American playwright Paula Vogel received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her 1997 play, How I Learned to Drive. It tells the story of Li'l Bit and her Uncle Peck through early adolescence to post-college and uses learning to drive as a metaphor for their inappropriate sexual relationship. Vogel's unlikely inspiration for the play was Humbert Humbert, the antagonist in the controversial Nabokov play Lolita, whom she was surprised to discover she felt rather a lot of sympathy for because to her, at least, he seemed to be hugely misunderstood. Vogel's goal was to entice an audience to the theater who would not normally consider attending a play about child molestation or incest, and to plant seeds of thought and discussion whilst they were there.
The play premiered at the Vineyard Theater, off-Broadway, on May 6, 1997, later moving to the Century Center for the Performing Arts, where it closed a year later. Lil' Bit was played by Mary-Louise Parker who had enjoyed huge success in the years preceding the role on screen in movies such as Fried Green Tomatoes and The Client. The role of her Uncle was played by St. Elsewhere alumnus David Morse. The role of Lil' Bit was also played for a short time by Brat Packer Molly Ringwald; Ringwald reprised the role in 1999 when the play transferred across the country to the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles.
As well as its Pulitzer Prize, the play received a number of awards, with a particularly strong showing in the Off-Broadway Lucille Lortel Awards, where it was the recipient of four trophies including Outstanding Play and an Outstanding Actor award for David Morse.
Unsurprisingly, this is Vogel's best known work, although she had come to the attention of the theatergoing public in 1992 with her Off-Broadway play The Baltimore Waltz, and Hot 'N Throbbing, another study of domestic abuse and sexual impropriety. Vogel continues to work as a playwright in residence and was most recently the chair of Yale School of Drama.
