June 4: Wendy Wasserstein

Wendy Wasserstein became the first woman playwright to win a Tony Award on this date in 1989 for her play, The Heidi Chronicles, which also won a Pulitzer Prize. Wasserstein was born into a prosperous Jewish family in Brooklyn in 1950 and became a playwright while studying at Yale. Her plays were both comic and political, with a strong feminist sensibility. They included The Sisters Rosensweig, Isn’t It Romantic, An American Daughter, and Old Money, among others. She also wrote five books, including Shiksa Goddess: Or, How I Spent My Forties, a collection of essays, before her untimely death in 2006 at age 55. “In Wendy’s plays women saw themselves portrayed in a way they hadn’t been onstage before,” said André Bishop of Lincoln Center Theater — “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.”

“The real reason for comedy is to hide the pain.” —Wendy Wasserstein