Play: Third

Overview

Wendy Wasserstein's 2005 play "Third" zeroes in on a crisis that exposes how ideals can unravel under pressure. The story follows Laurie Jameson, an English literature professor whose confident liberalism and self-image as a principled teacher are suddenly tested when she accuses a student of plagiarism. What begins as an academic integrity dispute escalates into a public controversy that forces Laurie, her colleagues, and the institution to confront uncomfortable questions about authority, identity, and moral certainty.

Plot

Laurie Jameson makes a public charge against a student, insisting that the work submitted is not original. The accusation triggers departmental hearings, media attention, and volatile debates on campus. As committee meetings, faculty interventions, and personal confrontations multiply, more than the student's academic fate is at stake. The procedural machinery of the university becomes a battleground where intentions, reputations, and past compromises are examined and reinterpreted.

Characters and Conflict

Laurie is the central figure: articulate, principled, and used to seeing herself as a defender of fairness. Her colleagues represent a range of academic temperaments, from cautious administrators who fear scandal to colleagues whose own compromises complicate their judgments. The accused student functions as a focal point rather than a simple antagonist; the dispute around authorship reveals tensions of generational division, cultural assumptions about ownership, and the uneven distribution of power in the classroom. Personal histories and ideological postures collide, and loyalties shift as the implications of the charge ripple outward.

Themes

The play interrogates the gap between professed values and practiced behavior. Questions of plagiarism and originality become proxies for deeper inquiries into authenticity, privilege, and the limits of liberal self-conception. Academic bureaucracy and the rituals of adjudication are depicted as simultaneously necessary and absurd, exposing how institutions shape moral choices. The drama also probes gender and ambition, examining how a woman in a position of intellectual authority navigates scrutiny, reputation, and the need to be taken seriously.

Tone and Style

Wasserstein balances sharp comedy with incisive moral drama, creating dialogue that is at once witty and revealing. The pacing shifts between brisk, often satirical scenes of departmental maneuvering and more intimate moments of self-examination. The language is contemporary and exacting, designed to illuminate character through verbal sparring as much as through action. Humor softens the critique without diluting its force, allowing moments of levity to heighten the poignancy of the play's ethical questions.

Reception and Significance

"Third" attracted attention for its topicality and for Wasserstein's characteristic ear for the contradictions of modern liberal life. Critics noted the play's ambition in taking on institutional ethics and the performative aspects of political identity, praising its sharpness while sometimes debating its resolution. The play stands as a probing exploration of how principles fare when subjected to real-world pressures and how the theater can interrogate contemporary professional and moral dilemmas. It remains a pointed examination of the perils of moral certainty and the complexities of adjudicating right and wrong within entrenched social structures.