Uncommon Women and Others

Six years after graduation, seven women meet for an reunion lunch and relive their college days in the early 1970’s at Mount Holyoke College, measuring their youthful dreams for the future against the anguish they face living in the “real” world. Wendy Wasserstein (1950-2006) changed the way contemporary women’s lives were presented onstage. She celebrated the complexity of the “New York woman” long before Sex and the City arrived on the scene. Her heritage can be seen in the post-1970’s “boom” of activity from women playwrights, many writing “serious” plays in Wendy’s preferred genre of comedy, from Paula Vogel to Teresa Rebeck, on through toSarah Ruhl. Wasserstein was one of a handful of women who have achieved pre-eminence as a professional playwright. She won a Pulitzer Prize and was the first woman to win an unshared Tony Award for The Heidi Chronicles (1988). Further, she was our most successful commercial female playwright in the last half of the 20th century.