The theater lost a compelling voice when Tony Award-winning, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Wendy Wasserstein died of cancer last year.

This week Napa Valley College pays tribute to her by presenting one of Wasserstein’s early works, “Uncommon Women and Others.”

A collage of interrelated scenes, the play begins with a reunion of five classmates at Mount Holyoke College in 1977, six years after their graduation. They compare notes on their activities since leaving school and then, in a series of flashbacks, we see them in their college days and learn of the events, some funny, some touching, some bitingly cynical, that helped to shape them.

Each member of the group is a distinct individual, and it is their varying reactions to the staid, sheltered and often anachronistic university environment that gives the play special meaning for today’s young women as they go forth into the often disquieting world that awaits them after graduation.

Wasserstein attended Mount Holyoke and went on to graduate school at Yale. “Uncommon Women and Others” was her graduate thesis.

The play was professionally presented by New York’s renowned Phoenix Theatre and then selected for the PBS “Theatre in America” series on nationwide television. From the first the play received rave reviews: “funny, ironic, and affectionate comedy, Miss Wasserstein is an uncommon young woman if ever there was one” said the New Yorker; “the real triumph of ‘Uncommon Women’ is that you leave the theatre caring deeply about its characters,” the New York Post wrote.

The all female cast is directed by Carla Spindt.

“It’s a bit of a period piece now,” said Spindt of the 1970s-era play. “The only thing missing from this play is politics. There is no sense of politics. I think that’s because (Wasserstein was) focusing on the women.”

Spindt is an accomplished director, teacher and actor. She got her bachelor’s degree in theater at San Francisco State University and her master’s from UC Davis. Her directing, teaching and acting credits include work at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, American Conservatory Theater, Sonoma County Repertory Theater, Solano College, Marin Theater Company and UC Davis.

Spindt is the conservatory director for the actor training program at Solano Community College. She also directed last year’s outdoor Napa Valley College production of “Much Ado About Nothing.”

Jillian Jones, who works as an editorial assistant for the Napa Valley Register, is a member of the ensemble. In describing the character she plays, she wrote in an e-mail:

“My character, Kate, is the epitome of the uncommon woman: smart, successful, focused. She has a stake in the ‘Uncommon Woman’ expectations and, as she says, she knows how to live up to them well, but she worries that she is so directed that she will grow up to be a cold, efficient woman in a gray business suit. Throughout the play, Kate struggles to reconcile who she is with who she feels she must become.”

Jones, 22, said she has fond memories of performing as a child at the old water district building in American Canyon as the Grinch in “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” a role she wryly says was “perhaps the highlight of my acting career!”

“Uncommon Women and Others” opens on Friday at 8 p.m. Other performances are April 14, 20 and 21, at 8 p.m., and April 15 and 22 at 2 p.m. Tickets are $12, adults, $10  for students/seniors. To purchase tickets, call 259-8077. Box office hours are Monday through Thursday 1-4:30 p.m. Tickets may also be purchased in advance, in person through the NVC cashier’s office. Parking is free. The Napa Valley College Theater is on the NVC campus, Building 1200, at 2277 Napa-Vallejo Hwy., Napa.

‘Uncommon Women’

Napa Valley College

April 13, 14, 20, 21, 8 p.m.

April 15, 22, 2 p.m.

Tickets: $12, adults; $10, students, seniors

Box office: 259-8077