An American Daughter

By Wendy Wasserstein

 

(at Your House)

 January 15, 2011 SATURDAY

Potluck Dinner (main dish, salads drinks desserts)
Admission is by Reservation Only. 
Space is limited– RSVP soon to our Host
Call Robin Simons  – 206-780-4353, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.   for a Reservation, Directions, and to Request a role for the reading.
Both viewers and actors are most welcome.

American DaughterWendy

An American Daughter, by Wendy Wasserstein

Lyssa Dent Hughes is the privileged, well-educated daughter of a Republican senator. She is the wife of a professor and the owner of a lovely house in Georgetown. She is also the president's nominee for Surgeon General. When the media discovers that once, long ago, she failed to respond for jury duty, this relatively minor misstep is portrayed as a serious moral lapse. A good friend uses the incident to make a point, scarcely thinking of the implications, and Lyssa must suffer the consequences. From that moment on, Lyssa Dent Hughes sits helplessly as the press investigates her family and friends, shattering her privacy, her career, and her world. Wendy Wasserstein's trenchant humor and sizzling dialogue combine with biting political commentary to produce a masterful, and topical, drama.
 
"This brave and ambitious play portrays with withering accuracy the damage wrought by the tart-tongued TV culture of Washington." -Walter Shapiro, USA Today

"A daring new play-beautiful, brilliant, angry and funny. Wendy Wasserstein has not merely returned to the broader political concerns of her cherished Pulitzer Prize-winning The Heidi Chronicles, she has returned with a vengeance-electrifyingly reconnected. . . . Enormously moving." -Newsday

 

An American Daughter opened under the New Play Workshop Series at Seattle Repertory Theatre in June 1996. Directed by Daniel J. Sullivan (then-Artistic Director), the cast featured Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, Penny Fuller, Adam Arkin, and Liev Schreiber.[1]

The play premiered in a Lincoln Center Theater production on Broadway at the Cort Theatre on April 13, 1997 and closed on June 29, 1997 after 89 performances and 27 previews. Directed by Daniel J. Sullivan, the cast featured Kate Nelligan, Elizabeth Marvel, Lynne Thigpen, Penny Fuller, and Hal Holbrook. There were also recorded voices of several real-life "Television/Radio Personalities" such as Charlie Rose. Lynn Thigpen won the 1997 Tony Award, Best Featured Actress in a Play.

 

 

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