The Baltimore Waltz

by Paula Vogel

Book by Paula Vogel

Genres: Plays, Drama, Theatre, LGBT, Audiobook, Fiction, Humor

72 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1992

About the author

Paula Vogel is an American playwright and university professor. She received the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play, How I Learned to Drive.

Vogel was born in Washington, D.C. to Donald Stephen Vogel, an advertising executive, and Phyllis Rita Bremerman, a secretary for United States Postal Service Training and Development Center. She is a graduate of The Catholic University of America (1974, B.A.) and Cornell University (1976, M.A.). Vogel also attended Bryn Mawr College from 1969 to 1970 and 1971 to 1972.

A productive playwright since the late 1970s, Vogel first came to national prominence with her AIDS-related seriocomedy The Baltimore Waltz, which won the Obie award for Best Play in 1992. She is best known for her Pulitzer Prize-winning play How I Learned To Drive (1997), which examines the impact and echoes of child sexual abuse and incest. Other notable plays include Desdemona, A Play About A Handkerchief (1979); The Oldest Profession (1981); And Baby Makes Seven (1984); Hot 'N Throbbing (1994); and The Mineola Twins (1996).

Although no particular theme or topic dominates her work, she often examines traditionally controversial issues such as sexual abuse and prostitution. Asserting that she "writes the play backwards," moving from emotional circumstances and character to craft narrative structure, Vogel says, "My writing isn't actually guided by issues.... I only write about things that directly impact my life." Vogel adds, "If people get upset, it's because the play is working." Vogel's family, especially her late brother Carl Vogel, influences her writings. Vogel says, "In every play, there are a couple of places where I send a message to my late brother Carl. Just a little something in the atmosphere of every play to try and change the homophobia in our world." Carl's likeness appears in such plays as The Long Christmas Ride Home (2003), The Baltimore Waltz, and And Baby Makes Seven.

"Vogel tends to select sensitive, difficult, fraught issues to theatricalize," theatre theorist Jill Dolan comments, "and to spin them with a dramaturgy that’s at once creative, highly imaginative, and brutally honest."[3] Her work embraces theatrical devices from across several traditions, incorporating, in various works, direct address, bunraku puppetry, omniscient narration, and fantasy sequences. Critic David Finkel finds this breadth in Vogel's career to be reflective of a general tendency toward stylistic reinvention from work to work. "This playwright recoils at the notion of writing plays that are alike in their composition," Finkel writes. "She wants each play to be different in texture from those that have preceded it."

Vogel, a renowned teacher of playwriting, counts among her former students Susan Smith Blackburn Prize-winner Bridget Carpenter, Obie Award-winner Adam Bock, MacArthur Fellow Sarah Ruhl, and Pulitzer Prize-winners Nilo Cruz and Lynn Nottage.

During her two decades leading the graduate playwriting program and new play festival at Brown University, Vogel helped developed a nationally-recognized center for educational theatre, culminating in the creation of the Brown/Trinity Repertory Company Consortium with Oskar Eustis, then Trinity's artistic director, in 2002. She left Brown in 2008 to assume her current posts as adjunct professor and the Chair of the playwriting department at Yale School of Drama, and the Playwright-in-Residence at Yale Repertory Theatre. Vogel previously served as an instructor at Cornell University during her graduate work in the mid-1970s.

Recently Second Stage Theatre announced that they would be producing How I Learned To Drive as a part of their 2011-2012 season. It will be the first New York City production of this show in 15 years.

Subsequent to her Obie Award for Best Play (1992) and Pulitzer Prize in Drama (1998), Vogel received the Award for Literature from The American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2004.

She won the 1998 Susan Smith Blackburn P

Reviews

[bella issa · Rating 5 out of 5]

wow wow wow wow. everyone read this.

i think the reason I love this play so much is because i still don’t understand it! there’s so much to unlace and unpack.

fourth time I think: this play HURTSSSS and I am scared to direct bc by god are there some weird moments

it’s fitting that this was my last book of my reading challenge. also oh my god I FINALLY UNDERSTAND THE DAMN RABBIT. EVERYTHING HAS FULLY FULLY CLICKED YES WOW.

[Ana Leite · Rating 5 out of 5]

A PAULA É OFICIALMENTE TUDO PARA MIM.

[Illiterate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Black humor (farce) and art (stylization) help process tragedy (grief).

[Ross Williamson]

one of the single most wildly homophobic things i’ve ever had the misfortune of reading

[Samantha Liguori · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The Baltimore Waltz" is a bit of an extreme play. We meet two siblings; Anna and Carl. They are both on vacation, touring Venice in order to give Anna one last chance at seeing the world. She is dying of the fatal illness ATD (Acquired Toilet Disease). Anna's way of coping with her fated ending is by sleeping around with every man she desires while on her vacation. She often leaves her brother alone to tour venues by himself with only the accompaniment of his faithful stuffed bunny. There is also the "Third Man" character who is always right behind the duo no matter where they go or if they separate. In the end Anna awakens to find that she is still in the hospital room she envisioned at the beginning of the play. She is with her brother who has now died of AIDS.

The entire piece is an escape from a difficult situation in which the author had experienced. It reminds me of "The Glass Menagerie" in this aspect. Anna dreamed of something so real and true, yet none of it ever happened. She was not the invalid but rather her brother. The tables turned creating a perfect twist between fact and fiction. This is what I learned from this work. Vogel created another world with flashes into the "past" which was really the present. One can only escape from reality for so long, so Vogel brings Anna back into her true reality at the end of the play. I enjoyed observing Vogel create this paradox of an alternate reality.

[Lillian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Readers beware. First of all, make sure to read the pages before the play begins. You will see a sweet and sad backstory for it. Also, remember, this is a dark(ish) comedy. It plays out as if the character Anne has a life-threatening illness that sounds absolutely ridiculous when, in fact, we find out in the end that it's her brother will a very real fatal illness. I personally believe that this wasn't only a way for Paula Vogel to honor her brother but, perhaps, a way for her to say she's sorry to him. Like she wished she could have died instead of him.

Prepare to laugh and then cry. It's that good.

[Melissa Larson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this play, and I would love to direct it someday. It's a brilliant comedy, somehow both ridiculous and bittersweet. Moving and real without being sappy. Paula Vogel is just so very, very good.

[Shannon Sullivan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This play is satirical and touching. At the beginning she explains why she wrote the piece and shows a letter her brother left her that people are allowed to put in their programs when they produce the show. I like that this play at times breaks the fourth wall and has a twist at the end. I see other readers understand the show better once they’ve read it more than once so I think I will do that too. If a theater near me ever puts this show on I will certainly see it.

[J · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this play because I enjoyed translating the French, German, and Spanish to myself in my head.

I liked this play because I find works about AIDS fascinating, especially when they aren't obvious or sentimental.

I liked this play because of the staging of the six stages of terminal illness.

I did not like the baffling promiscuity of Anna -- am I supposed to take it that her brother, Carl, fucked away his last days, even though he had AIDS? Surely not.

I did not like the baffling Third Man in this, who reminded me of what I thought were Humbert Humbert's hallucinations in Lolita.

I almost did not like this play, I will admit, because I hold a grudge against Paula Vogel for abandoning Brown's theater department.

But I loved the slideshow of Europe that was actually Baltimore and John Hopkins Hospital. I love how death is sudden for both Anna and the audience. I love how clear it is how much Paula Vogel really cared for her brother.

[Megan]

I can't decide what I thought of this play. I'm not sure I understood everything, but I also accidentally read the ENDING on the back cover before I had finished it, so that was a bit of a problem.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gorgeous ending. Stretches of it felt a little disjointed as I neared the end, but I overall understood what everything meant. Wonderful use of props as symbols. I'm starting to notice the techniques Vogel uses in her plays to lay out themes and such. She's a master.

[Nan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vogel is a master playwright. Anna's self absorption is typical of living and healthy. She misses all clues of her brother's own mortality. There are, however, some odd bits that I don't quite get -- Anna's promiscuity and the rabbit. I would love to see this play staged.

[Gata · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the first American plays about HIV/AIDS. Exquisitely written and a heartbreaking but beautiful read.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Funny, thought provoking, and sweet all at the same time. I read it in search of a monologue and really enjoyed Anna's character. I would love to see it preformed.

[Nicole · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting and clever. Contains graphic language and sex. Probably would be liked most readers, but not preferably for my own personal tastes.

[Rebecca Krebbs · Rating 4 out of 5]

One more reason to adore Paula Vogel and her amazing, crazy work.

[Grace Leneghan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the moment of realization when they are showing the slides from Europe and it really is just Baltimore and the Johns Hopkins Hospital.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful comic-noir about processing grief. As amazing, heartfelt, funny, and stylistically stunning as the movie it was inspired by. (The Third Man).

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

My introduction to Vogel's work, and my admiration has grown since. Sibling relationships, the power of grief, and the lengths we will go to protect ourselves from the truth.

[Neal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vogel's plays are wonderfully poignant. Highly recommended.

[Beverley Sylvester · Rating 4 out of 5]

The final scene ties together beautifully what was seemingly a rather nonsensical story into a complexly emotional representation of Paula Vogel's experience with the death of her beloved brother during the AIDS crisis. I spent a little too much of the story feeling confused/unsatisfied to give it five stars, but it was clearly well thought out and I sat pensively with the text for a long time after finishing it.

[Sophie Bloor · Rating 2 out of 5]

Didn’t really ‘get it’. The ending was clever but recently I have just been finding surrealist entertainment cringe? This is something I thought I’d never say. Were the brother and sister sleeping together? The time frame felt all over the place too at the start. Got stronger towards the end but that’s inevitable. Missed the mark for me unfortunately but probably not as harsh as this review implies. I’m just confused.

[Nicole Ferrando · Rating 4 out of 5]

the slides from Europe… and it’s just Baltimore… at the John’s Hopkins Hospital. omg. Wow, this play was great the way that it was funny and also was very real as this was based on a true story about how the author lost her brother in the AIDS pandemic. I felt it was a bit homophobic and painting the Anna as very promiscuous was unnecessary, but you could still understand the tragedy and heartbreak that came from this moment in the author’s life.

[Tom Musbach · Rating 3 out of 5]

A provocative, funny, and oblique take on the AIDS crisis and loss in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s. The play is a quick read and based on a sad, true story about the playwright and her brother and a trip they had planned to take. There’s an experimental, absurd quality to the play that is challenging to understand. (8)

[Sem · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ah, how playfully detached and evasive, not a shred of genuine emotion in the whole thing. In some ways, the polar opposite of 'Wit', even in terms of drab humor that's mixed in amid the whole dying of AIDS thing.

[Becca · Rating 3 out of 5]

Realizing that this play was based off the author’s actual life with her brother makes the play even more sad. The ending was the only sad part really but throughout the play it felt satirical and genuinely made me laugh. I also really liked how fast paced this play is.

[naima · Rating 5 out of 5]

I actually really enjoyed listening to this, I felt the emotions of all the characters really well

[Ron Giddings · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was glad I read this. I would like to see it. Lots to say, but I think the visual would be very effecting as well.

[Naiya Jeleny · Rating 5 out of 5]

All I will say is that I love Paula Vogel, this woman makes me cry just by reading her summaries

[shelley :) · Rating 4 out of 5]

idk what happened but I’m crying!