PREMIERE OF PLAY A TALE OF FRIENDSHIP

The answer to why Tony-award winning playwright, Mark Medoff (“Children of a Lesser God”) decided to present the West Coast premiere of “The Heart Outright” at the Bowery Theatre (where it plays through Sept. 27), can be given in two words: Kim McCallum.

“We’re doing it at the Bowery because he’s my buddy and he wanted to, Medoff said of the Bowery’s artistic director.

“Fortunately, I’m in a position where I don’t have to worry about whether I’m going to make $50 from a work or $50,000. I just want to work with people who care about the work. Kim told me that he was so committed to this work . . . could he have it before the show went into general release? And that was fine with me.”

Four years ago, when McCallum launched his first Medoff festival at the Bowery, he had no idea that his next three productions would result in a meeting with the playwright who would ultimately change the direction of his life.

He had opened the theater the year before. Money was tight and the hours were long. He kept wondering whether he was going to make it.

That’s when he read Medoff’s “When You Comin’ Back, Red Ryder?” Immediately he knew it was the next play he was going to do.

“At that point, I was so fried emotionally and physically that Teddy (the violent character he played) lent himself to me. I had a lot of hate in me, a lot of emotion that needed purging. Building the theater was difficult. The mean streets of 5th and Elm were much wilder. I was under a lot of stress. Teddy was better than a therapist.”

The critics were enthusiastic. McCallum followed with another Medoff play, “The Kramer.” Again there were raves. McCallum concluded his Medoff season in early 1984 with “The Wager.”

The success of the plays inspired two local writers, Nancy Cochran and Hilliard Harper, to travel to Las Cruces, N.M., to interview Medoff for San Diego Magazine and the Los Angeles Times, respectively.

Medoff was intrigued by their enthusiasm for McCallum’s productions.

“I said (to myself) if someone cares that much about my work and devoted a whole year of his life to it, I should come out and see it.”

Medoff flew in for “The Wager.” He arrived in the afternoon and took a walk with McCallum in Balboa Park.

“By the time we were five minutes in the park, we were soul mates. I spent the whole afternoon talking to him,” Medoff said.

Medoff was equally impressed by the production of “The Wager” that McCallum directed and starred in that night.

“I felt it was the most intelligently directed version I have ever seen and he was as good a Leeds as I had ever seen.”

Medoff told McCallum he would like to work with him sometime. McCallum was flattered but didn’t believe him.

McCallum said he told himself, “ ‘Kim--sure. Fat chance. People forget you.’ But he didn’t.”

Several calls were exchanged. Then 1 1/2 years later Medoff had something to offer McCallum. An interview for a faculty position at New Mexico State University where Medoff was head of the theater department and associate artistic director of the school’s New Mexico Repertory Theatre where Medoff was artistic director.

McCallum, who never attended college, may not have seemed like an obvious choice to some, but to Medoff (who has a Ph.D. in English literature) he was just what he was looking for.

“I felt he had created something quite exciting here (at the Bowery). I interviewed a lot of people and I felt instinctively I wanted him to come.”

The interview proved to be as dramatic a demonstration of McCallum’s talent as anything else he had done.

On the day McCallum was supposed to return to San Diego, Medoff was rehearsing to play in a Rep production of “Greater Tuna.”

The next night was opening night and Medoff’s co-star fell sick. Medoff asked McCallum whether he could learn the part in 24 hours. McCallum said he could.

The theater staff pitched in to help costume him, block him and drill him in his lines.

“People in theater love a good real-life drama like that,” Medoff said. “Everyone showed up hoping that the collective ‘we’ could pull it off.”

And pull it off they did, despite one unnerving moment that both now recall with laughter.

McCallum said, “I went out and said, ‘Hi, my name is . . . ‘ and I couldn’t remember my name. I said (whispering to Medoff) ‘What’s my name?’ He said, ‘What?’ I said, ‘What’s my name?’ ”

After Medoff told him, McCallum not only pulled off the part, he pulled down the job. Two years to the day of opening “Red Ryder,” he, his wife and twin daughters moved to New Mexico, with McCallum returning in the summers to work at the Bowery.

In May, Medoff stepped down as artistic director to spend more time writing. He is finishing a novel and writing screenplays for Whoopi Goldberg and Goldie Hawn. This week, McCallum takes his place as director of the theater Medoff created.

Even now, it is hard for McCallum to believe that he and the playwright he so admires have become such fast friends that they play basketball every weekend together and Medoff’s daughters baby-sit his.

McCallum rhapsodizes about Medoff’s loyalty, the quality that Medoff, himself, says is the most important to him.

The regard is mutual.