The Heidi Chronicles was probably something I never would have read if it were not for a class such this. With that said, I was pleasantly surprised after reading and viewing the play. Wendy Wasserstein created a unique and expressive way in which to portray the life of Heidi, a troubled person who never quite seems to find what she is looking for. The play touches on the issue of feminism—an issue that I have never given much thought to or worried about. In my view of the play, Wasserstein used Heidi to try on a number of brands of lifestyle in hopes finding one that would make Heidi happy. We see Heidi touch bases with everything from frightening feminist meetings (with potty mouth Fran) to involvement in strange relationships with her guy friends, homosexual Peter and domineering Scoop. All along the way Heidi tries to find herself, and at the end, I think she does. After years of “not being happy,” Heidi finally realizes what is important to her and stops trying to be a person that she is not.
I did, however, have trouble figuring out what the whole message of the play was, if there was one. As we talked about in class, The Heidi Chronicles was not a typical kind of play with an introduction, middle-part, climax…and so on, but rather it was more like a camera filming scenes and moving through time. At the end, I felt sort of a “well now what?” feeling, as if the play left me hanging and confused. Maybe that was Wasserstein’s point—to stop at a point where Heidi’s life if turning around and leave the viewer to surmise about what could happen next.
The play left me feeling sorry for Heidi, as she became caught up in a movement trying to break down the traditional social and gender barriers surrounding women. This is certainly a fight that I am not opposed to, though Heidi—and her friends—tried hard to an almost fanatical degree (Heidi not so much), and ended up missing out on happiness and enjoyment of life. This may not make sense to you, the poor person trying understand the garbled thoughts coming from my head, but I think my point would be that in one’s effort to become happy, it can be easy to lose sight of what really makes you happy and instead become less happy.
I, too, find episodic stories very difficult to follow. I am a very sequential thinker and always want to place things in order with relations between the two. I found "Into the Wild" by John Krakauer even more difficult to read because those episodes weren't chronological! I like your last sentence - it correlates with Scoop's line about shooting for a ten and getting a six. Good Blog!
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