Publisher Description

Every night when she goes to sleep, a woman dreams of erotic encounters with different men. She dreams of being the sponge squeezed to foaming in a gas station attendant's hand, and of twining her bare skin with a sea lion's thick pelt under the watchful eye of the sea lion trainer. From a gas station attendant to a sea lion trainer, a watchmaker to a teacher, a furrier to an astrologer, each evening's new encounter is more sensual and extravagant than the last.

Tennessee Williams and William Inge today are recognized as two of the greatest American playwrights, whose work irrevocably altered the theatrical and social landscapes. In 1944, however, neither had achieved anything like genuine success. As flamboyant genius Williams prepares for the world premiere of his play The Gentleman Caller—to become The Glass Menagerie—self-loathing Inge struggles through his job as a theater critic, denying his true wish to be writing plays. Based on real-life but closed-door encounters, reconstructed from troves of comments (and elisions) by each man about their relationship, Philip Dawkins gorgeously envisions what might have taken place during those early-career meetings.

The only single edition now available of this American classic about a mother obsessed with her disabled daughter.

Volume contains: 137 NY 500 (McCarthy v. McCarthy) 137 NY 510 (Kirk v. Kirk) 137 NY 621 (Hoffman v. Wight) 137 NY 631 (Peo ex rel U.S. Trust Co. of N.Y. v. Barker) 137 NY 631 (Pope v. Briggs) 138 NY 48 (Hyman v. Hauff) 138 NY 57 (Spofford v. Pearsall) Unreported Case (McCarthy v. McCarthy)

In this volume, Lee Brewer Jones examines Paula 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 Alegría Hudes. Chapters explore Vogel's plays in chronological order, consider her early influences and offer detailed accounts of her work in performance. Enriched by an interview with Lynn Nottage and essays from scholars Ana Fernández-Caparrós and Amy Muse, this is a vibrant exploration of Paula Vogel as a major American playwright. 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 Alegría Hudes, and the only woman to win two Pulitzers for Drama, Lynn Nottage. Vogel's theatre draws upon Russian Formalist Viktor Shklovsky and uses devices such as “defamiliarization” and “negative empathy” to challenge conventional definitions of protagonists and antagonists.