Beaumont Theater Hosts a Tribute To Wasserstein
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Prominent figures filled the Vivian Beaumont Theater last evening at Lincoln Center to remember a Pulitzer-winning playwright, Wendy Wasserstein, who died in January at 55. The service was simulcast at a theater at the Juilliard School. She was described more than once as “the voice of a generation.”
Lincoln Center Theater’s artistic director, Andre Bishop, said. She was smart, generous, and successful, he said, and deeply and profoundly loved.
Interspersed throughout the service were scenes from her plays, including actresses Joan Allen in “The Heidi Chronicles” and Meryl Streep in “An American Daughter.”
A long-time friend, Mary Jane Patrone, recalled participating with Wasserstein in a co-educational experiment at Amherst: They were among 23 women on a campus of 1,200 men. “With those odds, you’d have thought that we would have done better,” she said.
Jane Rosenthal, who met Wasserstein in 1979, recalled discussing exercise and women’s health. She said Wasserstein thought picking up the morning newspaper constituted knee bends. Wasserstein also said one could judge the quality of a woman by how long she kept her girlfriends. “I think she’s still everywhere,” Terrence McNally said.
