Uncommon Women and Others | |
---|---|
Written by | Wendy Wasserstein |
Characters | Leilah Rita Altabel Kate Quin Muffet DiNicola Samantha Stewart Holly Kaplan Mrs. Plumm Susie Friend Carter Narrator (voice) |
Setting | A restaurant in 1978 and Mount Holyoke College in 1972-1973 |
Uncommon Women and Others (1977), is the first play by noted 20th-century American playwright Wendy Wasserstein.
The play was initially produced at Yale University in 1975, as Wasserstein's master's thesis. [1]
The play premiered Off-Broadway in a production by the Phoenix Theatre on November 21, 1977 and closed on December 4, 1977 after 22 performances. It was directed by Steven Robman and performed at the Marymount Manhattan Theatre, New York.
The play was revived Off-Broadway by the Second Stage Theatre, in a production at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, running from October 26, 1994 to January 1, 1995. Directed by Carole Rothman, the cast featured Joan Buddenhagen (Leilah). [2]
Source: Lortel [3]
Alumnae of Mount Holyoke College (Wasserstein's alma mater) meet for lunch one day in 1978 and talk about their time together in college. The play is thus a series of flashbacks to the 1972-1973 school year as seven seniors and one freshman try to "discover themselves" in the wake of second-wave feminism. [4]
A made-for-television film was broadcast on the PBS Great Performances series in 1978, with all of the stage cast reprising their roles, except that Meryl Streep played Leilah. [5] [6]
In reviewing the 1994 revival, Jeremy Gerard wrote in Variety that the premiere of Uncommon Women and Others was "a happy matching of a new writer with a gifted director and an amazing cast, all for a play that seemed to distill the conflicts and uncertainties of its time into a memorable blend of raunchy wit and sober apprehension...a new voice in the theater had an extraordinary debut." [7]
Madeline Gail Kahn was an American actress, comedian and singer, known for comedic roles in films directed by Peter Bogdanovich and Mel Brooks, including What's Up, Doc? (1972), Young Frankenstein (1974), High Anxiety (1977), History of the World, Part I (1981), and her Academy Award–nominated roles in Paper Moon (1973) and Blazing Saddles (1974).
Donald Margulies is an American playwright and academic. In 2000, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play Dinner with Friends.
Paula Vogel is an American playwright who received the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play How I Learned to Drive. A longtime teacher, Vogel spent the bulk of her academic career – from 1984 to 2008 – at Brown University, where she served as Adele Kellenberg Seaver Professor in Creative Writing, oversaw its playwriting program, and helped found the Brown/Trinity Rep Consortium. From 2008 to 2012, Vogel was Eugene O'Neill Professor of Playwriting and department chair at the Yale School of Drama, as well as playwright in residence at the Yale Repertory Theatre.
Wendy Wasserstein was an American playwright. She was an Andrew Dickson White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University. She received the Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1989 for her play The Heidi Chronicles.
Jerome Herbert "Chip" Zien is an American actor. He is best known for playing the lead role of the Baker in the original Broadway production of Into the Woods by Stephen Sondheim. He has appeared in all of the "Marvin Trilogy" musicals by William Finn: In Trousers, March of the Falsettos, Falsettoland and Falsettos. He played Monsieur Thénardier in the Broadway production of Les Misérables and Mark Rothenberg in the film United 93. He is also known for providing the voice of the titular character in the film Howard the Duck.
John Guare is an American playwright and screenwriter. He is best known as the author of The House of Blue Leaves and Six Degrees of Separation.
The Heidi Chronicles is a 1988 play by Wendy Wasserstein. The play won the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Julie K. White is an American actress. She won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for her performance in The Little Dog Laughed in 2007. She has also received three other Tony Award nominations for her performances in Airline Highway in 2013, Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus in 2019 and POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive in 2022. She played Sam Witwicky's mother in Transformers film series (2007-2011)
The Sisters Rosensweig is a play by Wendy Wasserstein. The play focuses on three Jewish-American sisters and their lives. It "broke theatrical ground by concentrating on a non-traditional cast of three middle-aged women." Wasserstein received the William Inge Award for Distinguished Achievement in American Theatre for this play.
Lynn Nottage is an American playwright whose work often focuses on the experience of working-class people, particularly working-class people who are Black. She has received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice: in 2009 for her play Ruined, and in 2017 for her play Sweat. She was the first woman to have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama two times.
Tina Howe is an American playwright. In a career that spans more than four decades, Howe's best-known works include Museum, The Art of Dining, Painting Churches, Coastal Disturbances, and Pride's Crossing.
Uncommon Women and Others is a 1978 made-for-television film (based upon the play of the same name. Wendy Wasserstein wrote both the original play as well as the teleplay for the televised production. It was shown in May, 1978 as part of the Great Performances series on PBS. It was directed by Steven Robman and included all of the original cast from the 1977 Off-Broadway debut.
Jon Robin Baitz is an American playwright, screenwriter and television producer. He is a two time Pulitzer Prize finalist, as well as a Guggenheim, American Academy of Arts and Letters, and National Endowment for the Arts Fellow.
Laila Robins is an American stage, film and television actress. She has appeared in films including Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987), An Innocent Man (1989), Live Nude Girls (1995), True Crime (1999), She's Lost Control (2014), Eye in the Sky (2015), and A Call to Spy (2019). Her television credits include regular roles on Gabriel's Fire, Homeland, and Murder in the First. In 2022, she portrays Pamela Milton in the final season of The Walking Dead.
Dinner with Friends is a play written by Donald Margulies. It premiered at the 1998 Humana Festival of New American Plays and opened Off-Broadway in 1999. The play received the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Claudia Shear is an American actress and playwright. She was nominated for the Tony Award, Best Play and Best Actress for her play Dirty Blonde.
Third is the last play written by Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Wendy Wasserstein, which premiered Off-Broadway in 2005. The play involves a female professor and her interactions with a student.
Frederick Applegate is an American actor, singer and dancer.
Jennifer von Mayrhauser is an American costume designer who has designed costumes for more than thirty Broadway productions, and is notable for her significant contributions in film, television, and theatre.
A Fair Country is a play by Jon Robin Baitz. The play premiered Off-Broadway in 1996, and was a finalist for the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.