WASSERSTEIN, WENDY

born Oct. 18, 1950, Brooklyn, N.Y., U.S. American playwright whose work probes, with humour and sensibility, the predicament facing educated women who came of age in the second half of the 20th century. Her drama The Heidi Chronicles (1989) was awarded both a Pulitzer Prize and an Antoinette Perry (Tony) Award in 1989. Wasserstein was educated at Mount Holyoke College (B.A., 1971), City College of the City University of New York (M.A., 1973), and Yale University, where she studied creative writing with playwright Israel Horovitz and novelist Joseph Heller. She received an M.F.A. from Yale in 1976. Her first play, Any Woman Can't (1973), is a cutting farce on one of her major themes-a woman's attempts to succeed in an environment traditionally dominated by men. Two other early works are Uncommon Women and Others (1978) and Isn't It Romantic (1984), which explore women's attitudes toward marriage and society's expectations of women. In The Heidi Chronicles, a successful art historian discovers that her independent life choices have alienated her from men as well as women. The Sisters Rosenzweig (1993) continues the theme into middle age. Wasserstein's other works include an adaptation for television of the John Cheever short story "The Sorrows of Gin" (1979); the play When Dinah Shore Ruled the Earth (produced 1975; with Christopher Durang); The Man in a Case, an adaptation of Anton Chekhov's short story, published in the anthology Orchards (1986); a musical, Miami (produced in 1986); and a children's book, Pamela's First Musical (1996).