AMERICAN THEATRE: I knew of Wendy Wasserstein before I ever read her. You could argue this awareness goes back as far as my birth, as Dr. Michele K. Silverstein—the doctor who famously delivered Lucy Wasserstein, the daughter Wendy gave birth to at the age of 48, as described lovingly in Wendy’s 2000 New Yorker essay “Late Motherhood, Premature Baby”—was also my own mother’s obstetrician.
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I have and I think always will have a soft spot for Wendy Wasserstein, spurred on by the love that one of my late theatre professors had for her. Freshman year, not planning to major in Theatre, I took this professor's class Understanding Woman’s Dramas. The writer describes Wendy Wasserstein as someone “unable to do anything but put her whole self onto the page.” I couldn't dream of putting it more aptly. We first read her work, Uncommon Woman and Others, and I was amazed to find my own experience playing out on the page. Clearly influenced by Wasserstein's own experience at an all women's college, the friend group she created, and all their quirks were things I could and did recognize in my own college friends. Subsequently I read The Heidi Chronicles, and Third, both by Wendy Wasserstein and loved them. It made understanding the article's critique, without having read the play its critiquing, understandable. Wasserstein writes with such poignancy and vivacity, and as the article puts, “desire.” These were all things I felt when I read her other works, and would hope to see in a staged version. Its disheartening to know her work has been revised and received such critique, as it has played such a pivotal part in my own theatre education.
Hey! I wrote this piece!! Thank you for posting.
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