Playwright’s Sentimental Journey to ‘Grand Junction’

“I love to travel on trains,” playwright Martin Casella said wistfully. “I don’t think most Americans do. But four years ago, I had to go to New York; it was during the Olympics and I wanted to escape. So I took the train across the United States--and it was incredible. The most wonderful people travel on trains. People who don’t have to be somewhere in six hours. People who just want to relax and take it easy, who want to read. . . . “

The result of those experiences is “Grand Junction,” opening Sunday at the Coast Playhouse and directed by his brother, Matt Casella.

“I’m a raging sentimentalist,” the playwright, 31, admitted. “My favorite movies are ‘It’s a Wonderful Life,’ ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Our Town’--all involving people who are given another chance to see something they didn’t see the first time. That’s what this play is about: How wonderful life can be if you open your eyes and look at what’s going on, instead of rushing around, not connecting the dots. A lot of my friends say, ‘When I’m famous, I’ll be happy.’ They don’t realize that what’s going on is life.”

Part of appreciating it, Casella thinks, is being open to the unexpected and unexplainable. He talks about the friend he’d called before going to New York, not being able to reach her, but going to Bloomingdale’s and--literally--bumping into her at the door. Or the time he was on a train ride from Moscow to Leningrad, listening to the “fascinating but very, very loud” woman in the next compartment--”and it turned out she lived three blocks from me in the Fairfax district.”

Likewise, the characters in his play also discover a bond: “They’re five people who live in Los Angeles, who’ve all reached a place in their lives where they have to make a really big decision. You follow them as they get on a train and go somewhere across the country to a place that’s pulling them there--and you follow the people they left behind. As it goes along, you realize they’re all interconnected, but they don’t know it.”

The structure involves not only overlapping stories, but overlapping dialogue (recalling Craig Lucas’ “Blue Window”) and for the first 45 minutes, five characters occupying the same--separate--space on stage. “The first couple of plays I wrote were very Aristotelian,” he said dismissively. “They took place in 24 hours; people did this, they did that. But lately I’ve gotten more interested in things that are a little more epic in scope.”

Nowadays, Casella (whose plays include “Mates,” “Paydirt” and “Beautiful Dreamer”) is working on a piece about his mother (inspired by a photo of her at 20, “sitting on a float and waving--ravishingly beautiful”) and “States of Grace,” about a woman rebuilding her life after her fiance’s death in Vietnam: “In a way, it’s a metaphor for what the United States had to do when the war was over: pull ourselves back together and deal with all the guilt and anger and pain before we could go on.”

Apparently there’s little such Angst in the working relationship with his two-years-younger sibling. “We trade,” the playwright said of the power arrangement. “If I’m working with a director, there’s a point where I have to respect his opinion and defer to him. Sometimes, sure, we see things differently--and it can be a real battle.” When it gets carried off stage, “That’s less amusing,” Casella agreed. “Because we have to deal with lots of old stuff, family crap. And I tend to hold onto things for a while.”

Originally an actor, Casella’s first post-college job was as personal assistant to Steven Spielberg: “I followed him around, made sure his living quarters were OK, made sure his driver was picking him up at the right time--basically that his life was comfortable. It was an incredible experience. But (as far as my own creativity), no. For three years I sat on it. Then right after I quit, the winter of ‘81, I went crazy; I wrote three plays in a year.”

Since then, Casella has also kept his hand in acting: Spielberg tapped him for a role in “Poltergeist” (“I was the guy who ripped off his face--the major gross-out scene in the movie”). But mostly, he’s stuck to writing; though none of his screenplays have yet been produced, he has spent the last 2 1/2 years writing scripts for Disney.

In view of the ongoing writers’ strike, Casella’s theatrical detour has been therapeutic all-around. “Most of my plays tend to be a little depressing, almost fatalistic,” he noted. “This one’s very optimistic. It caught me in a great mood.”