A Short Road to Theatrical Stardom : ‘Gift From Heaven’ Bestows Its Bounty on Playwright David Steen

Ten weeks ago, life changed for David Steen.

His play, “A Gift From Heaven,” had been running at the Chamber Theatre in Studio City for a month. All the flyers had been distributed. All his friends had seen it--a couple of times. The $4,000 he’d raised to stage the show was gone. On a good night, there would be an audience of 10--three of them paying customers. Steen decided to close and informed the theater’s owners that the next weekend would be his last.

But then some major reviews came out. Critics loved the show. Adjectives such as “rich,” “unforgettable” and “flawlessly crafted” were used to describe the play. It became a critic’s choice in several publications. It began selling out. Offers came from the East Coast. Samuel French contacted him to publish the script. New York agent Howard Rosenstone, who handles David Mamet and Michael Weller, signed on to represent him. Recently, New York producer Elliott Martin flew out to see the show and took a 6-month option on it.

In the blink of an eye, Steen has gone from being an unknown to a theatrical star-in-the-making.

“I haven’t changed at all,” insisted the actor and playwright, 34, in his amiable Tennessee drawl. “And I don’t think I’ve become a prima donna. The crew people, costumer, set designer, other actors--and especially the director, Jim Holmes--have given this play a lot of texture. If I hadn’t had them around me, who knows what it’d be. . . . I’m not changed,” he repeated. “But sure, people have changed in their attitude toward me.

“When you write something successful, they think, ‘Well, he’s an intellectual.’ The truth is that when I was shopping this play around, a lot of people turned it down: ‘I don’t know--it’s kind of risky.’ One guy offered me a dollar for the rights. That’s why I raised the money myself and put it on. Yeah, I was very confident. I thought I had something special. But sure, it’s different. The people in it are different.

His story centers on the dirt-poor Samuels clan of North Carolina, circa 1954, where the arrival of a young cousin into the charged, claustrophobic household upsets the emotional and sexual power base of Ma over her slow-witted teen-age son and affection-starved daughter. “To me, the play’s about obsessiveness, how people get obsessed in a love relationship,” Steen noted. He said the mother “turns” that love and “justifies everything she does through her religion.”

Though religion--how people pervert and manipulate it to suit their needs--is a major element, he stressed that there’s no personal political agenda underfoot.

“I don’t want to make statements about anything,” Steen said firmly. “It wasn’t like I wanted to say, ‘Incest is bad. This is bad.’ It’s just a story for me--totally made up. It started as a scene I wrote for an acting class. People said, ‘Oh, that’s weird and interesting and funny’--so I started writing a play. Then, after I wrote it, I did the research. I guess I did it ass-backwards.”

Apparently, it hasn’t blunted the effect. “People come back afterwards and tell me, ‘It’s what we felt as children: the absence of what we considered love, how we tried so passionately to do the right things to get it--and never got it.’ ”

Steen claims little personal kinship with the subject (“I come from an absolutely supportive, loving family”)--or, for that matter, with the theater world.

“I went to Memphis State for a year--and almost a half,” he said, adding that he was one of those guys, who, when people asked him what he was majoring in, answered ‘pre-law’ “to make my mom and dad happy. But I was never a good student. And I was never involved in theater or anything like that.”

After Memphis State, he worked on a dude ranch in Colorado, moved to Lake Tahoe (“where I played around, worked as a bartender and waiter”), then to San Diego. “I said, ‘I’m not doing anything. Maybe I’ll be an actor.’ Then the play I was in got good reviews and I said, ‘Hey, I’m going to Hollywood.’ ” Since arriving here seven years ago, Steen has had some small parts in television, but has generally supported himself bartending and building wood furniture.

Part of that view is a definite Southern sensibility.

“Sure it’s there,” he acknowledged. “I just think the South is amazing. It’s so full of characters--people who can sit on a porch and stare at a bug for 15 minutes.” Although he figures he’ll continue to dip into his Southern roots, big-city life styles are also proving fertile ground. His newest project, “Avenue A,” is about New Yorkers. “They have such an edge about them,” he said, shaking his head.

Steen himself is not immune to such attitudinal adjustmentments. “I find myself getting caught up in the hustle and bustle,” he said. “I have to say to myself, ‘Come on, David. Cool it .’ ”