Regional Theaters, Playwrights Benefit by Joining Forces

Yesterday’s screenwriters came from Broadway. But, if the work of Old Globe associate artist Stephen Metcalfe sets any precedent, tomorrow’s screenwriters will come increasingly from regional theaters.

Both Marsha Norman’s “ ‘night, Mother,” made into a movie starring Anne Bancroft and Sissy Spacek, and August Wilson’s “Fences,” now being developed for Eddie Murphy, began at regional theaters and moved to Broadway before ascending to Hollywood.

But Metcalfe’s “Strange Snow” never played on Broadway before Metcalfe wrote it for the screen as “Jackknife.” Now being readied for a December release, “Jackknife” stars Robert De Niro and Ed Harris as two Vietnam buddies trying to get their lives back on track. The director is David Jones (“Betrayal,” “84 Charing Cross Road.”)

Although “Strange Snow” debuted at the Manhattan Theatre Club off Broadway, it was not until the play was read at the Old Globe’s play discovery workshop in 1984 that it and its author came to national attention.

“I’ve always said I owe the Globe a lot,” Metcalfe said with a smile. “Thomas Hall (Globe managing producer) always teases me that I should pay them half the royalties for ‘Strange Snow.’ ”

The timing of the Globe production didn’t hurt, either. In 1984, San Diego hosted a meeting of the League of Regional Theatres (LORT). Artistic directors from across the country clamored to produce the play. It was reproduced locally at the North Coast Repertory Theatre, the East County Performing Arts Center (ECPAC) and San Diego State University. And now it’s Hollywood’s turn.

The intervening years have been fruitful for the 35-year-old Metcalfe and the 51-year-old Globe.

Metcalfe has done a play at the Globe every year since 1984: “Vikings” in 1985, “Emily” in 1986, “The Incredibly Famous Willy Rivers” in 1987 and Metcalfe’s first musical, “White Linen,” now playing on the Lowell Davies Festival Stage through Sept. 25.

He is at work on a screenplay for “Emily” and an American version of the French film “Cousin, Cousine.” Retitled “Cousins,” the movie will star Ted Danson, one of the leads in another French-flick-turned-American hit, “Three Men and a Baby.”

At the Globe, Metcalfe’s was the first in a series of continuing relationships between the theater and playwrights.

“I came along at the right time,” he said. “The Globe was looking to form a relationship with a writer. You’re going to see a lot more people in that position.”

The splashiest names premiering works at the Globe are those of the proven Broadway winners--Stephen Sondheim, who premiered his Tony-winning musical “Into the Woods” here last year, and Neil Simon, whose new play, “Rumors,” opening Oct. 24, was scheduled for a Broadway run before previews were even under way.

But the more telling figures in the equation are the regional and Off-Broadway writers like Metcalfe who are being cultivated by theaters like the Globe--writers such as A. R. Gurney Jr. and Terrence McNally.

Gurney premiered “Another Antigone” at the Globe last year, as well as “The Cocktail Hour,” which will reopen at Off-Broadway’s Promenade Theatre on Oct. 20.

McNally, author of the hit Off-Broadway play “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune,” has been commissioned to write “Up in Saratoga,” a new version of a 19th-Century farce by Bronson Howard, scheduled to run during the Globe’s next summer season.

Similarly, the La Jolla Playhouse commissioned “Two Rooms” from Lee Blessing before Blessing’s “A Walk in the Woods” made it to Broadway. The San Diego Repertory Theatre commissioned a new work from jazz composer Max Roach, who did “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” for the theater last season. And Kit Goldman of the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre just commissioned a black retelling of the Pygmalion myth, by Elmo Terry-Morgan, which it hopes to premiere in 1990.

After Metcalfe moved to La Jolla from Connecticut last year, he became the first playwright named an associate artist for the Globe. The title does not mean he owes the theater first crack at his work, nor does the Globe owe him any productions.

It does, however, provide a sense of belonging, another significant benefit that continuing relationships with regional theaters are beginning to provide.

“I think (the title) means that I’m part of this theater community here, that I am a part of this family of artists and of the Old Globe,” Metcalfe said. “You meet the other artists, there’s a lot of give and take. You don’t feel you’re in a vacuum.”

That sense of team sometimes means switching hats, Metcalfe has found. Last week, at the invitation of Jack O’Brien, artistic director of the Globe and director of “White Linen,” Metcalfe stepped in to play one of his leads, the hardened outlaw, Wild Bill Longley.

“I think (O’Brien’s) feeling is that the perspective gathered from doing it a couple of times will be very valuable to me,” he said.

“We do think a director and writer should get on stage just to remember what it’s like, to know what the actors are going through,” he said. “I don’t think he would have asked me to do it if he didn’t think I could get into it. It’s not as unlikely a choice as it may seem.”

Although Metcalfe started as an actor in the theater, the last play he performed in was “Half a Lifetime,” the same year that the Globe produced “Strange Snow.”

Not only doesn’t the experience make him nostalgic for his acting days, it results in an odd switch of loyalties.

“When I’m up there, I find myself wondering what (expletive) wrote this,” Metcalfe conceded with a rueful laugh.

But the experience of acting in his play, as he and O’Brien expected, is already helping him think of the changes that may help the musical move on to other venues after it closes here.