SOURCE: An interview in Interviews with Contemporary Women Playwrights, Beech Tree Books, 1987, pp. 418-31.

[Below, Wasserstein discusses the characters, language, and humor of her Uncommon Women and Others and Isn't It Romantic as well as her views about being a woman playwright and the future of American theater in general.]

[Interviewer]: Your plays are very funny. Will you talk a little about comedic writing in general, and then specifically about women's comedy?

[Wasserstein]: Well, there's always that old Woody Allen joke: When you write comedy you sit at the children's table, and when you write tragedy you sit at the adult table. But I'm not sure that's true. It's very satisfying for me to hear the audience laugh. The audience is alive, it's there. What's interesting about my plays is that they are comedies, but they are also somewhat wistful. They're not happy, nor are they farces, which is odd because I've been given offers to write sit-coms for television, and I don't think I'd be good at it. There's an undercurrent in my work.

Christopher Durang is a very dear friend, and a brilliant writer. We've collaborated on a film [When Dinah Shore Ruled the Earth] and it's interesting how our voices merge at a point. Mine tends to be more warm, and his is more startling. There's a give and take, but I'm still interested in that warmth. Collaboration is also a matter of stretching oneself, trying to get out into other forms. Chris talks about moving toward more warmth, and I find myself moving toward something darker. When we wrote the movie, we met every day, and wrote the whole script on one notepad. The writing became one voice. It was very interesting.

Do you think it is more natural for you to write "warm"?

I wouldn't say that. It's hard, talking about a female aesthetic. Best put, I once heard Marsha Norman say that women writing plays had secrets they wanted to tell. When I wrote Uncommon Women and Others, I wanted to write an all-woman play. Now given that, what am I going to write? My characters rafting down the Colorado River? It just happens that the men I've known have not gone to girls' schools for eight years. They have not had the pleasure of a course on "Gracious Living." They also did not grow up—and hopefully this has changed—with having to hear "Be a sweet girl, be a good girl." That's different nowadays. I was writing Uncommon Women from an experience I had. I don't know if that gets down to an aesthetic. When you're talking about an aesthetic, you're also talking about language.

How would you describe your stage language?

The people in my plays talk circularly. They do not talk directly. I don't know if that's women or that's Wendy. It's probably Wendy. But Wendy is a woman writer, and Uncommon Women comes from a woman's experience. It's about women sitting around talking. It's reflective. I do agree with Marsha Norman in that I think there are stories to tell that haven't been told. But you're not only telling them for women, hopefully.

You said that in working on Isn't It Romantic you were interested in the ways in which your characters became trapped by their own humor.

Janie Blumberg, the main character, is totally trapped by her own sense of humor. Some people seeing the first version of the play thought it was composed of very witty one-liners, but I felt it was how Janie talks. Janie is a character who has a problem expressing her feelings and she desperately wants to be liked.

Is Janie's humor a way of protecting herself?

It's a protection, but it's a vulnerability as well. I think that may be very female. Janie in Isn't It Romantic tells joke, joke, joke and then finally explodes. Finally, she discovers her own strength. And furthermore, there is a strength in being comedic. It's a way of getting on in the world, of taking the heat out of things. Humor is a life force.

It seemed that many of the critics missed the irony of Isn't It Romantic in its original production.

Women playwrights fall into a trap because the audience goes in expecting a "woman's play," with a feminist sensibility. Nobody goes into a man's play and thinks, "I want a man's point of view on this." They don't expect to discover the male playwright's political feeling about the sexes. That is never asked of men. For example, when Janie in Isn't It Romantic doesn't marry the doctor, it's not because she's a grand feminist, or because she loves her career, or wants to ride off on a tractor. He isn't right for her. As a playwright, first and foremost you must be true to your characters. It's the character's motivation; not me speaking for womankind. Even Uncommon Women doesn't say, "This is what I feel about women." Basically what it's saying is "I'm very confused." The characters are confused; they're also dear and kind and funny. The play asks: "Why are they so confused?" I want to show you their confusion. But it's not saying I have any answers. And what it's really not saying is "Fuck you."

Didn't you once say that Isn't It Romantic is about being funny?

Janie Blumberg's humor gives her the ability to distance herself from situations. But she simultaneously endears herself to people by being amusing. The play is about her difficulty in communicating. She's so verbal, and yet she can't talk. It's a play about speech—about the ability to speak and not to speak at the same time, which comes from the pressure women are under to be a good girl, a smart girl, and a warm girl, simultaneously.

Is Isn't It Romantic about the price of being a good, smart, warm and funny girl?

Yes, I think so.

Is Janie willing to pay the price?

Janie is strong, but she doesn't know it. Maybe she secretly knows she's strong and is frightened by it. It's not going to be easy for Janie, but she is able to move from feeling and that's interesting. In fact, that's character. Janie is stronger than her friend Harriet who has all the externals…. Harriet could be a cover on Savvy magazine. The girl who "has it all." You know, the person who gets up at eight o'clock in the morning, spends twenty minutes with her daughter and ten minutes with her husband, then they jog together, she drives to work, comes home to her wonderful life, studies French in the bathtub, and still has time to cry three minutes a day in front of the mirror.

What's troublesome, from my point of view, about the Women's Movement is that there are more check marks to earn nowadays. More pressure. What's really liberating is developing from the inside out. Having the confidence to go from your gut for whatever it is you want. Janie is able to do that.

The character of Janie's mother in Isn't It Romantic runs around saying, "I like life, life, life." She's a bit of a crackpot, but she does have a spirit. The comedy itself is a spirit. It's not an application form, a resume, it's life. This life spirit creates a current, a buoyancy, which, getting back to drama, is very important. It's important to reach the essence of that spirit in what you create. That, to me, is heroic.

In the Phoenix production of Isn't It Romantic most of the critics were upset by the fact that in the end, Janie rejected the nice Jewish doctor as a husband.

If the Jewish doctor had been a creep, and Janie decided not to marry him, the play would be a feminist statement: Good for her, see how strong she is. I wanted to write a nice man. And the play's not about the fact that she doesn't marry. I don't feel one way or another about marriage per se, though I'd like to get married one of these days….

The doctor isn't really perfect, is he?

He's not perfect at all! He tells her he wants to make alternate plans, he calls her "monkey," he buys an apartment without telling her. If these are people's ideals, after the play they should see a marriage counselor. And Janie's not scared. He is a Jewish doctor, he is darling and funny and dear, but Janie has a right to her decisions. She has a right, even if that means she's going to be alone. Even if she's wrong in her choice. Even if she's going to sit in her apartment and cry every night, if that's what she wants to do….

Since the emergence of women's issues, men's behavior has been under close scrutiny. You seem to have taken an ironic swipe at the "new male" in drawing your character, Paul Stuart [from Isn't It Romantic], whose behavior is old hat—despite his liberated rhetoric.

Things have gotten very confusing. It's true that men can exploit the new rhetoric. My character Paul Stuart is very smart when he says that when he got married, women didn't know they could have careers. He says, "Now you girls have careers and you want a wife." He's pretty much figured things out. The fact that he still gets to have a wife is interesting….

Your plays bear the message that women can't "have it all." Helen Gurley Brown says that women can have it all, if only they learn the right strategies.

I've never been one for strategies, really. Because I can't make one for myself. What should you do? Take colored index cards for everything you want, put them on a bulletin board: baby on the pink card, job on the blue? I never understood how those things work. I know there are women who have careers and babies. They work very hard. More credit to them. But the whole notion of "having it all" is ridiculous. It's a ridiculous phrase. Who's determining what "it all" is? Helen Gurley Brown? That's not fair. No man has had the pressure during the past ten years of having a different article come out every two weeks dictating how he should live his life. It changes every two weeks!

There isn't any formula for happiness. The very basic expectations of being a "good girl," a "nice girl," and a "kind girl" are still being put upon us. This is confusing because there's nothing wrong with wanting to be kind, unless it hurts you, or keeps you from doing what you want to do.

Who is responsible for this malaise? The media? The theater? The government?

I don't know. You do want to work and have children and be gorgeous. But until there's a dictum for men that says, "Have it all," it's not fair for women to feel they should. Even with all the media talk about the "new father" and "time-sharing" I've yet to see the male "have it all" article come out.

As far back as Uncommon Women you seemed to have an awareness of the way the "new male" was absorbing the liberated woman's language. Rita says, "The only problem with menstruation for men is that some sensitive schmuck could write about it for the Village Voice and become the new expert on women's inner life."

I guess to be fair, things have changed….

Doesn't it sometimes seem things have regressed?

Well, I went back to Mt. Holyoke in 1979 to see a production of Uncommon Women. I asked some of the students there what they thought about the play. One of them said, "Well, we think it's a nice period piece." I said, "Who do you think I am, Sheridan?" I mean, I had been studying there only eight years before! Then the women told me that unlike my characters, they knew what they wanted: to go to business school, or earn Ph.D.s or get married. I did think to myself, "This is becoming like Amherst College during the fifties." What's so great about that?

Can we go back to the critics for a moment? Not many of them were kind about your rather broad character, Susie Friend, the cheerful organizer in Uncommon Women. Shakespeare was allowed a few clowns, why not Wendy Wasserstein?

Lots of women I know have grown up with Susie Friends. Now that's a woman's story! There have always been these little organizers in women's colleges. Of course, now they're organizing in banks!

Is it okay for her to be a little less than three-dimensional because she is a peripheral character?

Susie Friend was a device. If you see Uncommon Women as a spectrum of women: on one end, there's Susie Friend, and on the other, there's Carter, the intellectual. That's all.

You've said that the character of Tasha Blumberg in Isn't It Romantic was close to your mother in some ways.

Well, she is and she isn't. When you base a character on someone in real life, you are always condensing, as well as trying to keep the tone consistent. Tasha is not totally like my mother. Although my mother is a danseur! There is also an assumption that every mother you write is your own mother. That's not necessarily true. You have different things to say about a mother-daughter relationship at different times of life and in different kinds of plays.

You've also said that it was easier for you to write the character Lillian, Harriet's mother, in Isn't It Romantic than Tasha Blumberg. Why is that?

Harriet's mother is an intriguing character. She was a more interesting woman to write because, of all the women in Isn't It Romantic, she is the most modern.

Some of the critics saw Lillian as bitter. Do you agree?

Lillian is not hard or bitter. She is not Faye Dunaway in Network. But she's tough. In terms of comedy, she was fun to write because her sense of humor is very different from the other characters I have written. She has a little inflection, she's very wry and dry, and that was good for me because sometimes all of my characters have similar senses of humor. Lillian knows of the world and her own life. She has made her choices and has come to terms with them. In her life, there was not room for a man. She could not "have it all." She did pay a price and what's tragic is that her daughter is now going to pay another price.

What is the price for Lillian?

Lillian had a bad marriage with a selfish man. Maybe with a more understanding man, she would have been fine. Who knows what the problem was? But in her life, she could not work it out. It wasn't worth it to her. Lillian is not a romantic. Lillian is fair. She is modern because she faces herself. What she has to say is honorable: "You tell me who has to leave the office when the kid bumps his head or slips on a milk carton." If she has to go home, time and time again, then why should she be with a man anyway? From Lillian's point of view, there is no reason to have two babies, your husband and your child. What's interesting is that Lillian, in her own way, is also a "good girl." She is not doing anything wrong. She is very American. A good mother, a hard worker …

Be more specific as to what was more difficult about writing Tasha Blumberg, the character most nearly like your own mother.

I'll tell you why she was harder to write than Lillian. I've always thought that Uncommon Women was me split into nine parts, in terms of characters. But the truth is, what was always the hardest in Uncommon Women was writing Holly, who, autobiographically, is closest to me, though there are parts of me in all of the characters. That play is twofold. First, it's play about Holly and Rita, which examines the fact that the Women's Movement has had answers for the Kates of the world (she becomes a lawyer), or the Samanthas (she gets married). But for the creative people, a movement can't provide answers. There isn't a specific space for them to move into. Holly was the hardest to write because I thought, "That's Wendy," or people will think, "THAT'S WENDY! There's the hips, there she is." And I also didn't want to self-congratulatize when drawing that character. So I find it difficult to write autobiographical characters. There aren't good guys and there aren't villains in my plays. If I were to say there's a problem with my writing, it's typified by the line in Uncommon Women when one character says, "Sometimes it's difficult having sympathy with everyone's point of view." I have been accused of being too generous to the other, less autobiographical characters in my plays, but in fact, it is hardest for me to be generous to the character that is closest to me.

You feel you have to humble yourself?

Yes. I think so. When someone said to me, "You're a playwright, why use a confused persona to represent yourself in a play? You know what you're doing. Why shouldn't the character?" I said, "I'm a playwright because I don't know everything. Because I am trying to figure things out." You do divide yourself up when you are writing. Marty Sterling, the doctor in Isn't It Romantic has the sweetest speech about marriage. Why doesn't Janie have that speech?

So Tasha Blumberg was harder to write than Lillian because she was more autobiographical?

Tasha is closer to my mother, that is true. I find my mother very funny. My mother dances six hours a day. She's, as she says, twenty-one plus, and she has not gone to Mt. Holyoke, but she is very sharp. Sometimes I find her humor funnier than my own. I saw my mother on the street the other day. I was in a taxi, and I stopped. She jumped in and said, "Oh, it's so wonderful to have children, honey. It's so wonderful to see you and I only hope that by the time you have children, you take a fertility pill and have five." Then she looked at me and said, "And that's going into the play, isn't it?" I thought, there is no way I could write anything as good as that. And she knew it. I haven't finished with my mother yet. That is the truth of all this.

Will you write about it someday?

Maybe it's where my writing is going. I don't know. Although I am proud of the last scene in Isn't It Romantic, the play doesn't deal with the pain of that subject. The real reason for comedy is to hide the pain. It is a way to cope with it. A way of staying "up." It's a privacy. You are there, and you are not there. You don't share equally about every topic. That's the truth of language, the truth of dialogue. If you did, you wouldn't be writing language, you wouldn't be writing what you are hearing, how people really talk….

So humor creates subtext?

Yes and it is also part of the delight of writing itself. When you come up with a good line, you make yourself laugh, right there at the typewriter. It gives you pleasure.

I want to say that the other reason Lillian was easier to write than Tasha was that Lillian was someone on my mind. She is contemporary. She's an image that is closer to, if not me, then me ten years from now. She reflects a conflict that I think about a lot. Men and children. Having children alone, and whether or not that's possible. Tasha Blumberg—forget my mother—is from another world, a different time, which is harder to capture. Lillian is closer to my world. I have considered writing plays about the young Tasha at Radio City, the dancer. And at one point in Isn't It Romantic, Janie gets up and starts to tap dance. There is an image of a person alone, who dances. Janie's mother is a dancer, and that is the gift from mother to daughter.

You studied dramatic writing at Yale. Were there other women in the playwriting program?

Susan Nanons was there, Sharon Stockard-Martin, Grace McKeaney … they are all very talented women. But no, the playwriting program was not overflowing with women.

Did you take a lot of flak for writing Uncommon Women, a play with an all-female cast?

I made the decision to write a play with all women after seeing all that Jacobean drama, where a man kisses the poisoned lips of a woman's skull and drops dead. I though, "I can't identify with this." I wanted to write a play where all the women were alive at the curtain call. And I had seen my friend, Alma Cuervo, whom I love dearly, have to play the pig-woman in Bartholomew Fair, a panda in General Gorgeous … I thought, What's going on?

Were people shocked by Uncommon Women?

Well, the play was not in as good a shape as it is now. I do remember someone who saw the Yale production saying that I was a "subset" of Christopher Durang. Chris came to my defense and said, "When I write my play about an all woman's college, you can call me." It was shocking to me.

You said in an interview that the point of view at Yale was that "the pain in the world is a man's pain."

Though women are often said to write "small tragedies," they are our tragedies, and therefore large, and therefore legitimate. They deserve a stage.

Why didn't Uncommon Women, with all of its success, move to Broadway?

We had one offer, which is an interesting story. The producer told me that at the end of the play things should be different. He said the play was too wistful. He thought, that at the end, when everyone asks Holly, "What's new with you?" she should pull out a diamond ring and say, "Guess what? I'm going to marry Dr. Mark Silverstein." I thought, "Well, she'd have to have a lobotomy, and I'd have to have a lobotomy too." So the play never went to Broadway. It does stick in my craw because Uncommon Women is a very good play and it had such an amazing cast. But sometimes you've opened a door, and when you go to the next work, people listen. Don't I sound old and wise? The play should have moved to Broadway!

Is Uncommon Women a political play?

It's political because it is a matter of saying, "You must hear this." You can hear it in an entertaining fashion, and you can hear it from real people, but you must know and examine the problems these women face. It all comes from the time I was in college, which was a time of great fervor. There used to be pieces in that play that were very political. The most political part was when Mark Rudd came to Mt. Holyoke. In that version, Susie Friend had a strike speech and even organized a strike for Mark Rudd.

Why did you take that out?

Well, I took it out because I thought that it would open the play up to all the questions of Vietnam, and that's another play. I really wanted to do something so that women's voices could be heard. I'm happy I did that. I can remember the 1969 Cambodia strike. Simultaneously, Amherst College was accepting women for the first time. There were twenty-three women and twelve hundred men. That was a glorious experience. I didn't go to the dining hall for two weeks. I was scared to death! The first night I was there, the men were rating us! I remember going to the student-faculty meeting and saying, "You have to let us stay here." The speaker seemed to think this was a very selfish issue. He said, "We have Kent State, we have Cambodia … what's the big deal about a little girl wanting to stay at Amherst College?" I thought, "This is one of the most important things happening in terms of long-range changes for women." In fact, Amherst College went coed two years later. That's just an isolated incident. I do think that that whole period has not yet been resolved. Maybe things are regressing. I try to find answers to these issues through my plays.

Your character Leilah in Uncommon Women, says, "Sometimes I think I just need to live in a less competitive culture." How do you think that relates to being an artist in America?

When I was at Yale, I was frightened to death. I remember years later telling Christopher Durang that I felt like I was going from platform to platform, trying to catch the train to Moscow. I went from platform six to platform seven and I kept missing the train. I had no idea what I was doing at drama school. Everyone else I knew was going to law school or marrying lawyers, except for my immediate friends, who seemed as cuckoo as me. I really couldn't explain my feelings to anyone. If you tell someone you are a playwright, they say, "So what do you do for a living?" Or, if you're a successful playwright, they say, "Gee, isn't that glamorous?" You think, "Yeah, it's real exciting. I sit in a room alone every day and I write. Thrilling!" Either way, you are in an odd spot. It doesn't place you in the margins, but you are not in the mainstream of society. It certainly doesn't make for a secure life. But it does at least make for a life of doing what you want to do. I feel very lucky to be able to do that.

You seem to make a plea for community in your work….

Yes. Or at least, a plea to establish your own kind of family. Maybe my family is Chris Durang and Ted Talley and André Bishop. It could well be, but again, that's pretty marginal. You can't go to weddings and say "My family is Chris Durang, and Ted Talley and André Bishop…."

Would you tell us something about Playwrights Horizons?

I am very lucky because that theater is my home, and it has made a tremendous difference to me, having someplace that I know I can work out of. I've had a long association with the people there. Life is competitive, but Playwrights Horizons is not. It is a community, and that has always been very important to me.

What happens when you are in rehearsal with a play? Are you able to maintain sufficient artistic control over your work?

It depends on the production and on the play. I was there through everything with Uncommon Women. I was at the [Eugene] O'Neill [National Playwrights Conference], the Phoenix Theatre, and when they did the television production for PBS. I had a good relationship with the director, Steve Robman.

You felt your intentions were given enough attention?

Yes. But subsequently, I have seen productions of Uncommon Women around the country and I can't tell you the sort of horrifying things I've seen. It's unbelievable.

How do you react to a bad production?

It depends on whether you've been involved in the actual production. Sometimes you just go to see the play. That's taught me that there is a point at which you have to let a play go. It was hard for me to let Uncommon Women go because it had such a short run in New York. I like to be able to go to a theater for more than a two-and-a-half-week run.

You don't experience anger in rehearsal? You've never had to fight for your intentions?

Well, yes, sure I have. Rehearsal is a very important time to learn not to be such a good girl. I think you have to learn to speak up, because the point is, it's your play, and you do know something about it. It is very important to pick the right director. That is step one. And you can't be a good girl about picking a director either. You can't pick somebody just so everyone will like you. You have to pick someone you respect and who will be right for the play.

Have you ever worked with a woman director?

Susan Dietz directed Uncommon Women in California.

Did you feel she brought any special insights to the work?

I did like the production a lot. I don't know how to answer that question because I was assigned Steve Robman at the O'Neill and he stayed with the production throughout. It wasn't a conscious choice for a male director or against a female director. It is very important that there be more women directors, and that more women directors are encouraged, which goes all the way back to the question of how many women directing students there are at Yale. I do think what you want is a good director.

What did you mean, earlier, when you spoke of "letting go" of the play?

I told Chris the other night that I've had the sensation, with both Uncommon Women and Isn't It Romantic of waiting for the play to embrace me. I keep waiting for the play to give back what I've given. And it cannot happen. You can get depressed. Because if you're a good writer, you're generous and you give it everything and people laugh and applaud—but still, the play is inanimate. It cannot reach out and embrace you. That's hard to come to terms with. You can follow a play around the country waiting for that to happen. But it can't—and finally, you have to separate from it and just send it out.

Is the closest you can get to that embrace hearing the spontaneous laughter from the audience?

Maybe. But during Uncommon Women, there was something special among those actresses and me. I can remember being in the dressing room with Swoosie Kurtz and Jill Eikenberry and Alma Cuervo, and Anna Levine, Glenn Close and Ellen Parker and there was the sense of embracing, a sense of all starting out together … again, that feeling of community. And I would say I feel it more at the laughter than at the applause.

Why did you decide to study playwriting at Yale instead of attending Columbia Business School, where you had also been accepted?

You know, I even sent Columbia a deposit! When I graduated from Mt. Holyoke I came to New York and took writing courses at City College. I studied with Israel Horovitz and Joseph Heller. While studying playwriting with Israel, I had my first play done at Playwrights Horizons—this was back when it was at the YMCA on Fifty-second Street. I applied to both programs because I felt "I've got to make a living." I was living at home at the time. I thought I'd go to business school, then get a job in Chicago and everything would be fine. But when I got into Yale School of Drama, I thought, "Playwriting is something I really want to do. It's worth a shot." But it was hard. It took me a long time to take myself seriously. I mean, it still takes me a long time to take myself seriously….

Did Durang and Talley have difficulty taking themselves seriously?

I don't know. I don't think they thought something was wrong with them because they weren't in law school or married to a lawyer. I thought something was wrong with me. I thought I was a Ford Pinto. Now, I've gotten used to it. I'm used to living a life of eighty percent security.

Does a Guggenheim Fellowship help with that feeling of eighty percent security?

Yes. That was the best thing since Uncommon Women. It is a certified "We believe in you." I have a funny story about that. In October, my father said, "So what are you doing?" I said, "Applying for a Guggenheim." He said, "What's that?" I told him it was a foundation that gives artists money to finish their work. Then he said, "No daughter of mine's going on welfare!" I'm the only person whose parents are going to disinherit her for winning a Guggenheim!

Did you see Uncommon Women as a "non-play," as some of the reviewers did?

Uncommon Women is not a conventionally structured play. On a simple level, it moves through the seasons of the year. I do not see that play as presentational. It's like an odd sort of documentary. I am more interested in content than form. Uncommon Women is episodic. I don't know what actually happens in that play … they graduate.

Quite a lot happens….

But it is an emotional action. And I tend to go on big canvases. My favorite authors are Russian: Tolstoy, Chekhov … the whole idea of presenting a social life and a personal life interests me. I also love Ibsen.

There's much reference recently to "The new woman playwright"—Mel Gussow's article in The New York Times Magazine [May 1, 1983], for example. Is it really that women are newcomers to playwriting, or is it the attention that's new?

I think it's the attention that's new. I do think there are women who open doors, like Marsha Norman. I don't know if her play 'night, Mother could have won a Pulitzer Prize twenty years ago. So maybe there is a little more attention nowadays. But at the same time, when I saw that article, I thought, "Where is Corinne Jacker?" And that article also brings up the whole issue of whether women playwrights are a separate category. We are all playwrights. I think that is very important. But for now, any minority group must be labeled. Our idea of a playwright is a white male—then all the others are separated into subsets: black playwrights, gay playwrights, women playwrights, and so on. The point is, we are all in it together. But I listen to my plays, and as I hear them, I distance myself, and I still think, "A woman wrote this."

Are female playwrights becoming less political than they were in the sixties and seventies?

It depends on what you see as political. Politics on the largest level is from each according to their ability. Nine girls taking a curtain call can be seen as political. It's important in terms of feeling legitimate. So is the fact that men can come to my plays and laugh, and that some girl from New Jersey comes to the play and says, "This is my story." And if my story can reach her, maybe she can tell her story. That is very important. Comedy does not segregate the political.

Do you feel that British women playwrights are more likely to be overt in their politics?

That could be true. It could have to do with being brought up in a society where feminism has been connected to broader political issues. Maybe feminism has taken a different shape there. Caryl Churchill is a wonderful playwright. Her Top Girls was great. The way she took the larger political scope and then looked at the personal was fantastic.

Can you give us a summation?

It is very important that women keep writing plays for many reasons. The theater is the home of the individual voice—at least in dramatic form. It is not in movies or television. I think the work of women in America is evolving. For myself, I am trying to work on structure, on comedy, and on being able to create a feeling of community. That can only happen in the theater.

Are you optimistic about the state of American theater?

Oddly enough, I am. Because you do not write by committee in theater. The way that artists are discriminated against does have an effect on your pocketbook. Getting a Guggenheim helped this year, but you know, I am not making millions. The Guggenheim is not the money you would make as a first-year lawyer. That's how our society works. It makes you feel marginal. But, as somebody who believes in the individual voice, I still believe in the theater and what can happen there. I believe in comedy, in its spirit, and in its ability to lift people off the ground. I also think there are stories to tell, and as a woman writer, I want to tell those stories, to work out those conflicts. I want to take these conflicts from the political down to the personal. And the personal level, to me, is somewhat comedic. I hope to write a play that is going to be a history of the Women's Movement, which is a serious thing to take on. I want to write about someone who went through it and how it affected them personally—I want to explore the reverberations. Because I want to understand, and sometimes I understand better by writing….