The Heidi Chronicles has some of the best life-defining one-liners.

Thought I should read this as it has my name in the title. I think seeing a play is easier than reading it but the play was a quick read and mostly made sense.

A play I read for my survey of theatre class, The Heidi Chronicles wasn't my favorite. I felt that it lacked any plot or much depth in character development. It tried to tell a moving story of how a woman grows up through the 60s-80s trying to find a voice for herself, but I struggled to connect with the character at all. It jumped around a lot and was pretty confusing. It won a Pulitzer Prize, but I am not sure why. Probably because it explored new issues and was controversial. And the movie is even worse with Jamie Lee Curtis. Avoid both if you can.

Where I first fell in love with Wendy.

This one would be my favorite ones of hers and where I'd begin with her.

I picked this up for my Modern Drama class in college. I had to choose a playwright we were not studying in class to read and write a paper about. My dad suggested Wendy Wasserstein for he thought she was up my alley. Oh, how I loved this play. I read all of her plays in print for my assignment, but the Heidi Chronicles is so true, so heartbreaking, and touched me in a way few authors are able. It stands the test of time and does not date itself. I have given this to many friends during some tough times in their lives.

Listened to The Heidi Chronicles performed on audiobook for 2025 reading challenge and loved the snappy dialogue, the piercing cultural references, and the development of these characters over the decades. Enjoyable way to "read" a play.

Very dated.

Definitely one from the ever growing canon of white, educated urban women examining their lives and making some vanguard choices. It's from 1988 but could have been written last week. I'm actually comforted by the fact that a life like Heidi's--educated, accomplished and independent, yet still ambivalent and longing-- is so cliche to me by now, the stuff of long-running television series and best-selling books. And though it's tempting to dismiss cliches, I need to remember these were not the pop culture cliches my mother was bombarded with, and that's where the significance lies.

Love it.
Ia m on a wendy kick right now,.. still not done with it

Unfortunately, most of the details about the stranglehold patriarchal culture exerts on life in the United States are still relevant--but we don't talk about it much. These are interesting, funny, classic American plays.

"I hope our daughters never feel like us. I hope all our daughters feel so fucking worthwhile" (182).

"No more master penises!" (185).

"'I'm just not happy. I'm afraid I haven't been happy for some time.' I don't blame the ladies in the locker room for how I feel. I don't blame any of us. We're all concerned, intelligent, good women. It's just that I feel stranded. And I thought the whole point was that we wouldn't feel stranded. I thought the point was that we were all in this together" (232).

I really liked reading HEIDI CHRONICLES, even if some of the plays' politics felt dated and some of the comedy felt off-the-mark to me. Like, are we meant to laugh at the radical lesbian or with her? The plays are really sharp, really funny, and persistently relevant. I appreciated the specificity of the characters and the settings: Seven Sisters and Ivy League (soon-to-be) graduates, navigating their lives as "uncommon women" in New York. Yes, it's a 9-5 kind of white (Jewish) feminism, with insufficient class critique, but those are the stories Wasserstein knows, not to mention ones that feel most familiar to me, and I'm grateful she told them.