For Immediate Release
September 20, 2001

WENDY WASSERSTEIN, PULITZER-PRIZE WINNING PLAYWRIGHT,
TO SPEAK AT MOUNT HOLYOKE ON SEPTEMBER 28

SOUTH HADLEY, Mass. — Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and 1971 Mount Holyoke College graduate Wendy Wasserstein will return to the College on September 28 to talk about her experiences working in film and sign copies of her new book, "Shiksa Goddess (or How I Spent my Forties)."

MHC's Film Studies Program will present Wasserstein in "From Broadway to Hollywood: A Conversation with Wendy Wasserstein" at 7:30 PM in Hooker Auditorium. The Film "The Object of My Affection," for which Wasserstein wrote the screenplay, will be shown at 7 PM Tuesday, September 25, in room 202 of Skinner Hall.

"We're really lucky to have Wendy come talk to us about her experiences working in film," says Thomas Wartenberg, chair of film studies and professor of philosophy. "She has an outsider's perspective on the industry that should make for a fascinating discussion."

Wasserstein's experiences at MHC were the inspiration for her first success, "Uncommon Women and Others," a play about eight Mount Holyoke women, which was first produced at Yale and later off-Broadway, and which was adapted by public television in 1978. The play, written in 1977, won an Obie Award. Wasserstein also scored an off-Broadway success with the long-running comedy "Isn't It Romantic" (1981).

She has been represented on Broadway with the Playwrights Horizons production of "The Heidi Chronicles," the recipient of the 1989 Pulitzer Prize, Tony Award, the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, and the New York Drama Critics Circle, Drama Desk, and Outer Critic's Circle Awards, and with the Lincoln Center production of "The Sisters Rosensweig," a recipient of a 1993 Outer Critic's Circle Award and Tony nomination. "An American Daughter," which opened on Broadway in 1997, was nominated for several Tony Awards. In 1993, Wasserstein received the William Inge Award for Distinguished Achievement in American Theater.

Wasserstein's publication credits include a collection of essays, "Bachelor Girls" (Knopf); "The Heidi Chronicles and Other Plays" (Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich); "The Sisters Rosensweig" (Harcourt, Brace); and a children's book, "Pamela's First Musical" (Hyperion).

In 1985, the Alumnae Association honored Wasserstein with a Mary Lyon Award, given for outstanding achievement by a young alumna. The College awarded her an honorary doctor of humane letters degree in 1990.

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