Wendy Remembered
Wendy Remembered
Wendy Wasserstein died a year ago today leaving a six-year old daughter and a space in the world for a female playwright.
By Michelle Fiordaliso, Contributor Executive Coach. Author. Filmmaker.
01/30/2007 03:37pm EST | Updated November 17, 2011
Wendy Wasserstein died a year ago today leaving a six-year old daughter and a space in the world for a female playwright. It wasn't by her dying though, that she left a space open for a female playwright, she left spaces open by the life she lived and by the work she created. She paved the way for female playwrights everywhere. We, as young women, take for granted things that were once not so easy to acquire: the right to vote, rights to our bodies, rights to the American stage and the world of theatre. Wendy Wasserstein's work gives me the choice to fight my own doubts and demons and trust that my plays have a place in this world. And so, every morning for the past year, I find myself invoking her, praying to her to help me say something that will inspire people in the way that she did.
In Wendy Wasserstein's obituary in the New York Times last year it said, "Although it was always laced with comedy, her work was also imbued with an abiding sadness, a clear-eyed understanding that independence can beget loneliness, that rigorous ideals and raised consciousnesses are not always good company at the dinner table. But she shared her compassion among a wide array of characters, those who settled and those who continued to search."
Rigorous ideals and raised consciousness is what had me move away from a life as a psychotherapist and move towards a life as a playwright. When something painful is revealed about yourself in a therapy session, you leave the room with the weight of it, but when something painful about yourself, or your life is revealed in the theatre, if through the genius of the writer you can see yourself reflected through the words and actors on stage, the pain is like a shell embedded in the sand in the ocean. The wave recedes and reveals it, for a moment it's there, and then the wave washes the weight of it away. You leave the theatre with a renewed sense of yourself that's exhilarating, no matter how painful. Wendy Wasserstein's plays did this for women, over and over again. Her plays revealed our loneliness, our betrayal, our fears and most of all our hope.
It always goes back to the quote from the Heidi Chronicles, because it's so perfect. Heidi says, "I don't blame any of us. We're all concerned, intelligent, good women. It's just that I feel stranded. And I thought the whole point was that we wouldn't feel stranded. I thought the point was we were all in this together."
I live in Los Angeles and I never get star struck when I see celebrities but meeting female writers makes my knees knock. I've met a lot of my favorite female playwrights but I never met Wendy Wasserstein. I wish I had. I think of her everyday and the fact that I don't feel stranded because of her. She opened the door to the theatre for women everywhere, and now it's up to each one of us that has something to say to walk through that door.
Last year today, I mourned for Wendy and for her daughter Lucy Jane. And I mourned for American Theatre. I mourned for the terrified writer in me. And I mourned for women everywhere who feel stranded. But this year, despite my sadness, I am celebrating Wendy Wasserstein's life and work. And by remembering her, maybe women everywhere will remember that we are in this together, we don't have to feel stranded. Our independence as women and writers shouldn't beget loneliness. Thanks to Wendy's words, we have each other.