PLAY BRINGS PAST INTO PRESENT FOR YOUNG

How’s this for an unlikely melding of three moments in history? Pioneer aviator Glenn Martin, on a record-breaking 1912 flight from Newport Beach to Santa Catalina Island, stops to rescue a man and a horse dangling from a cliff in what is now Dana Point. The man is Richard Henry Dana himself, the town’s namesake, making a perilous descent in a scene from his book “Two Years Before the Mast,” set in 1835; the horse is the mount of notorious bandit Juan Flores, run over the cliff by a posse in an 1857 chase.

The scene--set to music, no less--is from South Coast Repertory’s latest educational touring production, an exploration of Orange County history called “Orange Trees,” which began its six-month tour last week. By the time the production closes, it will have played to about 80,000 students, from kindergarten through sixth grade, in more than 150 schools.

SCR commissioned Los Angeles playwright Doris Baizley to write “Orange Trees” in 1976, when it first toured local schools. Updated with new scenes by Baizley and new songs by Diane King, the play takes a fancifully anachronistic approach to Orange County’s past, mixing events and characters from different eras as it charts a historical course from the first Mass at Mission San Juan Capistrano, in 1776, to the traffic jams of today. History by the books it isn’t, but then Baizley wasn’t aiming for a straightforward recitation of the facts.

Baizley, speaking by phone from her home in Los Angeles, said that with the play she is trying to convey two basic ideas to her young audiences: “First of all, that there is a history, and that it’s not some distant thing that’s locked up in a book. . . . And, that they are part of the history, and that they have a responsibility to the place where they live.”

Baizley admits that she “didn’t know a thing about Orange County history” when she undertook her research for the original production of “Orange Trees,” research that included visits to such local sites as the San Juan Capistrano mission and Bowers Museum. “I just read and went to see the places and thought of little moments, kind of skipping over 200 years, that we could land on,” the playwright explained. “It’s written very much like an outline, going very fast over history.”

One aspect of local history that intrigued Baizley was the way the local land has changed hands over the years, first passing from the Indians to the Spanish, who built the missions, then to Mexico and finally to the United States, who dismantled the sprawling Mexican ranchos and began building today’s county of more than 2 million residents. The give and take of these transitions led to Baizley’s use of a story-telling competition as a structural device in the play.

“The idea of a story-telling contest, with each character trying to claim the whole history of Orange County, was the motivating force, with the idea that in the end the history belongs to everybody, including the kids who are in the audience watching,” Baizley explained.

Baizley’s experience writing for children includes seven years with the Mark Taper Improvisational Theater Project, helping to develop a number of productions that toured Los Angeles-area schools (some of which were later produced on the Taper’s main stage). These days she is concentrating on other work: A play she developed through Taper’s New Theatre for Now, “Mrs. California,” was produced last year at the Coronet Theatre in Los Angeles, and there are plans to turn it into a movie. One of her screenplays, tentatively titled “Mary Austin and the Basketmaker,” is being produced for PBS’ “American Playhouse” series.

The playwright’s experience of writing for children has been invaluable, she said. “What I liked about it when I was doing it originally in the ‘70s was that it was a way for me to experiment with a group of actors and a director, finding different ways of making ideas dramatic,” Baizley explained. “I think you’re given more freedom to invent sometimes when you’re working for kids. There’s not a lot of established ideas; there’s really a lot more room for invention.”

When Baizley’s “Orange Trees” first toured county schools in 1976 and 1977, the production was tied to the nation’s Bicentennial. This time, the play is being reprised partly because of the approaching centennial of Orange County, which split from Los Angeles County in 1889. Baizley said she made few changes in her original script. “Really, we kept the play pretty much the same. We just added a lot of music,” the playwright said. “It had some songs in it (before), but in this version we’ve actually set whole scenes to music. And we added the traffic jam.”

John-David Keller, director of both the past and current versions of “Orange Trees,” said the play has evolved into a more polished production. “This is a much more sophisticated presentation,” said Keller, who directs all of SCR’s touring productions and the theater’s annual production of “A Christmas Carol.”

The complex production numbers and set changes in “Orange Trees” place special demands on the five-member cast, which performs three shows a day during the school year and operates without the benefit of a crew, Keller explained after an opening-week performance at a Dana Point school. The fact that each performance takes place in a new, sometimes difficult environment adds another dimension, which Keller said helps keep the performers interested during the play’s six-month run. “Every day, they have to think on their feet,” the director said.

This is the first of SCR’s 16 original touring productions to be repeated. “This show just has an appeal,” Keller said. “This is the one show that deals with Orange County. When we first did it, it was one of the most popular touring shows we had done.” Teachers, Keller said, look on the show as “a big, walking audio-visual aid.”

Opening-week response to the play from students was “terrific,” Keller said. Baizley’s device of mixing characters from different times and places did not confuse the audiences, he added: “Children don’t need to have everything spelled out for them,” the director said. “They know what’s happening.”