SOURCE: An interview in Interviews with Contemporary Women Playwrights, Beech Tree Books, 1987, pp. 418-31.

Below, Wasserstein discusses the characters, language, and humor of her Uncommon Women and Others and Isn't It Romantic as well as her views about being a woman playwright and the future of American theater in general.

[Interviewer]: Your plays are very funny. Will you talk a little about comedic writing in general, and then specifically about women's comedy?

[Wasserstein]: Well, there's always that old Woody Allen joke: When you write comedy you sit at the children's table, and when you write tragedy you sit at the adult table. But I'm not sure that's true. It's very satisfying for me to hear the audience laugh. The audience is alive, it's there. What's interesting about my plays is that they are comedies, but they are also somewhat wistful. They're not happy, nor are they farces, which...