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Pulitzer Prize-Winning Drama Still Zings In The #MeToo Era

Paula Vogel's Pulitzer prize-winning play, "How I Learned to Drive," is a complicated story of sexual abuse.
Paula Vogel's Pulitzer prize-winning play, "How I Learned to Drive," is a complicated story of sexual abuse.
Paula Vogel's Pulitzer prize-winning play, "How I Learned to Drive," is a complicated story of sexual abuse.
Credit HuthPhoto
Paula Vogel's Pulitzer prize-winning play, "How I Learned to Drive," is a complicated story of sexual abuse.

Paula Vogel’s play “How I Learned to Drive” tells the story of Li’l Bit, a 35-year-old woman looking back at painful and humorous moments of her far-too-early sexual awakening at the deft and exploitative hands of her Uncle Peck. When it first hit the stage in 1997, it stealthily took audiences along for the ride as it revealed tightly-sealed truths about sexual abuse. Today’s #MeToo-era audiences will find the work just as searing as it adds to the conversations about sexual trauma and its long-lasting wounds. 

Host Frank Stasio talks about the Pulitzer Prize-winning play, 'How I Learned To Drive' with the plays author Paula Vogel and director Lee Sunday Evans.Host Frank Stasio talks with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paula Vogel and director Lee Sunday Evans about the play and how it resonates today. “How I Learned To Drive” is on stage at PlayMakers Repertory Company at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill through April. 21.  

Copyright 2019 North Carolina Public Radio

Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.
Jennifer Brookland is a temporary producer for The State of Things.