Cast

Heidi Holland ... Liz Steele

Susan Johnston ... Sandy Squillo

Chris Boxer, Mark, Waiter, Ray... Tim Feeney

Peter Petrone ... Joe Petrolis

Scoop Rosenbaum ... Rob Nardini

Jill, Debbie, Lisa ... Stephanie Bullwinkel

Fran, Molly, Betsy, April, Sandra ...
   Cassandra Johnson Locke

Becky, Clara, Denise ... Jennifer Schmidt

Ensemble roles played by CTWS Students Colleen Fogarty, Joe Gallagher,Ty Hendrickson, Durk Schutt, Marybeth Stork, Elise Woulfe

Director’s Corner
By Molly Burns

When Arthur Miller died, there was a big hoopla in the media as to who the greatest American living playwright was—a fruitless discussion to my point of view because how do you compare apples and oranges—Albees and Simons? Then, sadly, in one year, we lost two of the American theatre’s brightest, ground breaking playwrights—August Wilson and Wendy Wasserstein. I cried. I wish they could have written more. So we are left to cherish the work they did leave us, and to carry on by keeping their characters and themes alive.

In our play, Heidi champions the artwork and recognition of many women visual artists throughout history who have been dropped by the textbooks. 1960’s feminist theory and studies has helped restore some of them to us, but how much have we lost in forgetting our women’s accomplishments? There was a poet in Victorian England who sold more poems than Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Yet this famous ‘poetess’, Felicia Hemans, is not mentioned in a 1930’s Scott Foresman anthology called Poetry of the Victorian Period, which devotes less than forty of its 942 pages to poems by women.

This history of inclusion or exclusion of women is still being created, and Wendy Wasserstein realized this. Her play The Sisters Rosensweig (produced by TWS in 1997) had the largest advance in Broadway history for a play, and she commented, “My work is often thought of as lightweight commercial comedy, and I have always thought, ‘No you don’t understand: this is in fact a political act. Nobody is (now) going to turn down a play on Broadway because a woman wrote it or because it’s about women.’” (Paris Review, 1997). With her bold pen, she struck out her own course and contributed to our contemporary theatre. She and her characters deserve the place they have carved out, so as not to be relegated to the dust bin as was Aphra Behn, a prominent playwright of Restoration drama.

Dramaturg’s Diary
By Liz Egan

Wendy Wasserstein was born in Brooklyn, the youngest of five siblings. Her father was a textile manufacturer, her mother an amateur dancer. The family moved to Manhattan when Ms. Wasserstein was 12. She earned her undergraduate degree from Mount Holyoke College in 1971, studied creative writing at City College, and, after receiving a Masters in Fine Arts from Yale in 1976, returned to Manhattan for the rest of her working life. She was the quintessential New Yorker. "My parents only let me go to drama school because it was Yale," she said in an interview for the magazine Bomb. "They thought I'd marry a lawyer."

I could find no evidence that Wendy Wasserstein and Judy Chicago ever actually met, but when Peter sings, “Judy Chicago in the morning, Judy Chicago in the evening, Judy Chicago at dinnertime,” he is referring to Ms. Chicago’s most famous work, “The Dinner Party: Right Out of History.”

In the early 80’s “The Dinner Party” was mounted in a warehouse on South Dearborn Street because all the Chicago art museums demurred exhibiting it due to ‘lack of room.’ This monumental sculpture is a triangular dinner table, each side measuring forty-eight feet, each place setting honoring a famous woman, legendary or historical. A few years later, after going from ridicule to veneration, after traveling to many cities, after evolving through the contributions of many artists, it is now being readied for permanent installation in the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Judy became much in demand as a speaker and I met her at a lecture and reception at the Art Institute of Chicago in the mid-80’s. I was struck by her easy going manner, her sense of humor, her essential femininity.

These were qualities Wendy and Judy had in common. Neither was a bra-burning feminist; neither spoke with a strident voice. Both expressed their support for the Feminist Movement in their work, both founded schools for women, both engaged an evolving creative process.

In the parlance of playwriting, that process is ‘workshopping’. A playwriting workshop can begin with nothing more than a premise, or a fully fleshed work that simply needs polishing. For Ms. Wasserstein, the Seattle Repertory Theater was her incubator. She sent Daniel Sullivan, who was to become her favorite director, an early draft of The Heidi Chronicles. He gave it a workshop production in 1988. Four years later, The Sisters Rosensweig took shape as a Rep workshop production. In 1996, An American Daughter received a Rep developmental production.

Production Credits

Director, Molly Burns

Technical Director, Thad Hallstein

Stage Manager, Patti Roeder

Asst. Stage Managers, Charlie Egan, Kelli Kopp

Costume Designer, Martha Niles
Costume Crew: Stephanie Abramowitz, Linda and Mark Cunningham, Lori D’Asta, Bill FitzGerald, Tom Frohnapfel, Jim Hannigan, Ann Marie Hultgren, Patricia Huth, Julie Knoch, Kathy Kusper, Mary Pavia, Debby Phillips, Lori Proksa

Dramaturg, Liz Egan

Hospitality Chair, Carol Clarke
Hospitality Crew: Dorothy Attermeyer, Rosemary Beale, Nancy Belda, Jan Benedict, Carole Borg, Cheryl and Sophia Brand, Susan Cardamone, Roger Clarke, Tory Crnovich, Danna Durkin, Bonnie Hilton, Karen Holbert, Andrea Imes, Dick and Peggy Jacoby, Donna, Eleanor and Rich Kanak, Jason McCargo, Debbie McHenry, Debby and Jon Mills, Diane Oppenheim, Janel Palm, Pat Rafferty, Adam and Margo Rickert, Donna Sauers, Nancy Schifo, Carol Suda, Catey Sullivan, Sarah Vanikiotis, Tom Viskosil, Susan Waldschmidt, Jackie Weiher, Gini Welch, Mark and Sue Wisthuff

Lighting Designer, Cal Turner
Lighting Crew: Linda Bugielski, Karla Hudson, Katie Pecis, Paul Roach, Rick Snyder, Betsy Stiles

Makeup Designer, Mary Ellen Druyan
Makeup Crew: Stephanie Abramowitz, Linda Bugielski, Brian Centers, Eileen Crow, Holly Cejka, Stacy Mazzula, Mary Pavia, Amanda Ragan, Sue Wisthuff

Properties Designer, Darla Goudeau
Properties Crew:
Tom Gess, Larry Horn, Dennis Hudson, Mike Huth

Set Dresser, Jim Kopp

Set Construction Chair, Mark Hewitt
Set Construction Crew: Grace Abrahamson, Anne Cahill, George Dempsey, Robert Erck, Bill Hurley, Mike Huth, Jon Mills, Nancy Obern, John Otto, Rich Patacek, Paul Roach, Fred Sauers

Set Designer: Thad Hallstein

Set Painting Chair: Mary Pavia
Set Painting Crew: Karen Arnold, Linda Auer, Donna Kanak, John Mueller, Mike Pavia, Lori Proksa, Amanda Ragan, Rick Snyder, Rob Snyder, Sandy and Tom Squillo

Sound Designer, Peggy Solick
Sound Crew: Bob Erck, Nicole LaFrancis, Janette Quinn

Visuals Designer, Bill Hammack
Projections operators: Judy DiVita, Bob Erck, Mary Maureen Gentile, Bill Hammack

Box Office Chair, Mary Ellen Schutt
Box Office Crew: Ed Barrow, Cindy Blaszak, Kelli Kopp, Lori Proksa, Sue Wisthuff

House Manager Chair, Bill Wilson
House Managers: Jack Calvert, Susan Cardamone, Brian Centers, Rob Cramer, Harry Hultgren, Roland Imes, Terry Locke, John Mills, Arlene Page, Denny Wise

Front Row Center Flyer, Joe Petrolis

Group Sales Chair, Betsy Stiles

Poster Distribution, Kathleen Kusper

Production Coordinator: Jon Mills

Program Advertising, Peggy Carlson

Publicity Chair, Bonnie Hilton

Program Editor: Ed Barrow
Program Production: Stephanie Williams

Actives Website, Judy DiVita
Actives Website photos, Judy DiVita & Peter Bosy

Dramaturg’s Diary (continued)

Andre Bishop, Artist Director of the Lincoln Center Theater and the producer of The Heidi Chronicles and all of Ms. Wasserstein’s subsequent plays, said that her life, her work, and her writing were all intimately connected. This makes poignant the end of Heidi’s rambling alumnae speech in 1986 where she muses about the state of the Feminist Movement. “We’re all concerned, intelligent, good women. It’s just that I feel stranded. And I thought that the whole point was that we wouldn’t feel stranded. I thought that the point was that we were all in this together.”

The Feminist Movement, as with Ms. Wasserstein’s premature death, has left us not so much a sense of what was accomplished as what might have been.

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