On Humor: Is there a New York humor? Yes, but I think it's a different kind of humor than one thinks, I think it's not definitely that euphemism for ethnic humor, be that Jewish, Italian, African American, Korean. I think what it is is a worldly humor, it's a sort of "gotcha" humor. On The Theater Community: When you work on Broadway still there is this whole community of people who are working on Broadway, and you go to Sam's Restaurant and there are all the people from the shows, all the chorus people and that's what they do. You know, you see each other. For me as a playwright, you write a play, you're alone in a room for a year or whatever and then, suddenly, downstairs are the wig people and the set people and all of that. And it's extremely different than working on movies. It's a much tighter community. It's also the history of Broadway and who else has been in your theater and what other play has been there and who's across the street. My first play on Broadway was "The Heidi Chronicles" and across the street was Jerome Robbins's "On Broadway,". and I thought, "This is extraordinary!" That was great. And the day our play closed, "A Few Good Men" was playing across the street and I remember they hung out a sign across the window to say goodbye to us and I thought: This is like this whole community that's going on there. There you are in New York and here's this whole legend and it's this street that's throbbing. On Opportunities For Women In New York: This has been the place where you could come as a woman and have an independent life. You could come here for whatever reason. You could come and be a playwright, you could come and marry a millionaire, you could come here and be a secretary, you could come and work for a fashion magazine; it was a place where you could come and at least be a person. When I was growing up I'd always look -- is there a woman in this picture? Is there somebody that you could say, "Oh, I'd like to be like that." And I think in New York there was always that somebody. I was reading this illustrated history of Brooklyn and there was the first African-American female doctor in Brooklyn Heights in the turn of the century and I thought: Who was this? How did she do this? This is really interesting.		Photo: Joseph Sinnott Born in Brooklyn, and a graduate of Mount Holyoke and The Yale School of Drama, Wasserstein is an award-winning playwright. Her plays include "Uncommon Women and Others," "Isn't it Romantic," and "The Heidi Chronicles" which won the 1989 Pulitzer Prize, a Tony Award, and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award among others. She has written screenplays, books, and essays, and is a contributing editor for NEW YORK WOMAN and HARPER'S BAZAAR.