Heidi meets Peter at a school dance; they bond over books and wit and dance together.

Scoop meets Heidi at a Eugene McCarthy campaign event and persuades her to have sex with him.

Susan takes Heidi to a women's consciousness-raising group meeting in a church basement.

Heidi and a friend protest the lack of women artists on display at the Chicago Art Institute.

Peter tells Heidi during the Chicago art protest that he is gay and has been dating a man.

Scoop admits to Heidi at his wedding that he chose Lisa because she would never try to outshine him professionally.

Heidi sits alone outside Scoop's reception and cries; Scoop returns, and they kiss and dance together.

Heidi arrives late to Lisa's baby shower, having just attended a memorial vigil for John Lennon in Central Park.

Susan announces she is accepting a vice president position at a new Los Angeles film production company.

Scoop and Peter repeatedly interrupt Heidi during a live television segment, preventing her from speaking.

Heidi furiously confronts Scoop and Peter after the television taping for not allowing her to get a word in.

Heidi addresses her former high school's alumni association and admits she is simply alone and unhappy.

Heidi brings donation boxes to Peter's pediatric AIDS ward on Christmas Eve and announces she plans to move to Minnesota.

After Peter explains how his world is narrowing with illness and loss, Heidi decides not to move away.

Scoop visits Heidi's new apartment and discovers she has adopted a baby girl she named Judy.

Heidi Holland's story begins at a teenage school dance where she forms an immediate bond with Peter Patrone, the platonic friendship that will anchor her entire life. In college she falls for the charismatic but damaging Scoop Rosenbaum, whose on-again-off-again hold over her takes years to break. A consciousness-raising group, an art museum protest, and Peter's coming out all shape her feminist identity even as her personal life remains unsettled. Scoop's wedding marks a turning point when he admits he chose another woman precisely because Heidi is his equal, and the years that follow bring professional success but deepening loneliness, culminating in a devastating public speech admitting she is simply unhappy and alone. A midnight crisis at Peter's pediatric AIDS ward forces her to choose connection over escape. In the final scene Heidi has quietly created her own version of having it all, adopting a daughter and imagining a freer future for her.

Heidi's journey from a school dance to adopted motherhood.

Heidi lectures at Columbia about unsung women painters including Sofonisba Anguissola and Clara Peeters.

Susan rolls up her skirt to attract boys at the school dance and warns Heidi she'll get messed up unless she takes men seriously.

Heidi declines to dance with a boy named Chris Boxer, choosing to stay with Susan instead.

Heidi reads 'Death Be Not Proud' alone at the school dance instead of socializing.

Scoop grades the chips and music at the McCarthy campaign dance and reveals he dropped out of Princeton.

Scoop pumps his fist in triumph as he and Heidi exit the McCarthy campaign dance together.

Becky, a teenager left by her parents, arrives at the consciousness-raising group and shares her story of abuse.

Jill immediately invites Becky to come live with her after hearing about her abusive home situation.

Heidi chooses to stay behind with Peter rather than join the women's march on the museum curator's office.

Peter introduces Heidi to his new boyfriend Mark, a waiter, outside the Chicago Art Institute.

Lisa enters the group gathered outside her own wedding reception and invites Peter to come dance with her.

Denise tells the baby shower gathering that TV host April Lambert wants to interview Heidi about her new book.

Denise arrives at a restaurant lunch and pitches Heidi a sitcom about women turning thirty who regret their choices.

Peter reads aloud to Heidi from the children's book 'Heidi' about her year of travel and learning.

Scoop holds baby Judy and kisses her cheek, then reveals he is planning to run for Congress.

While Heidi's personal struggle drives the play, the scenes around her reveal just as much about the era's tensions between ambition, friendship, and expectation. At the school dance, Heidi's bookish detachment and Susan's anxious social maneuvering establish two very different strategies for surviving girlhood under the male gaze. The consciousness-raising group opens up the play's feminist terrain through Becky, a teenager whose story of abandonment and abuse shows how much is at stake for young women without community. Secondary moments at the wedding, the baby shower, the television studio, and the restaurant each expose the gap between what women's liberation promised and what daily life actually delivered. Susan's trajectory from promising lawyer to fast-talking Hollywood executive is tracked through these scenes, showing how ambition can erode identity. Small but telling gestures at the end, like Scoop cradling baby Judy while casually announcing a run for Congress, show how little the men in Heidi's life have changed even as she finally has.

The supporting scenes and characters that shape Heidi's world.

Peter playfully tries to give Heidi a fictional name at the school dance, insisting he wants to remember her as she is.

Heidi asks Scoop why mothers teach sons confidence they never bother teaching their daughters.

Heidi declines Scoop's invitation to meet Senator McCarthy and Paul Newman but remains at the dance, drawn to him.

Fran challenges Heidi for being merely a visitor who won't commit to the consciousness-raising group.

Susan announces to the group she will fight the male-dominated system from within by joining the Law Review.

Heidi admits to the consciousness-raising group that she has let Scoop define her and blames herself for how he treats her.

Peter demands that Heidi treat his rights as a gay man as politically valid as her campaign for women in art.

Peter and Heidi hit each other in a playful argument that finally airs the distance and resentment between them.

Heidi's teaching assistant accidentally projects 'Judith Beheading Holofernes' during Heidi's lecture on Lilla Cabot Perry.

Heidi reveals she nearly married someone in England but chose her Columbia University job offer instead.

The women at the baby shower whisper among themselves that Scoop is openly having an affair with a coworker.

Scoop asks Peter after the television taping whether people like Peter ever wonder what any of it is all for.

Susan admits over lunch that she has reinvented herself so many times she no longer knows who she is.

Peter tells Heidi that his former partner Stanley is sick with AIDS as he explains how his world keeps narrowing.

Heidi tells Scoop that Judy will grow up never being told she must choose between love and her ambitions.

Beneath the headline events of Heidi's life lie the sharper, quieter moments of revelation that actually change its direction. From Peter's insistence on inventing a name for Heidi at their very first meeting to her own admission that she has let Scoop define her self-worth, the play tracks how women are narrated by others before they learn to narrate themselves. Scoop's refusal to commit, framed through his arrogance at the McCarthy dance and his cruel honesty about the type of wife he wanted, sets up a decade of emotional damage Heidi must slowly undo. The baby shower and the restaurant lunch reveal how women's friendships can fracture under the pressures of competing ambitions and self-reinvention. Peter's disclosure that his former partner Stanley is dying brings Heidi's private unhappiness into devastating proportion. In the final scene Heidi reframes everything by telling Scoop that Judy will grow up never being forced to choose between love and ambition.