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The Heidi Chronicles is a 1995 made-for-television drama film by Wendy Wasserstein adapted from her play of the same name. The film premiered on TNT on October 15, 1995.
- Drama
- Author Biography
- Plot Summary
- Characters
- Themes
- Style
- Historical Context
- Critical Overview
- Criticism
- Sources
- Further Reading
Wendy Wasserstein was born in Brooklyn, New York, on October 18, 1950. Her parents were Jewish immigrants who came to America from Central Europe as children. Her father, Morris, was a prosperous textile manufacturer. Her mother, Lola, was a homemaker and a nonprofessional dancer. To compete for attention in her large family Wasserstein developed a...
Act I, prologue
The Heidi Chronicles opens in a lecture hall at Columbia University in 1989. Heidi Holland, a forty-year-old art history professor, delivers a lecture on three women artists, Sofonisba Anguissola, Clara Peeters, and Lilly Martin Spencer. She points out that while these women were either highly regarded in their time and/or extremely talented, they are virtually unknown today.
Act I, scene 1
The year is 1965, the setting a high school in Chicago. Sixteen-year-old Heidi attends a dance with her friend Susan Johnston. When the scene begins, Heidi and Susan look out at the dance floor singing along to “The Shoop Shoop Song.” A boy, Chris Boxer, asks Heidi to dance, but she declines, telling him she doesn’t want to leave her friend. When a ladies’ choice dance is called, Susan hikes up her skirt and runs out on the floor to ask a boy she likes to dance, leaving Heidi alone. Heidi sit...
Act I, scene 2
It is now 1968, and Heidi attends a dance in Manchester, New Hampshire, for the volunteers and supporters of presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy. Heidi lingers near the food table and is approached by Scoop Rosenbaum. Scoop is overbearing, cutting down her every opinion. Heidi tries to evade him by saying her name is Susan Johnston, until he points out that she is wearing a nametag. Scoop tries to impress her with his intelligence, his work as a journalist, and his well-read opinions. Alth...
Denise Friedlander
Denise is Lisa’s sister. She works as a production assistant on a show called Hello, New York. Susan Johnston hires her as her assistant when she becomes a Hollywood executive.
Lisa Friedlander
Lisa Freidlander marries Scoop Rosenbaum and works as an illustrator of children’s books. She accepts the role of housewife and mother to Scoop’s children. She is always cheery and sweet, despite the fact that her husband is cheating on her. She and Scoop have two children, Maggie and Pierre.
Heidi Holland
Heidi is the woman around whom The Heidi Chroniclesis constructed. Over the course of the play, episodes of Heidi’s life are depicted, from the 1960s to the 1980s, from ages 16 to 40. As an adult, she is an art historian; it is through a series of art lectures that her story unfolds. Two of her lectures describe overlooked female artists who remained on the periphery of the art world, artists whose works are notable for their observational nature. Like the artists she describes, Heidi is ofte...
Success and Failure
Underlying much of the tension of The Heidi Chroniclesis how success differs for men and women. Though it is known from the prologue of the first act that Heidi has a successful career as an art historian, the play focuses more on her success as a feminist and autonomous person; unlike the male characters, career success for Heidi does not equal a fulfilled life. As Heidi’s generation demanded, she became an independent woman in a male-dominated world. Yet this success seems hollow to Heidi n...
MEDIA ADAPTATIONS
1. The Heidi Chronicles was adapted into a television movie for Turner Television Network (TNT) in 1995. The production stars Jamie Lee Curtisas Heidi, Peter Reigert as Scoop, and Tom Hulce as Peter. From the play’s male perspective, Scoop and Peter are successful in a more traditional sense. Scoop has a long-term marriage, two children, a promising career as a lawyer and later as a publisher. The magazine he starts is wildly prosperous. Though by the end Peter finds many of his friends dying...
Identity
One primary theme that Heidi is concerned with is the search for her own identity. In the first two scenes of the play, she is young, sixteen- and nineteen-years-old, but she is sure of her intellect and her belief in women’s causes. Her allegiance to feminism is illustrated in the women’s consciousness-raising group scene. Heidi commits to other women, promoting their equality in art and in life. Yet this identity undergoes rigorous tests, such as Scoop’s wedding reception, during which he t...
Setting
The Heidi Chronicles is a comedic drama that spans the years 1965 to 1989 and employs numerouslocations for its setting. The play is framed by two scenes that open each of the acts. These are set in the present in a lecture hall at New York City’s Columbia Universitywhere Heidi teaches. While these scenes frame and define the action, the main body of the play is told through a series of flashbacks that span Heidi’s adult life. In Act I, locales include a high school dance at Miss Crane’s Scho...
Point of View and Narrative Structure
The Heidi Chroniclesis told from the point of view of Heidi Holland, primarily in episodic flashback. In three scenes, Heidi directly addresses the audience with monologues: a prologue opens each act while in Act II, scene 4, Heidi addresses a group at a luncheon. In the rest of the play, Heidi is present in every scene, primarily reacting to the characters and events around her. Such a technique enables Wasserstein to direct the audiences’ attention to what is occurring in Heidi’s life. By s...
Symbolism and Imagery
Wasserstein uses symbolism in several ways in The Heidi Chronicles. She frequently uses popular songs to link scenes, emphasizing their symbolic meaning. For example, the tone for the women’s group scene is set by Aretha Franklin’s “Respect,” a song about a woman demanding better, equal treatment from her man. Heidi admits her relationship with Scoop is not good for her, and she, in fact, deserves respect. The women’s solidarity is solidified when they sing a campfire song together. To emphas...
Women’s Issues
As the 1980s came to a close, conservative forces remained in control of the White Houseand other aspects of American society. Republican George Bush assumed the presidential office in 1989, following eight years of conservative rule under President Ronald Reagan. The largely conservative U.S. Supreme Court upheld state restrictions on access to abortions. Though this ruling did not overturn Roe v. Wade, the case which legalized abortion in America, the ruling was seen as a victory for pro-li...
Art in America
Of the major art exhibits that opened in 1989, none were centered around female painters. This inequality is central to Heidi’s career as an art historian. The arts came under fire, in part because of controversy over an exhibit, partially funded by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), of work by Robert Mappelthorpe, whose photography was thought by many conservatives to be pornographic. Legislation was proposed in Congress to prevent funding of “obscene” art by the federally-funded NEA.
Health Crises and the Rise of AIDS
The number of AIDS cases was on the rise in 1989, and only one drug, AZT (zidovudine or retrovir), was approved for treatment of the disease in the United States. There was no cure or vaccine. While knowledge about the disease increased, nearly 2.5 million people in the Western Hemisphere (approximately 1 to 1.5 million Americans) became infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. AZT was also being used, somewhat successfully, to delay development of full-blown AIDS in people with few or...
Critical reaction to The Heidi Chronicles has been mixed since its debut in 1988. Many feminists critics applauded the fact that a play about women and women’s issues was such a smashing success. The depiction of a modern woman living an anxiety-filled life was a concept with which many women identified. But some such critics believed this success ...
A. Petrusso
In this essay, Petrusso discusses the weakness of the female characters and the dominant role of the male characters in Wasserstein’s play; this unbalanced power structure is reflective of traditional views of male/female roles in society. Despite its reputation as a feminist play, the male characters and their values dominate The Heidi Chronicles. In a review of the original Broadway production, Cathleen McGuigan said in Newsweek:“The men in Heidi’s life are more interesting [than her female...
WHAT DO I READ NEXT?
1. Eastern Standardis a play by Richard Greenberg written in 1989. The play concerns several professionals living in the 1980s and finding their Yuppie lives meaningless. One character, a writer, suffers from AIDS. 2. Isn’t It Romantic, written by Wasserstein in 1984. Like The Heidi Chronicles,it employs an episodic structure and music to set the tone of the play. The plot centers around two women and the choices they make for personal fulfillment. 3. In the Company of Woman: Voices from the...
Gerald Weales
In this mixed review of The Heidi Chronicles, Weales praises the performances but complains that the play “has no dramatic center” in its title character. He criticizes Wasserstein forproviding a protagonist who is little more than a foil for the supporting characters. Wendy Wasserstein’s The Heidi Chroniclesbegan as a workshop production at the Seattle Repertory Theatre; then, shepher ded by the Seattle Rep’s Daniel Sullivan, it moved to a well-received off-Broadway debut and then to Broadwa...
Austin, Gayle. Review of The Heidi Chronicles in Theatre Journal,March 1990, pp. 107-08. Brustein, Robert. Review of The Heidi Chronicles in the New Republic,April 17, 1989, pp. 32-35. Hodgson, Moira. Review of The Heidi Chronicles in the Nation,May 1, 1989, pp. 605-06. McGuigan, Catherine. “The Uncommon Wasserstein Goes to Broadway” in Newsweek,Ma...
Ciociola, Gail. Wendy Wasserstein: Dramatizing Women, Their Choices, and Their Boundaries,McFarland, 1998. Franklin, Nancy. “The Time of Her Life” in the New Yorker,April 14, 1997, pp. 63-71. Keyssar, Helene. “Drama and the Dialogic Imagination: The Heidi Chronicles and Fefu and Her Friends” in Modern Drama,March 1991, p. 88. Shapio, Walter. “Chron...
In 1995, the play was adapted as a television film. It was directed by Paul Bogart and starred Jamie Lee Curtis and Tom Hulce in the leading roles. Awards and nominations [ edit ]
- Wendy Wasserstein
- 1988
Oct 15, 1995 · Heidi Holland is a woman on the long and often bumpy road of self-discovery from the 1960s to 1990s. The movie follows her path from high-school egghead, to feminist supporter, to intellectual art dealer/mother, and chronicles her ups and downs and revelations.
- (276)
- Drama
- Paul Bogart
- 1995-10-15
The Heidi Chronicles was adapted into a television movie for Turner Television Network (TNT) in 1995. The production stars Jamie Lee Curtis as Heidi, Peter Reigert as Scoop, and Tom Hulce as Peter.
In 1995, The Heidi Chronicles was adapted into a television movie starring Jamie Lee Curtis. A 2015 Broadway revival of the play starred Elisabeth Moss.
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Oct 9, 1995 · Oct 9, 1995 12:00am PT. The Heidi Chronicles. Quick, name four Pulitzer Prize-winning plays by women that were adapted for the bigscreen. I know, trick question -- the Pulitzer's only been...
