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NOTE: Members of the press, including photographers, are welcome to attend the reception, from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m. Many photo opportunities available. Press credentials are necessary.
BANK STREET COLLEGE OF EDUCATION
2004 ANNUAL DINNER
HONORS BRUCE WASSERSTEIN
AND WENDY WASSERSTEIN
Tuesday, February 10, 2004, at the Pierre Hotel, in New York City
New York, Jan. 15- More than 500 people are expected to attend Bank Street's annual gala at the Pierre Hotel, Tuesday, Februaury 10, 2004. This year's event recognizes two extraordinary people, Bruce Wasserstein and Wendy Wasserstein, who will be awarded honorary doctorates from the Bank Street College of Education.
Bruce Wasserstein has been a leader in the development of the mergers and acquisitions and merchant banking businesses. Mr. Wasserstein left First Boston Corporation in 1988 to establish the private investment banking firm Wasserstein Perella. Since January 2002, he has been head of the investment firm Lazard, which has its principal offices in New York, London, and Paris. Mr. Wasserstein has been particularly active in educational matters, and has served on the Visiting Committees of the Harvard Law School, the University of Michigan College, and the Columbia School of Journalism. He is also a founding sponsor of Arts Connection, which promotes art training in public schools.
Mr. Wasserstein attended the University of Michigan, and received his A.B. in 1967. At age 19, he entered Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School, graduating in 1971 with an M.B.A. with high distinction as a Baker Scholar, and a J.D. cum laude. He then completed a Diploma in Law and Economic Regulation at Cambridge University in 1972 as a Knox Fellow from Harvard. Mr. Wasserstein is the author of Big Deal, a best-selling book about the merger business. He has five children.
Playwright Wendy Wasserstein has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the New York Drama Critics Circle Prize, the Drama Desk Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award, the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, and the Tony Award for her play The Heidi Chronicles. Her other plays include Isn't It Romantic and The Sisters Rosensweig. Her play Old Money was produced at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center, in the fall of 2000. She has adapted some of her plays for television, including An American Daughter, Uncommon Women and Others, and The Heidi Chronicles. Her screenplay, The Object of my Affection, was made into a major motion picture featuring Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rudd, and directed by Nicholas Hytner.
Ms. Wasserstein's publication credits include a collection of essays, Bachelor Girls (Knopf); The Heidi Chronicles and Other Plays (Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich); The Sisters Rosensweig (Harcourt, Brace); a children's book, Pamela's First Musical (Hyperion); and her most recent book of essays, Shiksa Goddess (OR HOW I SPENT MY FORTIES)(Knopf).
She serves on the Council of the Dramatist's Guild, and on the boards of the School of American Ballet, WNET/Thirteen, and the Guggenheim Foundation. She has taught at Columbia University, New York University, and Princeton University. She has been the recipient of an NEA grant and a Guggenheim Fellowship, and has been a fellow at the American Academy in Rome.
Her adaptation of The Nutcracker was performed by the American Ballet Theatre at the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center. She was the librettist for the original opera Festival of Regrets, Central Park, which has had runs at Glimmerglass Opera, as well as the New York City Opera and on Channel Thirteen Great Performances. Her adaptation of the Merry Widow was performed at The San Francisco Opera. She has recently completed the libretto for a new full-length opera, Best Friends, with composer Deborah Drattel. She has also written the book for a musical based on Pamela's First Musical with Cy Coleman and David Zippel.
Ms. Wasserstein started The Open Doors Program, which brings New York City public high school students to plays accompanied by professional theatre artists, and is run by the Theatre Development Fund in New York.
Ms. Wasserstein was born in Brooklyn and raised in Manhattan. She received a BA from Mount Holyoke College and an MFA from the Yale School of Drama. She lives in New York with her daughter, Lucy Jane.
The mission of Bank Street College is to improve the education of children and their teachers by applying to the educational process all available knowledge about learning and growth, and by connecting teaching and learning meaningfully to the outside world. In so doing, we seek to strengthen not only individuals, but the community as well, including family, school, and the larger society in which adults and children, in all their diversity, interact and learn. We see in education the opportunity to build a better society.
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