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"By the time Paula Vogel made her Broadway debut with her 2017 Rebecca Taichman collaboration Indecent , she was already an accomplished playwright, with a Pulitzer Prize for How I Learned to Drive (1998) and two Obie Awards . She had also enjoyed a brilliant career as a professor at Brown and Yale with students such as Sarah Ruhl, a MacArthur "Genius" Grant winner, Pulitzer Prize winners Nilo Cruz, Quiara Alegria Hudes, and the only woman to win two Pulitzers for Drama, Lynn Nottage. Vogel's theatre draws upon Russian Formalist Viktor Skhlovsky and uses devices, such as "defamiliarization" and "negative empathy" to challenge conventional definitions of protagonists and antagonists. In this volume, Lee Brewer Jones examines Vogel as both a playwright and renowned teacher, analyzing texts and early reviews of Vogel's major plays -- including Indecent, Desdemona, How I Learned to Drive and The Baltimore Waltz -- before turning attention to her influence upon other major American playwrights, including Sarah Ruhl, Lynn Nottage, and Quiara Alegria Hudes. Chapters explore Vogel's plays in chronological order, consider her early influences and offer detailed accounts of her work in performance. Enriched by essays from scholars Joanna Mansbridge, Katie N. Johnson, Amy Muse, and an interview with Lynn Nottage, this is a vibrant exploration of Paula Vogel as a major American playwright."--
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