Ringwald Theatre Begins The Wendy Chronicles this Month

The Ringwald Theatre will pay special tribute to Pulitzer prize-winning playwright Wendy Wasserstein with The Wendy Chronicles, a series of staged readings of her best known plays.  Beginning in January and continuing through the coming months, four of her plays will be presented as a way of examining the arc of her career and the special impact she had on the theatre community.  Wasserstein, whose works portrayed the challenging and complex lives of contemporary women, died on Jan. 30, 2006 of lymphoma.

 

In conjunction with the publication of Julie Salamon’s 2010 biography, Wendy and the Lost Boys, Ringwald artistic director Joe Bailey felt the need to expose Ms. Wasserstein’s plays to audiences who may not know them or who have not seen them in awhile. “Unfortunately, she doesn’t get produced much anymore.  I have always adored her plays and am excited to revisit them.  We’re starting with her first big play this month, then later in the year we’re hitting two more of the major plays in her canon, and finishing with her final play, Third, which has not been seen locally.”

 

Uncommon Women and Others will begin the cycle on Saturday, January 21 at 3pm.  The other plays to get future staged readings will be The Heidi Chronicles (directed by Joe Bailey), The Sisters Rosensweig (directed by Jamie Richards), and Third (directed by Matthew Turner Shelton).

 

Uncommon Women and Others focuses on five old friends meeting for lunch seven years after graduation from a prestigious women’s college. One is a successful corporate lawyer, another a housewife and mother. Also on hand: a perennial student, an insurance seminar hostess and a brash would-be writer. The reunion sets the scene for a series of flashbacks to their senior year when they were part of the “uncommon” group who were going to be pretty amazing by the time they were 30.

 

Uncommon Women and Others was Wasserstein's first major success as a playwright, written in 1977, the off-Broadway performance featured future stars Glenn Close, Swoosie Kurtz, and Jill Eikenberry and was later adapted for public television, with Meryl Streep stepping into Close's role.

 

The Ringwald reading features Cassandra McCarthy-Fogle, Kelly Rossi, Mary Byrnes, Christa Coulter, Leah Smith, Dinah Lynch, Kathryn Ruth Mayer and Inga Wilson. The reading is directed by Jamie Warrow.

 

Uncommon Women and Others performs on Saturday, January 21^st at 3pm at The Ringwald Theatre. Donations are accepted at the door. Reservations may be made online at www.TheRingwald.com.  The box office opens 45 minutes before performances.