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In 1989 Wendy Wasserstein became the first woman playwright to win a Tony; that same year she also collected the Pulitzer Prize and the award for best new play from New York Drama Critics Circle. These accolades for The Heidi Chronicles (first performed...

IN "HEIDI Fleiss Hollywood Madam," British documentarian Nick Broomfield pulls into Hollywood with a movie camera, intending to probe the enigma of the infamous sex operator -- charged in 1993 with operating a call-girl ring that catered to movie producers, actors and other Tinseltown...

When most people hear that someone has a great idea for a comedy about a feminist artist, they don't say "Honey, here's $40 million," playwright Wendy Wasserstein says. Still, once Wasserstein's acclaimed "The Heidi Chronicles" was hooked onto star Jamie Lee Curtis ("True...

For nearly 30 years, theater audiences knew Wendy Wasserstein as the wry mistress of wit who could make them guffaw in their seats or wheeze until they wept. But to her friends, the essence of this Broadway scribe was always her own high-pitched giggle. “It...

Bloomberg’s State of the City Mayor Bloomberg’s State of the City address won praise from leading Democrats as well as Republicans, and with good reason. It outlined an ambitious agenda grounded in everyday reality, not in divisive ideology. Rather than rest on his achievements,...

In the following interview, originally conducted on October 9, 1991, Wasserstein discusses her early career and the implications of her success, aspects of her writing process, the influence and role of women in contemporary theatre, and the critical and popular reception of her plays, particularly The Heidi Chronicles, both in the United States and abroad.

In the following essay, Keyssar contrasts the semiotic differences between The Heidi Chronicles and Maria Irene Fornes's Fefu and Her Friends, refuting the contention by philosopher-critic Mikhail Bakhtin that all dramatic literature is “monologic” by demonstrating the confluence between Bakhtinian criticism and contemporary feminist thought.

Rose was the founder of the Roses International Women's Theater and Softball Syndicate. In the excerpt below, written in the form of a letter dated 1 October 1989 to the protagonist of The Heidi Chronicles, she accuses the play's eponymous heroine of complicitly participating in the oppression of women and challenges her to actively oppose the patriarchal ways of contemporary society.