HOW I
LEARNED TO DRIVE

A Note from the Dramaturg

Paula Vogel’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, How I Learned to Drive paints the portrait of a complex relationship between a niece and her uncle by marriage. Using a palette of wild humor and startling honesty, Vogel takes us on a journey down the bumpy roads of rural Maryland in the 60s and 70s and leads us through a tale of forgiveness and survival. Like many of Vogel’s plays, this one also explores a taboo subject in a startling new light. It is through the way that Vogel so beautifully handles the complexity of the piece that made her worthy of the Pulitzer.

When writing this play, playwright Paula Vogel said she wanted to be “respectful and responsible.” She invited women with similar tales of survival to witness the work and comment on it.  Their feedback was very positive. These woman embraced the story for its honesty and its realistic portrayal of the cycle of abuse in all its many layers.  In an interview (see page six), Literary Director of A.R.T. said the play was about how we receive harm from the people who love us. Paula Vogel said she believed the opposite is true. “I would say we receive great love from the people who harm us.” From this standpoint, How I Learned to Drive unfolds. It is with a great love for and ultimate understanding of her Uncle Peck that compels Li’l Bit forward with her story and strengthens her ability to forgive and survive. Vogel observed that in many treatments on the same theme (in movies, books and documentaries), the one thing that often gets left out of the portrait of the trauma is “the victim’s responsibility to look the experience squarely in the eye and then to move on.”

How I Learned to Drive is a realistic and surprisingly humorous portrait of a family in rural Maryland facing (and sometimes denying) a potentially destructive relationship. Like many of Vogel’s plays dealing with serious and taboo subjects, humor functions as a disengaging device. It forces us to realize that laughter and tears are two very human reactions to life’s unexpected twists and turns. They are also a very therapeutic way of facing trauma. Both strengthen our own survival skills and allow us the emotional catharsis that we need in order to make it through the trauma. Much of the humor in How I Learned to Drive comes from the use of a “Greek Chorus.” It functions as several characters (Li’l Bit’s mother, aunt, grandparents and high school friends) and through its almost cartoonish style, the chorus reinforces the three-dimensional quality of Li’l Bit and Uncle Peck -- the two characters Vogel wants us to understand the most.

Like the rural Maryland landscape of the play, the story is full of rough roads, beauty and history. We bear witness to a land and people of survival and learn some important rules of the road. When the humor has dissipated and all we have in front of us is the truth, we are still compelled forward on this journey. The driving lessons extend above and beyond any textbook essay and stay with us long after the curtain closes.