KOSTMAYER PROBES ‘HISTORY OF FEAR’

“I had this idea,” playwright John Kostmayer was explaining, “that when a man and a woman go to bed together for the first time--if they really care about each other, have an emotional investment--they’re bringing a lot of baggage: a whole sexual history. And it isn’t with each other. His sexual history is with his ex-wife, ex-lovers, his parents, siblings. Hers is with her ex-husband, former lovers . . . so each of them is really getting into bed with the others’ past.”

Kostmayer took the premise a step further. What if--for theatrical purposes--those influential figures actually reappeared in physical form to harass the new lovers?

The result is “The History of Fear,” a “play with music” opening Saturday at the Victory Theatre.

Seated in the kitchen of the cheery Venice home he shares with new wife, Martha, the tall, affable Kostmayer, 44, was eager to discuss his work.

“It’s about the fear of intimacy, of being with a another person. In China’s (the heroine) case, she was raped as a young girl by someone she loved and trusted. So, for her to trust a man is extremely difficult. And Darwin (her partner) went through a period of impotence. So he’s afraid of sex; she’s afraid of love. But on this night, he’s fine; she’s fine. Every cell in them is awake and alert; all their senses are alive--and their pasts rush up and take over.

“Part of the concept of this play is that the past, present and future are all present simultaneously: that events we remember, that we’re participating in now, or that we anticipate, all have an effect on us.”

On this important night, the “affectors” are readily accessible. Kostmayer considers his departure from the confines of naturalism essentially undemanding: “I think the play embraces reality, if not realism.”

Although he had early worries about audience response, two workshop outings at the Victory (Kostmayer credits artistic directors Tom Ormeny and Maria Gobetti with creating “a key part of the characters, concept and style”), found immediate acceptance: “It seemed to excite people, provide them with material they hadn’t seen in the theater.”

And some of them didn’t want to.

“There’s no question the play deals with very raw and disturbing sexual material,” Kostmayer acknowledged--”rape, incest, impotence, male fantasies of domination, the difficulty of uniting sex and love. There are some biological realities in the world: Sex gets mixed up with pathology--and this deals with that.” (He cheerfully recalled the friend who recently saw a preview and concluded that it was the most moving night he’d had in the theater. “Then he referred to me as the Thorton Wilder of sleaze.”)

Ultimately, Kostmayer is confident of the play’s worth: “I think it’s a very healing experience, in some ways therapeutic. Darwin and China are obliged to live through, and experience again, all the traumas of their pasts--and, as they live through them, they hopefully go on to a new experience that is not dominated by the past.”

As for his own relationship to the work, “I choose to write about things that fall within the sphere of my personal concerns. So, sure, there are some autobiographical elements in ‘Fear,’ and some that aren’t. My primary concern as a playwright is not to put my autobiography before the public. It is to create a passionate exchange between human beings in the presence of other human beings.”

Although he claims the theater as his first love, Kostmayer is also active in other forms of writing. He’s under contract to Paramount, where, with “Cagney & Lacey” co-creator Barbara Avedon, he’s just finished writing the TV pilot of “Brockman,” about a real-life Bay Area 60-year-old grandmother who’s a street detective.

He offers no apologies for the commercial detour: “I’ve been able to work with wonderful people (Henry Winkler’s production company), so it’s made it a happy experience--and also enabled me to earn a living, get out of debt.”

But the stage lures are strong: “In theater you can say whatever you want, however you want to say it--and there are no limitations, constraints. You can be as personal and as passionate as you want to be. You are only limited by your own talent, your willingness to take risks, your ability to develop fresh ways to say important things.”

Interestingly, Kostmayer’s foray into play writing is relatively recent. Although he’d earlier dabbled in poetry (publishing work during his 20s), he said “it just wasn’t satisfying. There was a lot of power in me I felt I couldn’t put in it.”

In the ensuing career quest, he spent much of his young life “in a happy kind of restlessness, having no idea what I wanted to do.” Along with fathering three children (Gwen, Larry and Sam--he also has a new grandchild), Kostmayer sampled a variety of regional addresses and professions: newspaperman, bartender, waiter, seismic engineer, dynamite boat powder hustler, stevedore, commercial fisherman, security guard, dock and shipyard worker, director/producer of documentary films.

At age 37, he happened on play writing--and success came quickly. The Victory Theatre’s 1983 commission of his “On the Money” prompted a move to California (“even though I was giving up a job in Washington, D.C., and didn’t have one here”).

“Money” was a hit, and--on the basis of that--he was offered his first television-writing assignments.

Most recently, however, Kostmayer has had only theater on the brain. “I’m living and breathing that play 24 hours a day,” he said with a sigh of satisfaction. “It’s all I think about, all I care about.”