THEATER AND FILM : SCR Lights the Way for Renewed Emphasis on Play Commissions

David Henry Hwang, whose “M. Butterfly” just won the Tony award for best play of 1987, couldn’t make it to the Rainbow Room. But nobody took much notice of his absence. When you are having lunch in the stratosphere above Manhattan with the Empire State Building looming at your elbow, you tend to forget the no-shows.

Besides, there were plenty of people who could make it--playwrights Arthur Giron, Allan Havis, Craig Lucas, Jim Leonard and director Norman Rene--all of whom have had productions at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa. They were so pleased to celebrate SCR’s special regional theater Tony last week that the gathering felt like a family reunion.

“We wanted to share a bit of the glory with the writers connected to us,” said SCR producing artistic director David Emmes, who, with artistic director Martin Benson, was co-host of the luncheon. “I think a major reason we got the Tony is because of our commitment to new plays.”

Prophetic words.

Two days later, several New York producers took a page from the SCR journal and announced that they had joined forces to commission plays for Broadway in a venture called the American Playwrights Project. Although the new venture is intended for established writers and the SCR program focuses on emerging writers, the reasoning behind both is virtually identical.

Emmes talks about “nurturing talent.” James B. Freydberg, the independent Broadway producer who launched the New York project with the Jujamcyn Theaters and several other investors, talks about “getting product.” But both fear that movies and television are draining the theater of its best writers, and both believe that their play commissions may help stem that loss.

“I’ve always wondered why commercial producers weren’t investing in playwrights,” Freydberg said in a telephone interview last week. “I noticed there were six straight plays on Broadway this season, fewer than there have ever been. And this was supposed to be a good year for them.”

Rocco Landesman, president of Jujamcyn, which owns several Broadway theaters, also speaking by telephone, added: “We’re trying to make a home for serious plays. Broadway used to do that for Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller, who automatically come to mind. Now the only established writer who considers Broadway his home is Neil Simon.”

Commissions from the SCR Collaboration Laboratory (Colab) do not make new playwrights wealthy. They get from $6,000 to $10,000 per play. Nor will commissions from the American Playwrights Project make established writers wealthy. They will get about $15,000 and expenses. None of these sums can compete, moreover, with the kind of money Hollywood tosses around for movie scripts.

But the idea of “nurturing talent” goes well beyond money.

“It’s a tremendous boost for your morale to get a commission, whether or not you get a production,” said Havis, who is now writing a play for SCR. “I don’t know of any program with as much outreach as South Coast’s. It’s the perfect role model for other regional theaters. Now it has become trendy to seek out new voices. But I can’t complain.”

Emmes and Benson have decided that the $15,000 prize that came with their Tony will go to the Campaign for SCR, which finances the 3-year-old Colab program and, therefore, the commissioning of plays.

Along with Havis, whose “Haut Gout” opened the 1987-88 season on the Second Stage, other playwrights now in the Colab program are Thomas Babe, whose “Down in the Dumps” was given a Mainstage reading Monday night, Eric Overmyer, Howard Korder, Amlin Gray, Richard Greenberg, Ellen McLaughlin, Philip Kan Gotanda and Hwang.

Hwang was commissioned by SCR long before “M. Butterfly” opened on Broadway. The 30-year-old Los Angeles playwright also has been picked by Freydberg and Landesman (an “M. Butterfly” investor) for one of their commissions, as have Christopher Durang, Marsha Norman, David Rabe, Terrence McNally and Wendy Wasserstein.

“We’re not going to crank promising talent into a Broadway house,” Landesman said, “because new writers need to be developed in a protected environment. But Hwang is an exception. He has already proven himself.”

The matter of proof can rankle, of course. Who is proving what to whom? For many playwrights, getting their work mounted in New York is no longer the goal it used to be.

“I’m sure I speak for others when I say that we’re not thinking Broadway,” said Giron, whose “Charlie Bacon and His Family” was produced on the SCR Second Stage in 1987. “If something comes to New York, fine. If not, fine too.

“There is no question that New York theater has been kept afloat by the regional houses,” he added. “In the old days, Broadway producers used to try shows out on the road. Now, for economic reasons, they bring them in from the regionals. What is so honorable about SCR is that they don’t do shows with New York in mind.”

Still, all you had to do was glance around the Rainbow Room that day to realize that SCR productions frequently reach beyond the county in one form or other.

Jim Leonard’s “V & V Only,” a co-production with Circle Repertory Co., had its world premiere on the Second Stage in March and will open at Circle Rep in Greenwich Village on Thursday. Same cast. Same set.

A revised version of Giron’s “Charlie Bacon” will open at the John Drew Barrymore Theater in East Hampton, N.Y., July 18 with a new cast of young Hollywood comers--Matt Salinger (TV movies “Blood and Orchids,” “Manhunt for Claude Dallas”) and Lea Thompson (“Back to the Future,” “All the Right Moves”).

BACKSTAGE NOTES: It is nice to have friends in corporate places. The tab for lunch at the Rainbow Room was picked up by Philip Morris, which owns the Mission Viejo Co., one of SCR’s corporate sponsors.

Bonnie Hall, director of development at SCR, got the idea for the lunch. She called Sondra Raub, an SCR board member. Raub talked to her husband, Jack, who handles commercial properties at Mission Viejo Co. He passed the idea along to Wendy Wetzel, who handles the company’s cultural liaisons.

The company declined to disclose how much it paid for the lunch, but be assured that it ran to four figures. “We paid the bill, but we don’t want bragging rights,” said Wetzel’s assistant, Karen Kestner.

Tiffany & Co. is less coy about such things. According to spokeswoman Fernanda Gilligan, who attended the luncheon, the jewelry firm will spend more than $100,000 to sponsor SCR’s 25th anniversary gala in October as a tie-in to the opening of a Tiffany store at South Coast Plaza.