Vogel - How i learned to drive: stand-alone tcg edition

BOOKS BY PAULA VOGEL AVAILABLE FROM TCG The Baltimore Waltz and Other Plays INCLUDES: The Baltimore WaltzAnd Baby Makes SevenDesdemonaHot N ThrobbingThe Oldest ProfessionA Civil War Christmas:An American Musical CelebrationHow I Learned to DriveIndecentThe Long Christmas Ride HomeThe Mammary Plays INCLUDES: How I Learned to DriveThe Mineola TwinsHow I Learned to Drive is copyright 1998, 2018 by Paula Vogel How I Learned to Drive is published by Theatre Communications Group, Inc., 520 Eighth Avenue, 24th Floor, New York, NY 10018-4156 All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in newspaper, magazine, radio or television reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that this material, being fully protected under the Copyright Laws of the United States of America and all other countries of the Berne and Universal Copyright Conventions, is subject to a royalty. All rights, including but not limited to, professional, amateur, recording, motion picture, recitation, lecturing, public reading, radio and television broadcasting, and the rights of translation into foreign languages are expressly reserved. Particular emphasis is placed on the question of readings and all uses of this book by educational institutions, permission for which must be secured from the authors representative: Jonathan Lomma, William Morris Endeavor Entertainment, 11 Madison Avenue, 18th Floor, New York, NY 10010, (212) 903-1552. The publication of How I Learned to Drive by Paula Vogel, through TCGs Book Program, is made possible in part by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

TCG books are exclusively distributed to the book trade by Consortium Book Sales and Distribution. Library of Congress Control Numbers: 2017058704 (print) / 2018000141 (ebook) ISBN: 978-1-55936-884-1 (ebook) A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Book design and composition by Lisa Govan Cover design by Monet Cogbill Cover art is based on the original Vineyard Theatre production poster designed by Tim Joyce; Mary-Louise Parker in the role of Lil Bit First published in March 1998 in The Mammary Plays First Stand-Alone Edition, April 2018 This play is dedicated to Peter Franklin. T his play was made possible by generous support from The National Theatre Artist Residency Program administered by Theatre Communications Group and funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. It was written and developed at the Perseverance Theatre, Douglas, Alaska; Molly D. Smith, Artistic Director. Table of Contents

Contents W E ARE IN AN INTERESTING CULTURAL MOMENT in the United States as I write this: scandals about the abuse of power through sexual manipulation and assault proliferate in social media.

A man with multiple accusers sits in the White House while a man who was banned from an Alabama shopping mall for predatory behavior has run for the United States Senate. #MeToo ripples through our awareness, even as older women and men face the reality that their careers, their ambitions and visibility have already been impacted by that power for decades. Mine certainly has been. Do we come forward now, decades later, after our bodies, our lives, our relationships have been marked and changed by incidents long ago? Will it have impact for the young women and men, girls and boys, who endure abuses now? I dont know if I will ever again write a play that connects with such a wide demographic of audience members. For me, having been honored to witness How I Learned to Drives impact in 1997, I track the works of art that have since been produced and continue to call power out, be it the film Spotlight or the Netflix series The Keepers. There have been friends who have told me that they could not come see my play in such an intimate public space as an Off-Broadway theater.

There was a woman who drove up from North Carolina when she knew I would be at a dinner in New York, just to hug me and thank me. A young girl in Los Angeles at a high school for LGBT students broke my heart when she worried that I might not accept her into my playwriting program. A talented and lovely/beloved actress tried to work through whether or not she could direct the HBO movie as her first film and asked me: Is there a way to make this film safe? (I replied there was not. The film did not get made.) Letters, emails, and post-play discussions in towns and universities made me aware of how deeply this experience runs, and that my playworld is inadequate to capture it. We may never know the statistics. We only know that once again we try to capture a cultural attention that quickly turns restlessly to the next crisis.

And although I have been told since 1997 that my play, written by a woman playwright, is not universal enough to receive a Broadway production, I have been given the gift of seeing How I Learned to Drive in Icelandic in a Broadway-sized house; Ive watched the play in Mandarin in a small theater in Beijing, And I have seen the play in Santiago and Australia. Its been done everywhere. Apparently the distance from the Vineyard Theatre on East 15th Street to the Market Theatre in Johannesburg, or Croatia, or Taiwan is not as far as the distance to Times Square. However, as I try to come to grips with the lack of control I have in terms of my own visibility and commercial success within the American Theater, I remain convinced that I have control in terms of how I see my identity. How I Learned to Drive gave me that gift. It felt as if the play was rewriting me, and I will always remember the sensation of lightness I had in the middle of the night as I wrote it.

This is the gift of theater and of writing: a transubstantiation of pain and secrecy into light, into community, into understanding if not acceptance. This sensation of lightness continued thanks to my extraordinary collaborators who first presented the play. Thanks is an inadequate word to people who have changed me: Doug Aibel, the artistic director of the Vineyard Theatre, who accepted the play before the first reading. Mark Brokaw, one of the most extraordinary directors of our time, whose sensitivity and sense of tempo opened the playworld. Mary-Louise Parker and David Morse, who were fearless in taking on these roles without denial or defense, and who together onstage urged each other to go deeper and deeper with every performance. And my first Greek Chorus: the magnificent Johanna Day as the Female Greek Chorus, the lyrical Kerry OMalley as the Teenage Greek Chorus, and Michael Showalter as a ribald, adolescent Male Greek Chorus.

My thanks at this point would be longer than the play. To all the amazing actors who have taken on the play and who continue my sense of light, forgiveness and acceptance, to all the directors, artists, crew and, most of all, to audiences who still believe that it is important to sit together in a darkened theater to witness what continues to happen in our midst so that we may change it for the next generation. I am grateful.