Pulitzer Prize-Winning Playwright Wendy Wasserstein Dies at 55

By: Jan. 30, 2006
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At the age of 55, Wendy Wasserstein has lost her battle with cancer. The beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright passed away at the Memorial Sloan Kettering due to complications from lymphoma, according to Lincoln Center artistic director Andre Bishop.

It was first disclosed in December of 2005 that Wasserstein was "gravely ill;" soon after, the nature of the illness was revealed. An infection had prevented doctors from administering chemotherapy.

Wasserstein won much acclaim over the course of almost three decades for writing plays that with wit, warmth and insight, confronted a range of feminist issues--the conflict of career versus marriage and motherhood, the struggle for women to achieve equality at work, and the joys and tribulations of love and sex, among them. Her latest play Third, starring Dianne Wiest, Jason Ritter and Charles Durning, was a recent hit at Lincoln Center's Mitzi E. Newhouse Theatre. The eighth of Wasserstein's works to be staged in New York, it concerned a college professor who has come to a crossroads in her life. Ironically, one of the play's characters was afflicted with cancer.

Wasserstein won the Pulitzer Prize for her 1989 drama The Heidi Chronicles. The show, which also won the Tony Award for Best Play (among other awards), traced the tumultuous life of its title character, an art historian, through two decades. Starring Joan Allen, Peter Friedman, Cynthia Nixon and Boyd Gaines (who won a Tony for his work) and directed by frequent collaborator Daniel Sullivan, the play was both a critical and commercial success; it ran for 622 performances and was later broadcast on PBS.

After The Heidi Chronicles, Wasserstein emulated the title character of that play by raising a child as a single mother. Lucy Jane was born in September of 1999--when Wasserstein was 48.

The playwright, who attended the Yale School of Drama, also received a Tony Award nomination for Best Play for The Sisters Rosensweig, which ran for 556 performances after opening in 1993; it starred Madeline Kahn (who won a Tony for her performances), Jane Alexander and Robert Klein. The play recounted the story of the relationship between three American sisters who reunite at the home of the eldest sister in London.

An American Daughter, concerning the controversy surrounding a woman nominated for Surgeon General, was produced on Broadway in 1997. Uncommon Women and Others, Wasserstein's thesis project at Yale, featured former classmate Meryl Streep when it was produced at New York's Phoenix Theatre; it was the play that first brought her to prominence. Old Money and Isn't It Romantic were other off-Broadway credits. With the latter play and The Sisters Rosensweig, Wasserstein earned Drama Desk Award nods for Outstanding New Play. With the late composer Cy Coleman and lyricist David Zippel, Wasserstein also wrote the book for Pamela's First Musical (based on her own children's book).

Bachelor Girls, Shiksa Goddess, and Sloth were books of personal essays while her first novel, Elements of Style, will be published by Knopf in May. Other credits included the screenplay for the film The Object of My Affection, the libretto for the opera Festival of Regrets produced by the New York City Opera, a new scenario for Kevin MacKenzie's production of The Nutcracker for American Ballet Theatre and a new adaptation of The Merry Widow which premiered at the San Francisco Opera. For PBS' Great Performances she wrote the teleplays of Kiss, Kiss Darling; Drive, She Said; and adaptations of John Cheever's The Sorrows of Gin.

Wasserstein founded "Open Doors," a mentoring program in theatre administered by the Theatre Development Fund for New York City public high school students. A former Guggenheim Fellow, she served on the Board of Directors of "Open Doors" as well as on the boards of the Educational Foundation of America, the School of American Ballet, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, WNET-TV/Channel 13 and on the Council of the Dramatists Guild.

She is survived by her daughter Lucy Jane Wasserstein, her mother Lola Wasserstein, her brother Bruce Wasserstein, all of Manhattan; her sister Georgette Levis of Vermont and eleven nieces and nephews. She was predeceased by her sister Sandra Meyer. 
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