The Dead Thread - Bilge

C cynfulcynner Member Ocean Beach, San Francisco Joined: Mar 24, 2002 Posts: 1799	C cynfulcynner Posted posted on Tue, Jan 31, 2006 11:51 PM Wendy Wasserstein -- prizewinning playwright Steven Winn, Chronicle Arts and Culture Critic Tuesday, January 31, 2006 Wendy Wasserstein, the celebrated playwright who limned the humanity, humor, societal pressures, surface details and vexing inner conflicts of women in America for nearly three decades, died of lymphoma Monday in New York City. She was 55. Her widely produced plays, beginning with "Uncommon Women and Others" in 1977 and including "The Heidi Chronicles" (1989), "The Sisters Rosensweig" (1993) and "An American Daughter" (1997), sprang from keen observation of contemporary behavior, mores, sensibilities and current events. Collectively, they form an unrivaled theatrical portrait of American life transformed by the feminist movement and its exhilarating, complicated aftermath. Her most heralded work, "The Heidi Chronicles," won the Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award for best play on Broadway. Ms. Wasserstein wrote about sex and career, money and children, ambition and ambivalence among college-educated, predominantly middle-class characters who aged along with the playwright over the course of her career. Her accessible, deftly structured comedies played on Broadway, off Broadway and in regional theaters around the country. She was also a screenwriter, novelist, essayist, opera librettist and children's book author. Locally, the Peninsula company TheatreWorks produced her plays over the years. "She was America's leading female playwright for over two decades," said Robert Kelley, artistic director of TheatreWorks. "Her dramatic comedies are a history of the changes that women have experienced in contemporary America. She also had a brilliant instinct for capturing American society in both its foibles and its potential." Sensitively produced, as many of her plays were by TheatreWorks and as "The Sisters Rosensweig" was by the San Jose Repertory Theatre in 1996, a Wasserstein work revealed the writer's flair for simultaneously entertaining an audience, engaging its sympathies, and provoking thought about social conventions. The semi-autobiographical "Sisters" will be revived in April by TheatreWorks, which is dedicating the production to the playwright's memory. Gregarious, gently self-mocking and big-hearted, Ms. Wasserstein was a fixture in the New York theatrical community. "Wendy is an ebullient, sly, extravagantly gifted and wise woman," the actress Meryl Streep said in a 1997 "LIVE!" interview. "She is comforting and endlessly available to her friends, who are therefore endlessly needy as the space allows." Andre Bishop, the Lincoln Center Theater director who was also a close friend, told the Associated Press yesterday that Ms. Wasserstein was "an extraordinary human being whose work and life were extremely intertwined. She was not unlike the heroines of most of her plays -- a strong-minded, independent, serious good person." She was born in 1950, and raised in a well-to-do middle-class Jewish family in Brooklyn and Manhattan. "It's hard when you're funny to be taken seriously," she told The Chronicle in a 2001 interview. "Since I was the youngest in a large family, the way I got by was being funny. Not ha-ha funny, like Nathan Lane, but by using humor to stand back a little." Ms. Wasserstein attended Mount Holyoke College, the source and setting of "Uncommon Women and Others," her first major play. Written as Ms. Wasserstein's graduate thesis at the Yale School of Drama, it aired on PBS in 1978. With "Isn't It Romantic?" in 1983 and "The Heidi Chronicles" six years later, the playwright charted the course of her heroines through the thickets of love, career and premonitions of motherhood. "An American Daughter," set in the Clinton era, deals with a woman's nomination as U.S. Surgeon General and a subsequent media scandal. "Old Money" (2000) satirizes the old and newly rich. Ms. Wasserstein's many other writing credits include the forthcoming novel "Elements of Style," the screenplay for "The Object of My Affection," the children's book "Pamela's First Musical" and a 2001 adaptation of "The Merry Widow" for San Francisco Opera. Last year, she published a short book in praise of "Sloth." In 1999, at age 48, Ms. Wasserstein gave birth as a single mother to a daughter, Lucy Jane. In addition to her daughter, she is survived by her mother, Lola Wasserstein; a sister, Georgette Levis; and two brothers, Abner and Bruce Wasserstein. Chronicle wire services contributed to this story. URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/01/31/BAGMIH02N31.DTL

Wendy Wasserstein -- prizewinning playwright

Steven Winn, Chronicle Arts and Culture Critic
Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Wendy Wasserstein, the celebrated playwright who limned the humanity, humor, societal pressures, surface details and vexing inner conflicts of women in America for nearly three decades, died of lymphoma Monday in New York City. She was 55.

Her widely produced plays, beginning with "Uncommon Women and Others" in 1977 and including "The Heidi Chronicles" (1989), "The Sisters Rosensweig" (1993) and "An American Daughter" (1997), sprang from keen observation of contemporary behavior, mores, sensibilities and current events. Collectively, they form an unrivaled theatrical portrait of American life transformed by the feminist movement and its exhilarating, complicated aftermath. Her most heralded work, "The Heidi Chronicles," won the Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award for best play on Broadway.

Ms. Wasserstein wrote about sex and career, money and children, ambition and ambivalence among college-educated, predominantly middle-class characters who aged along with the playwright over the course of her career. Her accessible, deftly structured comedies played on Broadway, off Broadway and in regional theaters around the country.

She was also a screenwriter, novelist, essayist, opera librettist and children's book author. Locally, the Peninsula company TheatreWorks produced her plays over the years.

"She was America's leading female playwright for over two decades," said Robert Kelley, artistic director of TheatreWorks. "Her dramatic comedies are a history of the changes that women have experienced in contemporary America. She also had a brilliant instinct for capturing American society in both its foibles and its potential."

Sensitively produced, as many of her plays were by TheatreWorks and as "The Sisters Rosensweig" was by the San Jose Repertory Theatre in 1996, a Wasserstein work revealed the writer's flair for simultaneously entertaining an audience, engaging its sympathies, and provoking thought about social conventions. The semi-autobiographical "Sisters" will be revived in April by TheatreWorks, which is dedicating the production to the playwright's memory.

Gregarious, gently self-mocking and big-hearted, Ms. Wasserstein was a fixture in the New York theatrical community.

"Wendy is an ebullient, sly, extravagantly gifted and wise woman," the actress Meryl Streep said in a 1997 "LIVE!" interview. "She is comforting and endlessly available to her friends, who are therefore endlessly needy as the space allows."

Andre Bishop, the Lincoln Center Theater director who was also a close friend, told the Associated Press yesterday that Ms. Wasserstein was "an extraordinary human being whose work and life were extremely intertwined. She was not unlike the heroines of most of her plays -- a strong-minded, independent, serious good person."

She was born in 1950, and raised in a well-to-do middle-class Jewish family in Brooklyn and Manhattan. "It's hard when you're funny to be taken seriously," she told The Chronicle in a 2001 interview. "Since I was the youngest in a large family, the way I got by was being funny. Not ha-ha funny, like Nathan Lane, but by using humor to stand back a little."

Ms. Wasserstein attended Mount Holyoke College, the source and setting of "Uncommon Women and Others," her first major play. Written as Ms. Wasserstein's graduate thesis at the Yale School of Drama, it aired on PBS in 1978.

With "Isn't It Romantic?" in 1983 and "The Heidi Chronicles" six years later, the playwright charted the course of her heroines through the thickets of love, career and premonitions of motherhood. "An American Daughter," set in the Clinton era, deals with a woman's nomination as U.S. Surgeon General and a subsequent media scandal. "Old Money" (2000) satirizes the old and newly rich.

Ms. Wasserstein's many other writing credits include the forthcoming novel "Elements of Style," the screenplay for "The Object of My Affection," the children's book "Pamela's First Musical" and a 2001 adaptation of "The Merry Widow" for San Francisco Opera. Last year, she published a short book in praise of "Sloth."

In 1999, at age 48, Ms. Wasserstein gave birth as a single mother to a daughter, Lucy Jane. In addition to her daughter, she is survived by her mother, Lola Wasserstein; a sister, Georgette Levis; and two brothers, Abner and Bruce Wasserstein.

Chronicle wire services contributed to this story.

URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/01/31/BAGMIH02N31.DTL

Post #211918 by cynfulcynner on Tue, Jan 31, 2006 11:51 PM