About the Play:

The Long Christmas Ride Home is a full-length drama by Paula Vogel. Two parents take their three young children on a road trip to visit their grandparents for the Christmas holiday. A breathtaking work by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of How I Learned to Drive and Indecent, in which a single, sudden act of violence shatters the lives of three siblings – and also unites them.

The Long Christmas Ride Home combines exquisite storytelling, music and puppetry to create a mesmerizing portrait of the delicate and often painful bonds of family. Past, present and future collide for a family of five on a snowy Christmas Eve when their car spins out of control after a disastrous holiday dinner. Humorous and heart-wrenching, this beautifully written play is told with actors and the centuries-old form of Japanese puppetry, Bunraku. The Long Christmas Ride Home deftly navigates the lasting impact of a moment in the lives of three siblings Stephen, Claire and Rebecca that sets the rest of their lives in motion. This hauntingly beautiful and poetic play proves that magic can be found in the simplest breaths of life.

The Long Christmas Ride Home premiered in 2003 at Rhode Island's Trinity Repertory Theatre winning the Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Production. Since then the play had regional premieres at professional theatres across the US and has been mounted by high schools, colleges, and community theatres.

Cast: 3 women, 3 men, 3 puppets

What people say:

"…[a] lovely and hauntingly original family drama…a work that breathes so much life into the theater." — Time Out New York

"Profoundly sad and shot through with fiercely beautiful writing…with its adventurous blend of puppets, live actors and Japanese theatrical elements, it’s also Vogel’s most daring work — and one of her best." — Variety

"…[a] delicate visual feast…When theatergoers talk about a play as a religious experience, they usually just mean that it had charismatic performances or some exciting dance numbers … Paula Vogel is not indulging in such hyperbole. She means her play to be a religious experience in the way that a Christmas Mass might be for committed Roman Catholics: an exalted communal ritual of redemption and solace…It's enough to make even die-hard agnostics believe…in the mystical powers of drama." — The New York Times

"…brutal and lovely…the overall effect is magical." — New York Newsday

"Vogel remains…the best playwright writing today." — Sun Chronicle (Providence)

About the Playwright:

Paula Vogel is an American playwright and university professor. One of the most widely produced and honoured playwrights writing in the English language, her work has garnered numerous awards and prizes including the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Susan Smith Blackburn Award, New York Drama Critics Award, Obie Award, AT&T New Plays Award, among many others, as well as fellowships from the Pew Charitable Trust, National Endowment for the Arts, and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. She is currently the Eugene O'Neill Professor and Chair of the Department of Playwriting at Yale University.