PBS ANCHORMAN : JIM LEHRER DEBUTS AS PLAYWRIGHT

“Chili Queen,” a new play, opened here over the weekend. Afterward, the author admitted that its New York premiere had caused him far more anxiety than he’d ever suffered as a TV anchorman.

“Oh, yeah--it’s much more personal,” said Jim Lehrer of public TV’s “The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour.” “When I screw up on television, I can fake it: say, ‘It’s not me, it’s the story,’ or, ‘It’s not me, it’s the lights.’

“But this one is me. It essentially comes down to whether the damned thing works or doesn’t work as a play. So you’re very exposed.”

About 100 patrons, including his partner, Robert MacNeil, and NBC’s Roger Mudd, were on hand Saturday night as “Chili Queen” began a one-month showcase run three blocks west of Broadway at Hartley House, a day-care center that also houses a small theater for new plays. Critics will inspect it later this week.

Lehrer’s effort is a black but warm four-character comedy. It’s set in a small, dingy, franchise chili parlor along a highway in Texas about 50 miles northeast of Dallas.

The parlor is the sort of place where, in addition to Dr Pepper, one can enjoy, maybe, a Chili-Sicle--frozen chili on a stick.

It also is where what police call a hostage situation occurs after a ferocious argument between a broke, recently unemployed young gas station attendant and a weary, middle-aged waitress. At issue: whether he paid for his hamburger with a $10 or a $20 bill.

The proceedings include much knowledgeable spoofing of print and TV reporters who phone hostage situations, seeking interviews. Here the media attention makes both the customer and his potential victim so flattered that they readily agree to pose for the TV cameras outside--with him holding a gun to her head.

One also hears the recorded off-screen voices of Lehrer and MacNeil in roles as a famous Dallas anchorman and his ace “Action 10” reporter chronicling the unfolding story of “The $10 Odd Couple.”

Inspired by an actual waitress-patron argument Lehrer overheard while at a rural Dairy Queen parlor in Texas, “Chili Queen,” although the first play he’s had staged in New York, is the fourth he’s written.

But the anchorman, a soft-spoken Kansan who grew up in Texas and was a newspaperman and city editor in Dallas before decamping to public television, hasn’t been tussling with the theatrical muse very long.

He only began in late 1983, while recuperating from a heart attack. Before that, he’d written fiction, with one satirical novel, “Viva Max,” being made into a movie. But he quit because it had begun taking too much of his time.

“There are three things that are very important to me,” he said. “My family, first of all; then my professional life, and then my (fiction) writing. But I couldn’t do all three well, and something had to give.”

When on the mend from heart surgery, he said, he thought of trying fiction again, but “the idea of going back to a novel, the energy involved in that, was just too much for me.

“My wife, Kate, who’s a novelist, said, ‘Well, then, why don’t you write a play?’ I told her there’s a reason why. I don’t know how. But then, I thought, ‘What the hell? It’s never too late to learn.’ ”

So Lehrer, then 49, began learning. “I got very turned on by it,” he said. “I worked at it very hard--did a lot of writing, did a lot of reading, went to a lot of plays. I found it to be a very exhilarating process.”

(Another noted anchorman from Texas, CBS’ Dan Rather, has also been attempting the process on and off since 1977 with an untitled Vietnam play, but found it more exhausting than exhilarating.

(“The biggest problem I have is writing dialogue that strikes my ear as believeable and realistic,” Rather said last week. “It’s a common problem, and certainly it’s a problem to me.”)

When Lehrer first typed ACT ONE on a blank piece of paper, only his family knew he was thinking of adding playwright to his list of credits.

True, two early works, “Cedar Chest” and “Silversides Thru-Liner,” were staged, but somewhat off Broadway--at the New Stage Theater in Jackson, Miss., to be exact.

It wasn’t until early this month, when he wrote a Washington Post piece about his upcoming “Chili Queen” and explained what had started him on his proscenium procession, that word really got out.

He hadn’t even told one of his best friends, former Texas journalist Larry L. King, author of the book for the bawdy Broadway musical hit of recent seasons past, “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.”

The Post piece, Lehrer said, “was the first time Larry knew I was writing a play. I’d kept it pretty quiet because I didn’t know if it’d work or not.”

“I got a great note from Larry,” he added. “What it essentially said was”--he grinned and slipped into a flat Texas twang--” ’Wal, you’ve really had it, buddy-boy. Because once it (playwriting) bites you in the ass, it doesn’t go away.’ ”

After his play’s premiere, Lehrer was nudged on stage, where he shyly stood next to the cast, listening to loud cheers and applause. Then he accepted a bouquet of roses from his two daughters.

Interviewed backstage later, he smiled and sipped his opening-night wine.

“Yeah, it’s true,” he said. “I’m bit by it. I love it, I really do.”