as she recalls, she “was fired” (Vineyard) after her dissertation committee lost two members and her work became unappreciated by Cornell’s reconfigured theater faculty. By 2016, Vogel had not returned to Ithaca in more than thirty years, yet here she was again as a degree-seeking student decades after having left ABD. The process that brought Vogel back to Cornell began in 1974, when she first encountered an English translation of the Yiddish playwright Sholem Asch’s 1906 God of Vengeance. For many years, Vogel sought to produce a play inspired by Asch’s yet did not achieve success until she met director and Asch scholar Rebecca Taichman. More than forty drafts later, a new Vogel play, Indecent, appeared in 2015 and played at Yale Repertory Theatre and La Jolla Playhouse. Indecent, the Cornell faculty decided, would serve as the dissertation for 2 the doctoral degree Vogel had abandoned in 1981. At age 64, Vogel would receive an earned Cornell University PhD. This degree might have been the capstone for a distinguished career, but it turned out