How I Learned to Drive (Acting Edition for Theater Productions) - Softcover

Vogel, Paula

Softcover

ISBN 10: 082221623X ISBN 13: 9780822216230

Publisher: Josef Weinberger Plays, 1999

Synopsis

Chronicles the relationship between Li'l Bit and Uncle Peck through a series of flashbacks as it progresses from friendship to something darker during a series of driving lessons.

About this title

Review:

"How I Learned to Drive is one of the best plays of the decade." (USA Today)

"With subtle humor and teasing erotic encounters, Vogel addresses the dangerous intersections of teenage temptation. She also paints a richly poetic and picturesque landscape...The play is a potent and convincing comment on a taboo subject, and its impact sneaks up on its audience." (Variety)

“How I Learned to Drive is a tremendous achievement, genuine and genuinely disturbing...This is, quite simply, the sweetest and most forgiving play ever written about child abuse...Vogel’s delicate tactic makes sense not only as a way to redouble the dramatic effect, but as a representation of reality, a perfect case of the form fitting the subject.” (Village Voice)

"The play is steeped in a gentle lyricism we associate with nostalgic portraits of American youth. The tone, the setting, the characters seem at first so familiar, so, well, normal, that it’s only by degrees that we sense the poison within the pastels. By then we feel both locked into, and complicit with, this portrait of a warping relationship. That’s the art of Drive." (New York Times)

About the Author:

Paula Vogel is an American playwright and university professor. She received the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play How I Learned to Drive and the Award for Literature from The American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2004. Vogel was Chair of the playwriting department at the Yale School of Drama.

About this edition

• Publisher: Josef Weinberger Plays
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 082221623X
• ISBN 13: 9780822216230
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 61