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Is it time for a Wendy Wasserstein renaissance?
Is it time for a reassessment of Wendy Wasserstein’s 1997 An American Daughter, which she described as “darker” than her 20th century hits? On Aug. 11, when La Femme Theatre Productions opens the first major New York revival at the Signature Center’s Irene Diamond Stage, audiences will find out.
Wasserstein was among the most commercially successful female theater artists of the 20th century. Along with Lorraine Hansberry and Lillian Hellman, she was one of few women to open a play directly on Broadway. According to an interview with Wasserstein in The Paris Review, she received the biggest advance ever given to a straight play for 1992’s The Sisters Rosensweig. (It lost the Tony for Best Play to Angels in America.)
And yet since her death from cancer at age 55 in 2006, (the same year as Betty Friedan, who scolded her about the end of her 1989 play, The Heidi Chronicles, where Heidi gives up her career to adopt a child) she has been sidelined. In the 1980s and early 1990s, Heidi, and her other big plays, An Uncommon Woman and Others, Isn’t It Romantic?, and The Sisters Rosensweig were considered paradigm changing. They told the stories of elite women navigating the enormous social changes second-wave feminism wrought. No other American playwright so consistently created worlds in which women — Jewish and not — juggled relationships and careers.
Written in the mid-1990s, An American Daughter is different. Sometimes described as Wasserstein’s most political play, it was her first work to be set outside of New York. The Beltway comedy-drama emerged out of her frustration at the backlash against feminism and the scandals tanking women in the Clinton era, such as Hilary’s Cookiegate and Zoe Baird’s Nannygate. And while An American Daughter is, like Wasserstein’s earlier work, autobiographical, it sounds different. Angrier. While Wasserstein was writing it, she was struggling to have a child as her sister, Sandra, was battling cancer. (A year after An American Daughter, she would conceive.)
The Hilary/Zoe figure is Lyssa Dent Hughes, a nominee for surgeon general whose life gets overturned by a media scandal after she admits on camera that she ignored a jury summons. The DC types who line up or fall away include her best friend, her husband, her father, a pro-life senator from Indiana, her best friend, a Black Jewish oncologist, a gay conservative modeled after Andrew Sullivan and a third- wave feminist modeled after Naomi Wolf.
Jean Lichty, the artistic director of La Femme, who plays Lyssa in the revival, believes An American Daughter deserves another look. “This is a deeply felt important play about social, political and class divisions,” she said in an interview.
Maybe so. Although the play’s politics sound quintessentially 1990s, it also anticipates our mob and media driven politics. After Lyssa describes her mother in an interview as “an ordinary Indiana housewife,” women in Indiana turn against her. It doesn’t matter how great her liberal policies are.
Still, I wonder if this production can overcome Wasserstein’s conflicted reputation. The critic Adam Kirsch pointed out years ago that she “is a descendant not just of Neil Simon but of all the family playwrights of the 1950s.” Yet unlike Simon and, say Arthur Miller, during her lifetime, critics derided her for being too glib. About her 1992 play, The Sisters Rosensweig, the critic and director Robert Brustein said “wisecracks come too easily to her.” A 1994 New York Times article wondered how a play about “bickering middle aged Jewish sisters” was selling out.
Some producers judged her plays “too New York,” which she retorted was code for too Jewish. Even worse, magazine features regularly mentioned her giggling, her weight, her single status, and her age, as though they explained something. She’s “pushing 40,” Newsweek proclaimed in 1989. A 1993 New York Magazine profile announced: “She’s finally starting to feel comfortable with herself. She recently lost 40 pounds.” These details remind me of the ones used to discredit Betty Friedan. They point to the way the press collaborated in minimizing women writers well after second-wave feminism supposedly eradicated it.
Moving towards a new way of writing
About the 1997 production of An American Daughter, Wasserstein told an interviewer she had wanted to write something that “was not just Jewish jokes.” And in part because the Jewish comedy and characters in it are darker than, say, The Sisters Rosenswieg, some critics judged it to be her strongest play. But it’s ultimately a strange piece of theater. It seems like it is moving towards another way of writing, which we didn’t get to see because she didn’t live long enough.
Like Heidi Holland, Lyssa, the central figure in An American Daughter is not Jewish. She is a fifth-generation descendant of Ulysses S. Grant. And yet the play, which is set during Rosh Hashanah, contains more direct Jewish references than Wasserstein’s earlier ones. The Jewish characters operate differently — the stakes for outsiders trying to be inside are different in political circles of court. But the balancing act feels most acute in one character who is unique in Wasserstein’s oeuvre — Lyssa’s BFF, Judith B. Kaufman, a Black Jewish oncologist (and a convert) who quips that she “has endured every in vitro and hormone treatment known to modern medicine.” (In a 1995 reading of the play, Whoopi Goldberg played this role.)
Wasserstein wrote in the introduction to the published version that Kaufman — one of her few Black characters — is the one “emotionally closest” to her. Daniel Sullivan, who directed the 1997 production, said in an interview that, with Kaufman, “she [Wasserstein] is drawing so much from herself.”
And yet this is not just autobiography plopped on stage. Perhaps she was influenced by Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, which ran on Broadway in 1992. Regardless, Wasserstein engineers some of the play’s most unnerving tonal swerves around Kaufman, swerves that bind questions of gender to those of race in ways that are unlike anything she had ever written. One minute, Kaufman is confessing to Lyssa her failure to drown herself during the Jewish ritual of Tashlich, the festival of regrets, during Rosh Hashanah. The next she is making a joke. And a few lines later, Lyssa is delivering a harsh rebuke that seems more like something from a play of ideas.
This sequence starts with Kaufman recounting to her friend the ritual where Jews throw breadcrumbs into water to absolve their bad acts. As she tells Lyssa, she throws her muffin top into the Potomac chanting “‘…Oh Lord, my God, the Lord is one, I’ve wasted my life,’ and I jump in.” Then she sees a box of donut holes, which cheers her up. She gets out of the water. But here Lyssa seems to snap: “What gives you the audacity to believe you’ve failed if you can’t make life or stop death?”
The moment seems like more than a friend’s rebuke and more like a white paper on the aftermath of feminism. And it may be what made critics of the 1997 production write sharp critiques such as Wasserstein “doesn’t know entirely where she’s heading or how to get there.” But I think such a hairpin swerve — a moment where it’s not clear if you are supposed to laugh or gasp — is exciting. I think Wasserstein wants me to be unsettled by Kaufman. She wants me to ask what it means to be a Jew and what success and failure mean. Such moments are there to show how desperate women are, how hard they are on each other and themselves. And how in the drive to remake the world, we have misunderstood what’s important. And how although there are fewer ways to live than we think, we still have choices.
Another Jewish character, Lyssa’s philandering professor husband, Walter Abramson, is only slightly less unnerving. He studies the sociology of the elites and declares himself agnostic. (“I was Jewish until I was bar mitzvahed.”) He is the opposite of the callow Scoop Rosenberg in The Heidi Chronicles who abandons Heidi Holland for a Jewish girl. Abramson has amplified his assimilation by marrying a non-Jew. And — I wonder if I’m imagining it —Wasserstein seems to link his philandering to his assimilation.
Navigating the upheaval of a generation
Wasserstein’s Jewish roots were, like many Jewish artists and writers born after the Holocaust, complex. She was born in 1950 in Flatbush, the youngest child of immigrant parents. Her father, Morris, ran a successful textile factory with his brother and patented velveteen. In Wasserstein’s telling, her mother, Lola, sounds like a cliché, making Wendy take dance lessons and comparing her unfavorably to her conventionally successful siblings, Georgette, and Bruce, who would become a financier. Less cliché are two half siblings ‚ the children of her mothers previous marriage to her uncle ‚ Sandra, and a developmentally disabled half-brother Abner who she first met in her twenties.
The family moved to the Upper East Side when Wasserstein was 12. She attended The Calhoun School, where she wrote skits to get out of Phys Ed. Next was Mt. Holyoke, where she got terrible grades. In 1973, she was accepted to The David Geffen School of Drama. She was the only female playwright in her class. “I decided I wanted to see an all-women’s curtain call,” she recalled at a moment when hyper-masculine playwrights were all the rage. “There were an awful lot of would-be Sam Shepards, and Wendy felt a little left out,” her friend, the playwright Chris Durang, told The Paris Review.
In 1989, after The Heidi Chronicles won a Pulitzer and a Tony for best play (the next woman to win the Tony for Best Play would be Bess Wohl, whose 2026 play, Liberation, about second-wave feminism, closed early) radical feminist journalists and scholars scorned Wasserstein’s realist dramaturgy, charged her of ridiculing the movement, of writing heroines who were more acted upon than acting. Although after her death some reconsidered when the last major revival of Heidi in 2015, closed early, The New York Times proclaimed that the ideal of “having it all” no longer captured anything about the zeitgeist.
It’s true that Lyssa doesn’t so much rail against the unfairness of the media circus destroying her as tolerate it. Until she doesn’t. (Some critics of previous productions called her a cipher and others that the play was too topical.) But to me it’s real. Moreover, I can’t think of another play showing middle-aged women in a larger context than The Family Drama. Much less one dealing with the backlash against second-wave feminism with multiple Jewish characters.
Moreover, Wasserstein’s realist dramaturgy may be old-fashioned but few American playwrights deal so frankly with daughters — including Jewish daughters —navigating the upheaval of the 60s and 70s and sometimes ending up alone. Wasserstein never underestimates the cost of sticking to your principles. Lena Dunham has said she was fascinated by Heidi.
An old play in a new era
Wasserstein herself thought the negative reviews of An American Daughter were sexist. In 1997, most of the first night theater critics were men. Newsday’s Linda Winer, the only one to review An American Daughter positively, described it as reminiscent of George Bernard Shaw. I think a better comparison is the one Wasserstein herself made. She called Henrik Ibsen her “postfeminist muse.” Like Ibsen’s characters, Wasserstein’s can seem like symbols one minute and real people the next. They often wind up alone with their convictions.
It will be interesting to see how the play is received now, when the chief critics at The New York Times and The New Yorker are women. And interesting too to see how audiences respond to it in a postfeminist world where Jewish plays of the moment are about Oct. 7 or the Holocaust.
Plus ça change is the point of view of Jean Lichty, who became interested in the play after Kamala Harris lost the presidential election. “I was devastated by Hillary. I was twice as devastated by Kamala,” she said in an interview, adding that the play’s rage appealed to her.
Lichty stresses that the cast is older in this production. “I think that raises the stakes.”
But the big difference is that the script is revised from the 1997 one, especially Act II. The production weaves together eight drafts that Wasserstein did during rehearsals of the play in regional productions, including Chicago’s Organic Theatre, and the 2000 teleplay starring Christine Lahti. (It’s worth mentioning that, even revised, the regional productions received mixed reviews.)
The Wasserstein estate approved the changes and Andre Bishop, the former artistic director of Playwrights Horizons and co-executor of the estate, came to rehearsal and gave notes.
Maybe the most notable change is that whereas in the 1997 New York production, Lyssa stays with her cheating husband, the 2026 version ends with the two female friends.
JUDITH: What will you do now?
LYSSA: I don’t know. Same as you. Rise and continue.
She is quoting a letter from Ulysses S. Grant to his wife, Julia Dent Grant, for whom Lyssa is named.
If this ending seems ambivalent it is also real. It gives a consolation that doesn’t seem phony: You have to live with regrets and compromises and go on.
The post Is it time for a Wendy Wasserstein renaissance? appeared first on The Forward.
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‘Remember 7.10.23’: In Israel, Hostage Square bears few remnants of a national crisis – but trauma lingers
(JTA) — TEL AVIV – In the days following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks, the families of the hostages held in Gaza turned the plaza next to the Tel Aviv Museum of Art into what became known as Hostage Square.
Filled with “Bring Them Home” signs and hostage posters, yellow ribbons and yellow balloons, the square hosted demonstrations and press conferences.
It was here that the families created a replica of a Hamas tunnel and established the Empty Shabbat Table, a haunting art installation to remind visitors – and especially the Israeli government – that their loved ones still languished in Gaza. And it was here, two years later, that the families and thousands of other Israelis gathered to watch the last of the living hostages return to Israel.
Three years after the attack on Simchat Torah, there are few remnants of the hostage families’ encampment: the tunnel replica, a few yellow ribbons and a sign bearing the words “Remember 7.10.23.” During the days leading up to the third anniversary, some paid respects to the few hostage families who set up a sukkah on the square, but the plaza was nearly empty.
By all outward appearances, Israelis have moved on.
Yet beneath the surface, many are still grappling with the trauma of Oct. 7 and the multifront war the attack triggered.
In a Channel 12 TV poll in June, 74% of respondents said they fear that terrorists will carry out another large-scale attack, and 66% said they want the Oct. 7 attack to be investigated by a state commission of inquiry.
Last month, in an Israel Democracy Institute survey, 68% of Jewish Israelis and 32% of Arab Israelis said the Oct. 7 attack is a “central factor” in deciding which party to vote for, behind security and the high cost of living.
In the café at the edge of Hostage Square, Isaac Badra, a 33-year-old realtor, recalled how he and his wife opened their home to their upstairs neighbors because the Badras live on the “safer” ground floor and their Tel Aviv building has no bomb shelter. The trauma persists, he said.
He vividly remembered the air-raid sirens, reserve soldiers rushing to base on Simchat Torah and the frantic phone calls with his wife’s family near the Gaza border as Hamas attacked Sderot, where they live.
“My wife’s mother said she saw terrorists in the street, but I couldn’t grasp what she was saying,” he recalled. When he turned on the TV, he realized the scale of the attack. “I locked all of our doors and our windows and prayed.”
Three years later, Badra said, “When I hear noises outside, I jump. When Arab construction workers shout out to each other, I jump. And now I doubt whether my friends abroad really have our back.”
Roni Shoval, a defense industry worker from northern Israel not far from the Lebanon border, said the trauma of the past three years “is still inside me.” He called the attacks “a modern Holocaust for Israel.”
Even three years later, “I’m not ready to visit Nova,” he said, referring to the memorial at the site of the music festival where Hamas murdered 378 people and abducted dozens more. “Look, I’m getting goosebumps now just talking about it.”
Shoval, 54, is still doing IDF reserve duty, years beyond the maximum age because the IDF needs his expertise. He doesn’t want the same for his children.
“My son will be drafted soon,” he said. “Back in the day, I served in Gaza and Lebanon. I don’t want him sent to Gaza and Lebanon.”
At a nearby table, 24-year-old Yael Meyer sat with classmates from Tel Aviv University. The attack the previous day aboard a flydubai flight bound for Tel Aviv, they said, only reinforced the trauma of Oct. 7 and the war that followed.
“I’m always aware that there could be another terror attack. But I always had the sense that the security services would protect us.” Since Oct. 7, that trust in the government is gone, she said.
Her friend Talia Zecler, also 24, said she felt “helpless” after the attack. “I was angry at my country. Entire families were killed or kidnapped,” she added. “It feels like we’re living in an endless war.”
Her heart races when the sound of a passing motorcycle resembles an air-raid siren. But at the same time, she still marvels at the bravery and solidarity of ordinary Israelis in the months after the attack.
“People became more connected after Oct. 7. They volunteered everywhere, including at Hostage Square,” she said. “There was a sense of unity, that we’re in this together, and we saw it on the flydubai flight.
“This is the Israeli spirit.”
Sitting in the café with her parents, S., a 19-year-old IDF soldier, said the trauma she experienced on Oct. 7 at her home in Jerusalem “is minuscule” compared to the experience of those whose families were directly harmed by the attacks on the Gaza border and, later, attacks by Hezbollah, Iran and the Houthis.
“Sure, when I hear a plane flying in the sky, I think, will there be another war with Iran? I immediately go there,” said S., whose name could not be published due to military protocol.
But as the country prepares to vote for the next government on Oct. 27, she plans to channel her hopes and dreams in the voting booth.
“The most important things for me right now are to have a national investigation of what happened on Oct. 7 and to repair our relations not only with our immediate neighbors but everywhere. We don’t live in a vacuum,” she said.
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Antisemitic flyers turn up in Ontario neighborhood where a man charged at a synagogue two weeks ago
(JTA) — Police in the Ontario town where a gunman charged the Sons of Jacob synagogue on Yom Kippur are investigating antisemitic flyers distributed around the synagogue’s neighborhood..
In an Oct. 1 press release, Belleville, Ontario, police encouraged those with tips or video evidence to contact police.
“We recognize that incidents such as this can cause concern within our community,” the police said. “Hate has no place in Belleville, and the Belleville Police Service remains in contact with community leaders and are taking proactive steps to support the safety and well-being of residents.”
Police have not identified the distributor of the flyers, and no arrests have been made.
The Canadian Jewish News published photos of the flyers, which included antisemitic conspiracy theories, such as “every single aspect of the Covid agenda is Jewish” and “every single aspect of abortion is Jewish.”
Coming so soon after the attack, the flyers rattled Sons of Jacob congregant Sari Watson, 40. “It’s so incredibly concerning to see this sort of antisemitic rhetoric surface, less than two weeks after the shooting,” said Watson, who skipped attending services the night of the shooting because she was wary of the increase in antisemitic violence in Canada. “This is a sign that this sort of hatred has infiltrated the public consciousness here.”
Belleville police chief Murray Rodd has confirmed the Sept. 20 attack was deliberate.
“This was an exclusive threat to our Jewish community,” he said soon after the attack. “There is no indication there was a threat to any other population or segment of our community, and it was a hate-motivated crime.”
According to police and Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit, the shooter, identified as 29-year-old Sean Ward of nearby Quinte West, Ontario, opened fire on Const. Jeff Smith, who was stationed outside the synagogue as security. Smith, who was seriously wounded, returned fire, and another officer who arrived at the scene also fired at Ward. Ward later died of his injuries. Smith remains hospitalized.
A GoFundMe site dedicated to Smith’s recovery has raised nearly $1 million on behalf of the Canadian Jewish community.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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From ‘false flag’ to ‘Bibiwood’: flydubai attack spawns conspiracy theories
(JTA) — JERUSALEM – A young girl steps out of the bathroom on a flight and glimpses a bloody scene unfolding in the cockpit: the co-pilot is attacking the pilot with an axe. She screams for help.
A handful of unarmed passengers, still tanned from their vacations in Thailand, rushes by her, successfully grabbing the control wheel as the plane plunges 17,000 feet. They also manage to save the life of the bloodied pilot.
It sounds like the climactic scene from a high-stakes action movie, yet by now most people know that this is what happened last week on a Tel Aviv-bound flydubai jet.
Or did it happen? It is so fantastical that maybe it is just a fabricated story or an event staged by Israel’s Mossad? That is what millions of people on social media seem to be suggesting in online posts.
Even after nonstop media interviews with the hero pilot or with the ordinary passengers who took control of the plane, conspiracy theories about the attempted hijacking are swirling. Some mockingly insist the event never happened. Others say it was a false flag operation. And many of the comments invoke deep-rooted antisemitic tropes.
Some accuse Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of staging the incident for political survival or to divert attention from the war in Gaza. Others say it was an attempt by Israel to play the victim or garner global sympathy.
“Brought to you by Bibiwood Productions,” wrote one person commenting on a CNN report posted on Facebook.
“Just stop already,” wrote another person beneath CBS’s clip of interviews with the men who fought the rogue co-pilot posted to Instagram. “It’s seriously embarrassing at this point. We didn’t believe it when the news broke; we didn’t believe it the first time you aired this interview. Reposting clips will not convince anyone with half a brain.”
“Bulls–t,” wrote another person.
Monitoring online responses as the attempted hijacking was unfolding last Wednesday, the Combat Antisemitism Movement’s Antisemitism Research Center found that the first conspiracy theories were posted just 67 minutes after the plane sent its first distress signal.
Within five hours, the ARC documented 1,000 hostile posts, and after 12 hours, 2,963 posts. The posts generated at least 30,000 likes and more than 3 million views.
“The fact is that internet companies have promoted a much more open free-speech policy these days, especially on Instagram and X,” said Sacha Roytman, CAM’s Chief Executive Officer, adding that it’s not just the posts that are problematic but also the comments they generate.
“They [the social media platforms] don’t control information anymore; they don’t want to control it,” he said.
Roytman added that another factor is that agitators – likely from Russia or Qatar – have learned how to build an effective bot network to spread misinformation. When the first post appeared after only 67 minutes, he said, “we knew it was not a human posting because no one cares to go online and start posting [that fast].”
“They were activated extremely fast and set up the stage to create an environment that’s toxic enough for other users to be inspired to find the stories they need to build their own claims,” Roytman said.
Amit Cohen, a research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies and an expert in cyberattacks and digital fraud, said that during such events, “there is often a gap between what the public wants to know and the amount of verified information available at that moment.
“That is exactly the kind of environment in which rumors and conspiracy theories can develop very quickly,” she said. “In this case, claims appeared online within a short period of time suggesting that the event did not happen as reported, that the videos were fake, or that the incident was staged or a false flag.
“Posts like these are not necessarily the original source of the conspiracy theory,” she said, “but they can function as ignition points.”
Cohen said it was important to distinguish between those who “deliberately create disinformation and those who spread it.”
“Someone may share misleading content simply because it fits what they already believe, because it provokes a strong emotional reaction, or even because it seems interesting or ‘worth looking into,’” she said. “They do not need to know where the message originated, and they certainly do not need to be part of any coordinated campaign.”
Gal Yavetz, a senior lecturer of Artificial Intelligence at Bar-Ilan University, said the flydubai story was so incredible, it left many people “looking for answers.”
“Inevitably, some people will accept more natural explanations, and others, who are more extreme, will go and blame the Jews for it,” Yavetz said, pointing out that similar conspiracy theories arose over the summer when thousands of Moroccan nationals flooded Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta in July.
“Every time there is something that we can’t really understand, that we can’t really explain, we blame the usual suspects — the Jews, the Jews who control the world, the Jews who are the natural scapegoat,” he said, adding that since the Oct. 7, 2023, deadly Hamas raids in Israel, conspiracy theories have become commonplace and all it takes is for a handful of people to start questioning the veracity of the events.
Posts by Egyptian-born, LA-based political satirist Bassem Youssef, known for his controversial comments about Israel and Jews, are a good example. In a series of videos, he mocks the flydubai event and raises suspicions about what really happened.
In one clip posted on X and viewed 130,000 times, Youssef, whose career was supercharged in 2012 when he was boosted by Jewish comedian Jon Stewart, even terms it a “Hollywood production,” drawing on what critics say are familiar antisemitic conspiracy tropes about Jewish control of Hollywood and, by extension, the world.
“I wish it was chatbots, but the truth of the matter is that social media is a breeding ground for this kind of discourse,” said Yavetz, who specializes in social media, political communication and the spread of misinformation and disinformation online.
“They are definitely helping to spread and to reshare most of this misinformation and disinformation, but we know from previous studies that it is really just a negligible number compared to just regular people who are going to the more extreme sides and just taking their own outrageous opinions to social media just because it is now so easy to do so,” he said.
“You don’t really need to do much; you just need to make sure that you can stand behind your claims, and all of a sudden an outrageous post will have 1,000 likes, then 10,000 likes, and these comments are just circulating again and again, going from Facebook to WhatsApp to Messenger and back to Twitter with screenshots and back to Instagram… It’s a flood that you can’t really stop by taking out an umbrella,” Yavetz said.
INSS’s Cohen, who is also a national security expert with the Dvorah Forum, a group that promotes women’s voices in foreign policy, said that “conspiracy theories are not new, but the digital environment has changed their speed, scale, and the ability to obscure where a message originally came from.”
She explained that “in the past, there were more intermediaries between the person producing information and a large audience. Today, a single account can post a claim and reach very large audiences within a very short time.”
And, Cohen added, AI has made the problem worse.
“Mainly because it has dramatically reduced the time, cost, and skill required to create convincing content,” she said.
It has also made it harder for people to believe what appears on their screens.
“The problem is no longer only that AI can create fake content that looks real. It also makes it easier to dismiss real content by claiming that it is fake,” said Cohen. “Once the public knows that convincing images, audio, and video can be artificially generated, the existence of visual evidence no longer necessarily ends the debate.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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