Celebrating the birth & legacy of

WENDY WASSERSTEIN

THE HEIDI CHRONICLES

Celebrating her words through our voice
with a monologue performed by
Actors Co-op Theatre Company member, Treva Tegtmeier

More on
THE HEIDI CHRONICLES

Through her plays and other writings, Wendy Wasserstein made a special place for herself in the American theater by being one of the first women to stage women’s issues with the astute and comic eye of a social critic. As her characters, accomplished women who are trying to find fulfillment in their personal and professional lives, discover that it is impossible to “have it all,” they gain a better understanding of who they are.

The Heidi Chronicles, her most celebrated and popular play, opened on Broadway in 1989 after receiving critical acclaim Off Broadway. It ran for 622 performances and collected the Tony (the first woman to receive the Tony for Best Play) and New York Drama Critics Circle awards for best play as well as the Pulitzer Prize. Joan Allen created the title role in the play, which toured nationally and was later filmed for television with Jamie Lee Curtis.

Spanning more than two decades, The Heidi Chronicles is an episodic, seriocomic biography of an art historian seeking to establish a fixed and fulfilling sense of identity amid the social convolutions of the 1960's and 70's, a period when the rulebook on relationships between men and women was being rewritten. Heidi's allegiance to her ideals and her unwillingness to compromise them for the sake of winning a man's attentions caused conflict with friends who chose easier or different paths. In the play's bittersweet final scene, Heidi has become a single mother to a new infant – a path Ms. Wasserstein would herself pursue many years.

Wendy Wasserstein died of lymphoma at the age of 55.  

Today, we continue to celebrate Wendy Wasserstein’s birthday with a monologue from THE HEIDI CHRONICLES performed by Actors Co-op Theatre Company member, Treva Tegtmeier.

Special thanks to Co-op member-on-leave, Deborah Marlowe for her voiceover work as Sandra Zuckerhall.

"In Wendy's plays women saw themselves portrayed in a way they hadn't been onstage before -- wittily, intelligently and seriously at the same time. We take that for granted now, but it was not the case 25 years ago. She was a real pioneer."

— André Bishop, Artistic Director Lincoln Center Theater (from The New York Times, January 30, 2006)

Learn more about WENDY WASSERSTEIN:

Listen More:
The Sisters Rosensweig
(L.A. Theatre Works Audio Production)

Read More:
Wendy Wasserstein Collection of Plays
from Dramatists Play Service

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