The Heidi Chronicles

Developing Complex Characters Who Grow and Change

by Bill Johnson

The Review

Prologue -- 1989

As the title of the play suggests, it is a chronicle of the life of Heidi, who opens the play as a lecturer speaking about the almost ignored role of women painters prior to the 20th century. While Heidi speaks about the question of resurrecting women ignored by a male dominated and filtered recreation of history, Wasserstein skillfully and playfully sets up a question about Heidi's personal life. In a sly way, her topic sets up what will be the story question of this play,

What must Heidi do to become the main character in a chronicle about her life as a woman coming of age between 1965 and 1985?

The last line of the prologue,

"And you sort of want to dance, and you sort of want to go home, and you sort of don't know what you want. So you hang around, a fading rose in an exquisitely detailed dress, waiting to see what might happen," leads into Scene One of the play.

Scene One -- 1965

Scene one opens with sixteen year old Heidi and Susan, her friend, at a school dance. Heidi apparently thinks she and Susan are there to enjoy themselves, but it quickly becomes clear that Susan is on the prowl for a man and doesn't want Heidi to be an obstacle.

Story note, while the scene is played for humor, it has a serious undercurrent about how Susan distances herself from Heidi to attract a man. This speaks again to the story's core dramatic issue that was framed as an issue in the prologue, how did it come about that women were marginalized in life? The answer is offered, in part, in Susan's lines to Heidi.

Susan,

"You know, as your best friend, I must tell you frankly that you're going to get really messed up unless you learn to take men seriously."

As Susan goes off to meet a young man, Heidi meets Peter. They engage in some spirited word play that builds to Peter,

"Will you marry me."

Heidi,

"I covet my independence."

Peter,

"If we can't marry, let's be great friends."

The scene ends with Heidi and Peter dancing together. They are clearly two kindred souls.

In a playful, engaging, witty, nuanced way, this scene advances the story along both its story line and its plot line. While the story of The Heidi Chronicles is about how women have become disenfranchised and what they are doing about it, its plot is a dramatic acting out of this issue. By showing how Susan treats Heidi to attract a man, Wasserstein advances her story along its story line with a deft, light touch; while the events of her plot, the introduction of Susan and Heidi at the dance, Heidi's meeting Peter, sets in motion events that resonate through the rest of the play.

Scene Two -- 1968

Scene two opens a few years later with Heidi at a dance held as part of Eugene McCarthy's run for the democratic nomination in 1968. As soon as she comes on the scene, Scoop Rosenbaum comes over to meet her. Scoop is described as "intense and charismatic" and that's an apt description of his dialogue. Scoop has a habit of assigning a letter grade to everything. Within moments of meeting Heidi he tells her,

"You know, you have a hell of an inferiority complex."

Defending herself from Scoop's aggressiveness, Heidi later muses,

"Actually, I was wondering what mothers teach their sons that they never bother to tell their daughters."

Story note, Heidi speaks here to the issue that a man like Scoop seems to be a normal outcome for a particular type of male: aggressive, determined, opinionated, self-promoting from every pore and because of that successful.

Heidi responds to Scoop,

"I'm interested in the individual expression of the human soul. Content over form."

Story note, wonderful dialogue, since Scoop is so clearly a wild manifestation of form over content.

Scoop continues to pursue Heidi, saying,

"Heidi, you don't understand. You're the one this is all going to affect. You're the one whose life this will all change significantly. Has to. You're a very serious person. In fact, you're the unfortunate contradiction in terms--a serious good person. And I envy you that."

This is another example of dialogue that, on the surface is funny and clever, and beneath the surface speaks directly to the story's core issue, how men manage to create an agenda for a woman's life just through force of form over content.

Scoop finally gets to the point of why he approached Heidi, he asks her to have sex with him. Scoop turns to go and pauses to see if Heidi will go with him. She does. He "clenches his fist in success."

In these first two scenes we meet the kind of man Heidi is attracted to intellectually, Peter, and the man she finds charismatic, Scoop. Both scenes are crisp, to the point, and poignant. Each scene both advances the story while presenting new facets of who Heidi is and how she responds to her world and its choices.

Scene Three -- 1970

Scene three opens two years later with Heidi and Susan attending a women's consciousness raising group. Wasserstein finds and acts out dramatically only those scenes from Heidi's life that illustrate Heidi' search for the meaning of her life. In some plays this is done by creating a compressed, moment to moment recreation of the story, i.e., 'night, Mother. Here, Wasserstein creates those scenes that best act out the dramatic advance of her story along its story line.

In the women's consciousness group Heidi comes across Jill and Fran, two women who are determined to aggressively pursue defining themselves as women. Fran demands of Heidi,

"Do you support my choice?"

Heidi,

"I'm just visiting."

Becky, a 17 year old girl at her first group meeting, points out that Fran has a way of yelling to get her point across that makes her sound like Bobby, Becky's boyfriend who spends his time "angry or stoned." When Jill, Susan and Fran all offer womanly assistance to Becky to help free her from Bobby, the moment becomes a group hug minus Heidi. When Heidi defends her right to make her own decisions and keep them private, Fran rejoins with,

"Heidi, every woman in this room has been taught that the desires and dreams of her husband, her son, or her boss are much more important than her own."

It then comes out that Heidi is seeing Scoop, but it's an odd relationship that revolves around Scoop's needs and agenda.

Susan,

"The point is that Heidi will drop anything--work, a date, even a chance to see me--just to be around this creep."

Heidi, a few lines later,

"When I need him, he's aloof. But if I decide to get better and leave him, he's unbelievably attentive."

Becky,

"Your asshole sounds just like my asshole."

Heidi,

"But you see, Becky, the problem isn't really him. The problem is me. I could have made a better choice. ... And the bottom line is, I know that's wrong. You either shave your legs or you don't."

This sets the group up for an emotional exchange and some singing of lines from Respect sung by Aretha Franklin.

By having Heidi enter this scene with an attitude that puts her at odds with Fran and Jill, Wasserstein gives the scene and its outcome a dramatic temperature that it would have lacked otherwise.

Story note, by showing how a woman can be affected by both the expectations of men and other women, Wasserstein creates a story that "rings" true. And by creating a story that continues to advance dramatically along its story line via Heidi's reactions to the events and characters who manifest the story's plot, Wasserstein creates a dramatically "moving" story about Heidi's search for her identity as a woman.

Scene Four -- 1974

Scene four opens four years later outside the Chicago Art Institute. Heidi is leading a protest with her friend Debbie against the Institute having an art show of Napoleonic art that excludes women artists, but very few people are bothering to come to the protest. Then, Peter Patrone shows up, the young man Heidi met in the play's first scene. He suggests that if Heidi changed her name to "Heidigwyth" she would have more gravity. Heidi, it turns out, has skipped on an opportunity to meet Peter, an intern, to instead lead the protest.

Story note, Wasserstein is now bringing characters together in a way that highlights where Heidi is in her life and her on-going struggle about defining herself.

Peter has sought out Heidi in part to tell her, "Heidi, I don't play on your team."

This is Peter's way of leading into the subject that he is gay. It also comes out that Susan has become a sheepherder at a radical women's health and legal collective in Montana. While all this is humorous, it still speaks directly to the story's deeper theme of people finding their way in life. While the story focuses on Heidi, every character in the story is "ripe" dramatically, with their own issues and questions of identity to resolve.

Scene Five -- 1977

Scene five advances to 1977 and the marriage of Scoop to Lisa. Peter sums up the ambivalence of the moment when he facetiously says to Heidi,

"Do you, Scoop Rosenbaum, take Lisa Friedlander to be your bride?" "Well, I feel ambivalent about her. But I am blocked emotionally, and she went to good schools, comes from a very good family, and is not particularly threatening. So, yeah, I do. Anyway, it's time for me to get married."

Story note, Wasserstein again begins a scene at another dramatic point in not just Heidi's life, but her friends. For example, there is no earlier scene to introduce Lisa because that would serve no dramatic purpose in the story. Her issues are presented as the scene progresses.

The exchanges continue and it comes out that for Scoop marriage is more a rite of passage than an affair of the heart. Scoop gets it out of Heidi that she's in a sort of relationship with someone. But that is happening off-stage. The primary people in Heidi's life who are acting out this story are all in the scene, Susan, Peter and Scoop.

Story note, Wasserstein always has on stage those characters necessary to act out her story. It's a subtle point, but it's very, very well done in this play. If a character or issue isn't germane to a story, its appearance can be confusing to the story's audience.

It comes out that Peter, even though he's gay, desires to marry Heidi. Again, it's the writer taking the story into deeper waters.

Scoop, his usual irritating self, begins to interrogate Heidi about her life. It both brings out information about where Heidi "is," and, by putting Heidi and Scoop in opposition as she resists Scoop's questions, it heats up the temperature of the scene.

Scoop tells Heidi,

"But I couldn't dangle you anymore. And that's why I got married."

Heidi,

0 "So. So now it's all my fault."

Scoop,

"Sure it is. You want other things in life than I do."

Heidi,

"Really, like what?"

Scoop,

"Self-fulfillment. Self determination. Self-exaggeration."

Heidi,

"That's exactly what you want."

Scoop,

"Right. Then you'd be competing with me."

Lovely, zinging dialogue. Wasserstein never misses a beat in this script.

The exchange ends with Scoop dancing with Heidi who cries while the song, "You Send Me" plays, and the lyrics,

"Darling, you send me

Honest you do

Honest you do."

Lights fade out as they slow dance.

By the end of this act Heidi's choices now have a poignancy and resonance they lacked when she was younger. Choices now have a permanence, a life partner of ten years, children, a home. Heidi's tears are like a soul call of a woman still searching for something that eludes her. The author has taken us on quite a journey with Heidi and the chronicles of her life to the close of Act One.

By ending on this note of Heidi's need for something more in life, and implying the question, will she find what she seeks? the story's audience is naturally drawn back from the intermission.

Act Two

Prologue -- 1989

Act Two opens with another Prologue, Heidi again speaking about the art of women in a lecture hall. But unlike the earlier prologue that focused on women artists of an earlier time, this presentation focuses on twentieth-century women artists. More germane to the story, Heidi speaks about how these particular woman artists have a pose of appearing slightly removed from the scenes they observe. This is a commentary about Heidi as well. It sums up where her life journey has brought her to in this particular moment. It's a subtle way for the author to cue the audience to Heidi's mind set, that she feels she's a role player in her own life. Heidi says of her role as an art historian,

"In other words, being neither the painter nor the observer, but a highly informed spectator."

Scene One -- 1980

Scene One opens with a shower for Lisa. "Imagine" by John Lennon plays, and by how the women gathered speak about Beatles songs, we're given a sense of where they are at emotionally as the play resumes. Heidi comes in from being in Central Park, where people have gathered to mourn John Lennon's death. It comes out that Scoop is now the editor of a magazine called Boomer, aimed at Baby Boomers.

That these women belong to different generations comes out with this exchange between Susan, Denise (Lisa's sister), and Heidi. Susan,

"Before business school I belonged to a Women's Health and Legal Collective there."

Denise,

"You mean like a dude ranch?"

Susan,

"Like a feminist dude ranch."

Heidi,

"Denise, have you never heard of a women's collective?"

Denise,

"Oh, sure I have. I took women's studies at Brown."

The women's movement as experienced by Heidi and Susan has become history for Denise.

Susan has moved on in life to the point that she's accepted a job in L.A. for a movie production company, something that would have been unthinkable for her character in earlier scenes.

Lisa tells Heidi that Scoop was looking forward to seeing her, but he'd been called away. As soon as Lisa leaves the room, it comes out that Scoop is having an affair with his assistant, a woman Denise's age. Lisa returns and the scene ends with the women offering a toast to the Beatles.

Scene Two -- 1982

This scene follows through with a Heidi, Peter, Scoop on a talk show. The interview is scatter shot, all over the map, with the host asking a blizzard of questions. Heidi, who tries to offer some thoughtful answers, is left behind by Peter's dry wit and Scoop's aggressiveness.

April (the show's host), to Heidi,

"So what's next? After the kids and the country house. Once we're settled, Heidi, do you think we'll see a resurgence of a social conscience?"

Before Heidi can answer, she's cut off by Peter then Scoop.

After the interview, Heidi expresses her anger to Scoop and Peter, then exits.

Story note, Heidi's anger, and what triggers it, is more movement for her character. Again the author takes the story into the deeper waters beneath its surface.

After Heidi leaves, Scoop turns to Peter and asks,

"Peter, do people like you ever wonder what it's all for?"

Peter,

"People like you run the world. You decide what it's all for."

Scoop,

"You know what genuinely surprises me? You're a far more arrogant man than I am."

The scene ends with Peter taking his exit.

Scene Three -- 1984

Scene three opens with Heidi meeting Susan for lunch. Susan has now become an executive and is arranging the development about a sitcom. She has taken on the persona of a powerful executive, both a far cry from her earlier persona and not so far a cry when one stops to consider her character and how she's treated Heidi in the past.

Story note, Susan as a character has gone through a series of bright transformations that also highlight the more quiet transformations of Heidi. By using Susan as the more elastic character, Wasserstein preserves in Heidi an emotional centered ness.

Heidi,

"Susie, do you ever think that what makes you a person is also what keeps you from being a person?"

Susan,

"I'm sorry, honey, but you're too deep for me. By now I've been so many people, I don't know who I am. And I don't care."

Heidi tries to press the issue, but Susan deflects it with the arrival of Denise, Lisa's sister and her new assistant. It comes out that Susan wanted to "do" lunch with Heidi to get her perspective as a woman who's studied art to give the new show a slightly different angle that will make it more attractive to an audience.

Denise,

"All we need is three pages. Who these people are. Why they're funny."

Heidi,

"But I have no idea who these people are. Or why they're funny."

Denise,

"They're ambitious, they're professional, and they're on their way to being successful."

Susan,

"And we don't want them to make the same mistakes we did."

Heidi,

"I don't want to make the same mistakes we did. What exactly were they?"

Denise,

"Well, like a lot of women your age are very unhappy. Unfulfilled, frightened of growing old alone."

Again, Wasserstein has turned the story into deeper waters. The scene ends with Susan clear that Heidi will not be part of this sitcom's creative team.

Scene Four -- 1986

Scene four opens with Heidi being announced to give an address to "Miss Crain's School of East Coast Alumnae Association." The topic, "Women, Where Are We Going."

Story note, by having Heidi address a gathering of women the author varies the dramatic pace of the story and also gives Heidi an opportunity to reveal the issues she's dealing with. This scene also helps tie the story back to the opening scene, of Heidi and Susan at the school dance.

Heidi moves into a detailed description of the women she spent time with the day before in a women's locker room. Heidi spills her bag on a woman's foot and goes on, "I'm embarrassed--no, humiliated--in front of every woman in that room. I'm envying women I don't even know. I'm envying women I don't even like."

Continuing,

"Well, I really don't want to be feeling this way about all of them. And I certainly don't want to be feeling this way about "Women, Where Are We Going."

And,

"I'm afraid I haven't been happy for some time. (Looks up at audience.) 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. (Pauses) It's just that I feel stranded. I thought the point was that we were all in this together."

End of her speech, end of scene.

Story note, we're deep in Heidi's soul here, some of the deepest waters of the story.

Wasserstein uses Heidi and her chronicles to speak not just of one woman, but of experiences that were universal for many women of the 60's and 70's, when society changed and they could take on the task of defining themselves, instead of being defined by others. But to look into oneself is sometimes to find more questions than answers. Here, Wasserstein sets out through Heidi a question many others have probed, what is the meaning of this life? What does it mean to be a woman in this particular time and place?

Beneath the humor, Wasserstein is very astute about her observations.

Scene Five -- 1987

Scene five opens at the hospital where Peter works. It's the Christmas season and Heidi is dropping off some toys and records. She's going to be turned away until Peter sees her. But Peter turns on Heidi with a real anger.

Peter,

"Heidi, you don't burst into the god damn hospital at midnight because you have boyfriend trouble or some other nonsense."

It comes out that Heidi has accepted a teaching position at a college in the Midwest, and she'll be leaving New York the next day.

Heidi,

"I thought you would be the one person who would completely understand."

Peter, quite angry,

"Understand what? Looking back at your life and regretting your choices? Deciding your work, your friends, your history are totally expendable?"

Heidi,

"You have a life here that works for you. I don't."

Peter,

"Right. So I am expendable too."

Peter begins going through Heidi's donations. It's like he's examining the rings of a tree and understanding the climate of the time each ring formed. Each thing of Heidi's that Peter examines has a resonance about who Heidi is.

It comes out that Peter's anger is his reaction to going to the funerals of his friends who have died of AIDS, and finding out his recent long time lover is ill.

Peter,

"You see, my world gets narrower and narrower. A person has only so many close friends. And in our lives, our friends are our families I'm actually quite hurt you don't understand that. I'm very sorry you don't find that comforting."

Heidi,

"There is no one precious to me in the way you are."

As the scene comes to its fulfillment, it is Heidi who notices Peter is crying. As with many great writers, Wasserstein finds and explores the emotional depths of more than a main character. Heidi and Peter say some of the lyrics to the Shoop Shoop song to each other as they embrace and wish each other a merry Christmas.

Scene Six -- 1989

This scene opens with Heidi in a new apartment in New York and Scoop showing up unexpectedly.

Story note, once again the author brings characters together in a way that sets up the audience to desire to know more about what's happened in their lives. It's another aspect of how the author creates a rhythm and pacing for the script that lends itself to her story.

It comes out that Scoop has an ulterior motive in coming to see Heidi,

"Maybe we should try again."

Heidi,

"Why?"

Scoop,

"You're lonely and I'm lost."

It comes out as a revelation that Heidi has adopted a baby girl. Her reasoning,

"And maybe, just maybe, things will be a little better. And, yes, that does make me happy."

The "things" that will be a little better are the deeper understanding that woman have achieved through redefining who they are in life.

Scoop leaves, recharged by his visit to go forth and resume being what he is. Heidi picks up her baby girl and sings,

"Darling, you send me.

You send me.

Honest you do, honest you do, honest you do."

The play ends with Heidi holding up her daughter to a banner for a Georgia O'Keefe retrospective, a woman artist who found her own way in life.

A lovely, graceful note on which to end Heidi's chronicle of her life, with Heidi finally finding for herself a sense of who she is in the tumult of the world, and how she wants to face the world from that knowing of who she is.

The Story and Plot of The Heidi Chronicles

This story serves as an illustration of a number of points about how to craft a well-told play. Start with its characters. Wasserstein introduces each character in a way that who they are and their issues can be taken in. Heidi is introduced in the prologue because she is the character who guides the audience through the story. Note also that Heidi's prologue about art history also sets the story into motion: how are women to find meaning in a world that ignores their existence? This is the question that Heidi explores.

The opening scene of the story introduces Heidi and her best friend Susan at age 16. Note again how we're given time to take in who Susan is and her relationship to Heidi. Note also that the boy Susan goes off to meet is never introduced. This story is very focused about who's dramatically important to its telling. Some writers struggle because they fall for the temptation of filling pages by introducing characters. The downside of this is that it can occlude what is really at stake in the story behind a wall of characters.

This first scene also introduces Peter, who will be another major character in the story. Peter is introduced and set up as someone who is similar to Heidi, attune to her.

The next scene of the story goes forward three years and introduces Scoop Rosenbaum. The entire scene revolves around his meeting Heidi and the question, will they go off together? Again, the author clears away that that is dramatically irrelevant to the story to focus on this meeting of Heidi and Scoop.

Each scene of the play continues this process of acting out a significant time in Heidi's life.

Summary

The Heidi Chronicles stands out as more than a story about one woman. It speaks to a culture that was challenged and what happened to those who did the challenging. It is a play written with a wit and grace of language that makes it a joy to read.

As I mentioned in the opening review of the story, it is a play that requires an audience to have a familiarity with its time and the cultural artifacts of that time to achieve some of its effects. But it is also a risky kind of theatre that is often attempted and more often a failure: a story written with a subtle, probing, poignant wit. With a false note, scene or character, the whole of the play would risk deflating. But Wasserstein never falters, always shapes each moment of each scene to her particular dramatic design. Excellent craft.

©2008 Bill Johnson