It started with a true high when the play I’ve been working on, THE BEST OF EVERYTHING based on the book by Rona Jaffe, got a 4 star rating and was the “critic’s pick” in the New York Times and my name was mentioned.  I’m not kidding, scroll down to the bottom of the piece and there is my name in lights!  This play is so deserving and I can’t tell you how honored I am to have my name attached. The writing, the casting, the direction, the set, the costumes and the fact that the story is utterly timeless make the experience absolutely delicious.  As a woman involved in a women led production, I am kvelling.  Tickets have sold so fast and furious that we’ve had to add two additional performances — Monday, Oct. 15 at 8:30pm & Saturday, Oct. 20 at 4pm.  Order your tickets today.

Then it was time to make some tough decisions.  I have officially left my single consulting job of nearly 2-1/2 years and am joining the team of a very interesting start-up on Monday.  Letting go of the client I was working for was a tough decision, but a necessary one.  As I finalized my work there today, it all felt good.  Really good. This is the new company, and I’ll talk more about it in the upcoming month or two.

And MamaDrama, the social media boutique that my partner, Erin Leigh Peck, and I created turned one!  We are one year old and we are headed to the New Victory Theater tomorrow for a wonderful event with 20 members of our network.  I’ll write more about that on Sunday. I can’t believe that in one year we have worked with the likes of Playwright Horizons, the Public Theatre, Godspell, Annie, Avenue Q, Save the Children, Rosacea Facts with Cynthia Nixon as the spokesperson and more.  We’re hoping to announce a fantastic new client next week.

And now it’s the weekend. Sigh.  Deep breath.

How was your week?

Last night I had the luxury of hearing from two incredible women after the production of The Best of Everything, playing at the Here Arts Center in Soho: Jane Maas and Stephanie Newman.  Maas wrote MAD WOMEN: The Other Side of Life on Madison Avenue in the Sixties and Beyond. The book tells the true story of what it was like for women in advertising in that era of rampant sex, three-martini lunches and overt sexism.  Newman wrote MAD MEN ON THE COUCH about the psychology of  the characters behind the show Mad Men. I have yet to read Jane’s book but I ate up every word in MAD MEN ON THE COUCH.

The Best of Everything (I actually have Associate Producer title on this show) is a new adaptation of Rona Jaffe’s 1958 bestseller about ambitious secretaries in the big city. These girls want thrilling careers and gay adventures—and husbands and children too, in due time. Today we call that “having it all”; these girls call it “The Best of Everything”. They’re not sure it’s possible either.  We’ve arranged a great line up of talk backs and this was the kick-off discussion, given the Mad Men-esque nature of this discussion. (book your tickets now!)

Jane Maas has the most amazing history.   One of the most respected names in advertising, she’s best known for her direction of the “I Love New York” program, which changed the image of New York City and revitalized its tourism economy. She worked on advertising for General Foods, Lever Brothers, S.C. Johnson, American Express and Cunard Lines. At Wells Rich Greene, in addition to the New York campaign, she headed the creative group on Procter & Gamble. In 1989, she became president of the New York office of Earle Palmer Brown.

And she did all of this while working.  She talked about how much the world has changed since then.  She remembers reading The Best of Everything by Rona Jaffe and thinking times were exactly the way the way Jaffe described them then. Now reading it, it all seems unreal, like the dark ages. Back then, if you got pregnant, you left work at month five.  It was a time where a woman working fulltime was a terrible mother.  She was thrilled to be a copywriter in a man’s world at the time.  She worked on the Shake & Bake account instead of automotives.  She read The Feminine Mystique in 1963 and breathed in Betty Friedan’s words and knew change was on the horizon.  She’s seen a lot happen in the last 60 years.

When asked who her mentors were, Jane said they were all men and today she is still not seeing or hearing about female mentors: “Successful women don’t help women. Women aren’t good as being mentors for women.  We’ve worked so hard but we’re still climbing.”   That statement resonated with me.  Back in the 1990s, I got fired from a job I loved by a woman.  It was my dream job and she broke my heart.  The truth was that she had a gutter mouth and it was hard for me to be in the same room with her but it was too late by the time I was sent to HR.  Maybe she was trying hard to be like a man and treated me unfairly?  Who knows.  As Jane said, “Women are tough on other women.”  Jane mentioned the 3% Conference that launched this year to honor the fact that only 3% of leaders in advertising senior roles are women.  Why is that?  Are opting ourselves out?  One thing hasn’t changed since the 1950s: women still think they’re not good enough.  Not good enough at home.  Not good enough at work.

Jane had a sitter named Mabel for 35 years.  Even now she admits that “none of this could have happened without her – she was my daughter’s mother more than I was.” A powerful statement from a powerful woman.

Another thing that has changed since the 1950s, according to Jane: Getting married is no longer the holy grail.  Success and career are more important to young woman than ever before, and the “can a woman have it all?” discussion continues.

Stephanie Newman, Ph.D. is the author of MAD MEN ON THE COUCH  and a regular contributor to the on-line edition of Psychology Today. She has been a clinical psychologist/psychoanalyst for over 15 years, providing insight-oriented talk therapy for those with anxiety, depression, relationship, health, and workplace difficulties. Dr. Newman is a faculty member at the Institute for Psychoanalytic Education, affiliated with the School of Medicine, NYU, and teaches candidates in the Institute’s analytic training program. She has presented her work at national conferences and is a frequent speaker at schools, camps, and parent associations.

Her analysis of the characters of Mad Men fit neatly into this conversation.  She stated that the women on the TV show didn’t have choices.  Betty Draper was a pretty ornament and her job was to take care of her kids.  The girls in the show didn’t have choices either. Barbara Lamont, a figure more prominent in the book, left her baby with her mother because her husband left her to return to work, where she was actually quite successful.    She agreed that it is harder than ever to balance both career and work, but back then it was not an option and women just opted out.  It’s okay to be ambitious today, back then it wasn’t and Caroline, the main character of the story, was but didn’t seem truly happy.

Jane ended the evening by saying, “Women are wired differently.  Men throw men at the solution.  Women say, ‘it’s my kids.  I’m going to raise them…and work.”

With that, Stephanie left us with a familiar term.  ”The fancy word for all that is GUILT.” Direct from a psychologist’s mouth. It all comes back to one thing.

Check out our upcoming FREE discussions after performances of TBOE and stay tuned for summaries on my blog – get details on tickets here;

Thursday, October 11:
Janet Groth, The Receptionist: An Education at the New Yorker

Thursday, October 18:
Merle Hoffman, Intimate Wars: The Life and Times of the Woman Who Brought Abortion from the Back Alley to the Board Room 

Saturday, October 20:
Letty Cottin Pogrebin – Feminist, activist, and co-founder, Ms. Magazine

It’s a labor of love for the two amazing women in charge, Amy Wilson, who you may also know from the fab blog When Did I Get Like This?, and Julie Kramer, longtime collaborators who think feminism and comedy go perfectly together. They make theater about fast-talking women with smart mouths who seize the narrative and question the status quo.

Wednesday, October 3rd: 

Jane Maas, author of Mad Women: The Other Side of Life on Madison Avenue in the ’60s and Beyond

and Stephanie Newman, author of Mad Men on the Couch:

Thursday, October 11th:

Janet Groth, author of The Receptionist: An Education at the New Yorker:

Wednesday, October 17th:

Kenley Collins from Bravo’s Project Runway on “Fashion in the 1950s”:

Thursday, October 18th:

Merle Hoffman, author of Intimate Wars: The Life and Times of the Woman Who Brought Abortion from the Back Alley to the Board Room (I am moderating this one!)

Make a night out of The Best of Everything!

Tickets: $16 per person
Book your tickets: click here and enter code: BEST.  This discount is available Oct 2nd-19th, Tuesday through Friday nights (except for October 4th). Show time is 8:30 p.m.
Location: HERE Arts Center
145 6th Avenue
New York, NY 10013-1548

Drinks and dinner Discount: get 15% off your food and drink tab at CITY WINERY with your ticket stub, either before or after the show.

When The Best of Everything was published in 1958, I can only imagine the buzz it created among young women.  After all, they are comparing it to be the 50 Shades of Gray of our day.

Set in the early Fifties, the story follows a handful of working girls at a Manhattan publishing house.  There’s ambitious Caroline, who dreams of graduating from the typing pool to an editor’s office and she will do anything to get there; naïve country girl April, who’s goal is clearly to meet someone so she can quit her job and stay at home in full fledge domesticity; and Gregg, the actress who can’t separate life from fiction. Jaffe wrote this tale at the mere age of 27, after working in a major publishing house herself, and it had to be scandalous. It dealt with abortion, marital affairs, A LOT of drinking, smoking, sexual harassment in the work place and the whole “can women have it all?” question. In the age of Anne Marie Slaughter’s article, there is now certainly a quest amongst all women to juggle family and work at the same time, and this book touched on this topic at a time when women were expected to stay at home and people like Caroline were an anomaly.

It really can all be translated to the modern times when you think about how far we have come (or haven’t come).  Funnily enough, recent TV shows have used the book as an inspiration. Mad Men‘s Don Draper read the book in bed during the first season to learn about women and Lena Dunham has said repeatedly that her writers on Girls on HBO, another tale of four working women,  use the book as inspiration in the writing room.

My book club gathered last night to discuss the book, and as expected, it was a passionate discussion as ten successful, educated women talked about the women in the book.  Some of us have continued to work after having kids, some of us stepped out of the work force when our children were born.  It brought back memories of being treated unfairly in the office, getting overlooked for promotions and our early days of dating.  It’s a very good book club selection – the characters are so well drawn out over the course of 500 pages – and it pulls on every woman’s heartstrings and will get them to reflect on their own choices.

But more than anything, it’s a bold, honest look into life 60 years ago and it makes every woman think about how far we’ve come — or haven’t come, and I am beyond honored to be involved in the upcoming NYC production of:

Book your tickets now!