Wendy Wasserstein

Lola Wasserstein, 89, an inspiration for many of the characters in the works of her daughter, playwright Wendy Wasserstein, died of natural causes Saturday at her Manhattan apartment, her family said. Lola Wasserstein was a model for the "Isn't It Romantic" character Tasha Blumberg, an untraditional Jewish mother who takes dance classes and wears skirts over black leotards.

When Christine Lahti took over the title role in Wendy Wasserstein's "The Heidi Chronicles" on Broadway in 1989, she began a lasting association with the playwright that continued through Lifetime's adaptation of "An American Daughter" in 2000 (later renamed "Trial by Media") and continues now, after Wasserstein's death, with the West Coast premiere of her final play, "Third."

Wendy Wasserstein, who won a Pulitzer Prize, a Tony Award and considerable popularity writing comic yet pointed plays and essays about the nagging choices and disappointments that many Baby Boom women encountered on the path to "having it all," died Monday. She was 55. Wasserstein died at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, according to Andre Bishop, artistic director of the Lincoln Center Theater. The cause of death was lymphoma.

In the first five minutes of "The Heidi Chronicles," the play that won Wendy Wasserstein the 1989 Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize, a teenage Heidi Holland turns down an invitation to dance with the student council president. Sorry, she says. She can't leave her girlfriend. Women friends and colleagues were crucial to Heidi and to Wasserstein, who died this week at 55 of lymphoma.

PLAYWRIGHT Wendy Wasserstein's death Monday, at 55, from lymphoma, saddened the theater community, surprised the public and deeply shocked women of a certain time and mind-set in ways we can't quite get our minds around.

"What's in a name?" a famous bard once wrote. "That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." But could someone named Biff ever be president? Could a Gertrude ever become Miss America? And what about the Wendys of the world? Would they feel their name was as integral to their identity if they knew it had been created by an early 20th century writer? In fact, many of them do know that Scottish author Sir J.M.

Wendy Wasserstein no longer has a to-do list. In the preface to her recently published collection of essays, "Shiksa Goddess," the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright writes: "When I turned 40 I made a To Do list composed mostly of items left over from when I turned 30." It's not that, at 51, Wasserstein has finally "done it all," but she has achieved several of those pesky leftover goals.

ART With its sparkling deserts, dramatic mountains and an unmatched clarity of light, the American West has been a focal point for artists since before the turn of the century. William Wendt, Carl Oscar Borg, Edward Weston and Richard Misrach are among the many influential painters and photographers who came west in the early 20th century to document its timeless beauty and natural drama.

Wendy Wasserstein, the clever chronicler of boomer angst in plays like the award-winning "The Heidi Chronicles" and "The Sisters Rosensweig," turns her attention to a younger generation in her first children's book, "Pamela's First Musical."

Wendy Wasserstein was "beyond nervous" about bringing her watershed 1988 Broadway comedy-drama "The Heidi Chronicles" to the small screen. She was "terrified." "You feel very protective of ... a play which meant a lot to you and to other people," Wasserstein explains. She notes she recently saw a high school production of "Heidi," which won her a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award. "It's just fine as a play. I said, 'Fine. There it is. It's alive and well.'