How I Learned To Drive

Renee Yeong (She/They) is a Singaporean director, trained in New York, based in London, interested in telling contemporary stories about women, the LGBTQ+ community, and other marginalised groups in Singapore, UK, US, and beyond.

Their recent directing credits include I am trying to say something true (Esplanade’s TRIP), Lotus Root Support Group (Singapore), I LOVE WHITE MEN (Dixon Place, Ars Nova’s ANT Fest, and Caveat NYC), Annie Aspen’s Musical Space Spectacular! (Ars Nova’s ANT Fest), When We Were Young and Unafraid, and Dry Land (Playwrights Horizons Downtown/NYU). 

As an assistant director, she has worked with Tony Award-winning director Rachel Chavkin on Bess Wohl’s world premiere play Continuity at Manhattan Theatre Club and Huzir Sulaiman on The Nuclear Family in 2020 for Checkpoint Theatre, up until its postponement.

Renee is also big on audio and podcasts and will be releasing their debut audio fiction podcast “SAYANG” with long-time collaborator Nicholas Chan, produced by award-winning Singaporean media firm Andas Productions, in Summer 2024.

Apart from being in the inaugural batch of The Studios: TRIP at Esplanade, Renee is also an alumnus of the 2019 Lincoln Center Director’s Lab and an associate member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Union. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts at New York University in Directing in 2018. 

Paula Vogel is a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright whose plays include Indecent (Tony Award for Best Play), How I Learned To Drive (Broadway production set for spring 2020; Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Lortel Prize, OBIE Award, Drama Desk Award, Outer Critics Circle and New York Drama Critics Awards for Best Play), The Long Christmas Ride Home, The Mineola Twins, The Baltimore Waltz, Hot’n’throbbing, Desdemona, And Baby Makes Seven, The Oldest Profession and A Civil War Christmas. 

Her plays have been produced in English in the USA, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and in translation in Italy, Germany, Taiwan, South Africa, Australia, Romania, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovenia, Canada, Portugal, France, Greece, Japan, Norway, Finland, Iceland, Peru, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Brazil, and many other countries. 

John Simon once remarked that Paula Vogel had more awards than a “black sofa collects lint.” Honours include induction in the American Theatre Hall of Fame, the Dramatists Guild Lifetime Achievement Award, the Lily Award, the Thornton Wilder Prize, the Obie Award for Lifetime Achievement, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, the William Inge Award, among many others. She is particularly proud of her Thirtini Award from 13P, and honoured by three Awards in her name: the Paula Vogel Award for playwrights given by The Vineyard Theatre, the Paula Vogel Award from the American College Theatre Festival, and the Paula Vogel mentorship program, curated by Quiara Hudes and Young Playwrights of Philadelphia. 

Paula was playwright in residence at The Signature Theatre (2004–05 season), and Theatre Communications Group publishes six volumes of her work. Paula continues her playwriting intensives with community organizations, students, theatre companies, subscribers and writers across the globe. She is the 2019 inaugural UCLA School of Theatre, Film and Television Hearst Theater Lab Initiative Distinguished Playwright-in-Residence and has recently taught at Sewanee, Shanghai Theatre Academy and Nanjing University, University of Texas at Austin, and the Playwrights Center in Minneapolis. From 1984 to 2008, Paula Vogel founded and ran the playwriting program at Brown University; during that time she started a theatre workshop for women in Maximum Security at the Adults Correction Institute in Cranston, Rhode Island. It continues to this day, sponsored by the Pembroke Center for Women at Brown University. From 2008–2012, she was the O’Neill Chair at Yale School of Drama.