MASTROSIMONE RIDES AGAIN WITH ‘HORSES’

When the Los Angeles Theatre Center was putting the finishing touches on William Mastrosimone’s “Nanawatai” a year ago, the playwright was riding high.

He was happy with the Theatre Center’s staging of his complex drama about the conflicts in Afghanistan--and he was eagerly at work on the film script of his best-known play, “Extremities.”

A year later, Mastrosimone, 39, should be riding even higher. “Extremities” is a hit by Hollywood box-office standards, and another of his plays, “Tamer of Horses,” opens Thursday at the Theatre Center.

Has he “made it”?

Chalk up another irony for Hollywood: Propelled into movie fame by the visibility of a film that bears his name, Mastrosimone has chosen to distance himself from it, unofficially, over what he terms “disagreements.”

(“I wanted to make a movie for all time,” he clarified. “The director wanted to make a movie that would please everybody. My disappointment stems from my own high expectations.”)

At least he’s back at LATC (could this become an annual event?), where artistic producing director Bill Bushnell is staging “Tamer.” The play has had only one previous exposure--at New Jersey’s Crossroads Theatre last fall.

“I’ve been wanting to work with Bill,” the playwright reflected over mid-afternoon coffee at a restaurant near the theater. “Because of him, ‘Tamer of Horses’ has taken on a whole new dimension.

“It’s a three-character play about a black couple who take in a foster child who’s a monster. It’s really about the power of forgiveness and love on a kid like that.

“The title comes from Homer,” he continued, “the last line of ‘The Iliad’: ‘And thus did they celebrate the funeral of Hector, tamer of horses.’

“The boy, whose name is Hector, identifies strongly with the Hector of the Iliad, who is depicted as a man who respects the gods--a loving husband and father, protector of his brother. A real nobleman. For the first time in his life, it makes this kid understand right and wrong. People’s moral perceptions are honed through literature.”

The plot of “Tamer of Horses” uses complex and subtle nuances which have had Mastrosimone doing plenty of rewriting. The process has been intense and restricted to writer and director.

“Just the two of us,” he said. “Too many influences can be at cross purposes. The actors, everybody, can influence Bush. But he has to come to me with one point of view. Bush is hard-headed. He’s not afraid to ask tough questions. I’m a writing machine. If he puts in the right information, I’ll give him the correct rewrite.”

Even though he, a white man, is writing about a black couple?

“I worried about that. I didn’t think I had a problem, but I worried about what black people would say. So far, all I’ve received is commendation. Except for a few lines, you could put white people in these roles without changing the dialogue.”

And the kid?

“There’s a whole group of street kids--white, black, Hispanic--who speak like this kid. He could be black. In this production he’s Hispanic. His language is black. I’m interested in that part of the language that’s alive and changes a lot--that’s street language.

“At Crossroads we looked for a black kid to play Hector and couldn’t find one. The director called and said, ‘I have this white kid--half Hispanic and half Greek--who’s the best of them all.

“So it was a black couple who took in this white boy. It made it interesting. Audiences there are half black, half white. It was like sitting through ‘The Color Purple,’ with white people sobbing through a black story and I thought, ‘That’s where it should be.’ To write it to the point where the color’s gone, where they’re just human beings.”

Joe Morton, who plays the husband, was in the original Crossroads production. Lynn Whitfield is his wife, and the boy is played by Esai Morales, once a voluntary ward of New York state and still dedicated to helping other foster kids through New York City’s Human Resources Administration.

Mastrosimone, a New Jersey kid, recently moved to Seattle, where many of his plays have been done by the Seattle Repertory Theatre. Among them: a quirky love story called “Shivaree”; “The Understanding,” a comic drama done as a workshop that becomes a full production next year (“The first play I wrote, my almost-autobiographical play”) and “Cat’s Paw,” a piece about terrorism that originated in Seattle, played San Diego’s Old Globe and will kick off the Hudson Guild’s season in New York next fall.

In the meantime, his home town of Trenton N.J., sister city to Moscow (“believe it or not”) is sending a Russian-speaking version of “The Understanding” to Moscow next spring. It will travel with a bilingual American cast, but probably not with the writer.

“I have other obligations in Seattle,” Mastrosimone explained, such as the May opening of a play on the Seattle Rep’s main stage. “It’s an Americanization of the Faust story called ‘The Scheme of Things.’ It’s important in my repertoire because it breaks from reality.”

Despite his unhappiness with the film world, Mastrosimone is now deep into the screenplay for “Nanawatai.” “But after this,” he insists, “I’m not doing film unless I have some degree of control.”

“Cat’s Paw” and “Shivaree” are both being negotiated as films. Mastrosimone hopes to be associate producer--”whatever that means. To me as a writer, it means I’m going to have to be consulted before they change things they don’t understand.”

Film, he claims, is part of his future and not just for the bucks.

“Creatively, you pay a price,” he said. “It’s not like you can just grab the money and run. You stop your whole life to listen to other people’s influences. Depending on how strong you are, it all comes out even in the end.”

So why go on doing film?

“You can tell the big story. Somebody said, ‘If Shakespeare were alive today, he’d be writing film.’ It’s a battle worth fighting.”

Might he stop writing plays?

“I’d never do that. If it weren’t for the theater, I’d go crazy. I’d probably just quit writing.”