First Stage Gears Up for Its Annual ‘Playwrights Express’

The playlet’s the thing, as First Stage gears up for its annual “Playwrights Express” play reading marathon Saturday and Sunday at its second-story theater in Hollywood’s First Methodist Church.

“It’s our big fund-raiser,” said acting artistic director Marsha Meyers. “The idea is to have fun, to reach out and to let people know about our facilities. If you’ve ever had a crazy idea and didn’t know what to do with it, but just wanted to see it up. . . .”

A total of 64 plays, scenes, excerpts, monologues and poems will be read from 1-10 p.m. Saturday and 3-10 p.m. Sunday. (Separate admission is required for each day.)

“Playwrights: we won’t reject you” was First Stage’s motto as it lobbied earlier this year for nationwide submissions. The requirements were a $25 check--and nothing “obscene or in particularly bad taste.”

“I had some problems last year with two of the pieces,” said Meyers, a founding member of the 5-year-old group (originally affiliated with New Dramatists and the Sundance Institute). “I brought them to the board and said, ‘Do we really have to do these?’ They said, ‘How about late-night?’ Actually, it wasn’t really bad stuff, just kind of Sam Shepard. A little raw. “

This year’s lineup includes “a comedy piece about an actor playing Richard III who doesn’t know that he’s in the wrong play--and on the other side of the spectrum, a two-character piece about a young woman taking care of an old lady who communicates with bird calls. There’s a walk through Westwood, lots of drama, comedies about work and life in Los Angeles.”

The festive mood on stage will be matched by a surrounding “carnival” atmosphere: If a play runs over its 15-minute time limit, it will be unceremoniously gonged. Patrons will dine on hot dogs and soda pop; upon entry, their hands will be stamped to allow exit/re-entry throughout that day’s performances.

First Stage is currently experiencing its own coming and goings; Meyers is functioning on a two-week tenure, while the board of directors attends to an overall administrative reorganization.

“We had a very strange structure,” she acknowledged of the previous regime. “It was never clear who was supposed to give orders to whom. So they decided to throw the whole thing up in the air and start over.”

As for current staff, she sighed, “it’s just me for the next couple of months.”

Beyond this transition, however, Meyers has big hopes for the company’s importance: “We want to outreach throughout the nation, so the stuff we work on does not stop here. We get nothing out of this. (The Express fund raiser is the only time playwrights are charged for readings.) We’re a nonprofit service organization. Our plan is just to help the play and playwright develop, through our readings, critiques and workshops.”

What makes First Stage different from other theaters that host regular play readings, she said, is that “we’re interested only in play readings. Other organizations want to go on and produce, get (the plays) out. Our main activity is the readings Monday nights. Then we have 2nd Stage productions, which maybe get five or six performances--with no production values. It’s a safe place for the playwright to see what needs to be worked on and to get feedback. But there’s no reviewing; it’s done in-house with invited audiences.”

Meyers has had two of her own works done there: “Bloomberg, Schuyer & Fishbeck” (about a receptionist at a law firm) and “Crazy Edna and Her Roomies,” on “a Jewish girl living in Manhattan with her grandparents--who are ghosts. They sit around doing their nails, reading books, putting their feet up on the coffee table and making her life miserable.” (That play was later mounted at the Gold Coast Repertory Company.)

Locally, Meyers has been active in Women in Theatre (“It’s important to have a place for women who are having problems expressing themselves as artists--a place to start to understand and believe in yourself.”) She’s also an actress: an alumnus of New York’s High School for the Performing Arts and the Academy of Dramatic Arts, and a founding member of the improvisational troupe War Babies.

“I always knew what I wanted to do--and I followed it,” she said simply. “When I was 19, I toured for 2 1/2 years across the country in ‘Fiddler on the Roof.’ I would sketch all the different theaters we’d play in and keep a list: ‘When I build my theater, this is what it’s going to look like.’ I had all those dreams.”