Playwright Rips SCR for Cancellation

Playwright Ellen McLaughlin of San Francisco has lashed out at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa over its recent cancellation of her play “Infinity’s House.”

The world premiere had been scheduled for spring as the centerpiece of SCR’S first California Play Festival.

“The play is large and unconventional, and I think they lost their nerve,” McLaughlin said in a recent interview from her home. She also accused SCR leadership of being--among other things--sexist, patronizing and better at getting corporate grants than at dealing with writers, despite its vaunted reputation for developing original plays.

“This has been a real blow for me, personally and financially,” the 31-year-old, award-winning playwright said. “The theater has put out an official line that I didn’t get the rewrites ready. But they dropped the play without ever seeing the rewrites. I don’t think they would have liked them anyway. And they have dealt with me as if I’m this hysterical woman, a loose cannon. They were paternalistic about everything.”

SCR literary manager Jerry Patch, who brought McLaughlin to the theater’s attention, said Monday that he was saddened by her accusations and attributed them to her disappointment.

“I certainly don’t feel that way toward her, and I don’t think anybody else here does either,” Patch said. “I never saw her near hysterical about anything. She’s a very thoughtful and considerate woman and one of the finest writing talents in the country. It’s purely and honestly a difference of opinion on the play.”

McLaughlin has reiterated some of her charges in a letter to the Washington-based Fund for New American Plays, which in June awarded SCR $64,000 to help underwrite the cost of staging “Infinity’s House,” a sprawling, 36-character drama about the westward migration of the pioneers, the building of the railroads and the creation of the atomic bomb.

It was the largest grant awarded nationwide by the fund this year. SCR officials have said they will return it.

SCR commissioned “Infinity’s House” about 2 years ago, based on conversations with the playwright. McLaughlin was paid $5,000 at that time to come up with a script. When SCR announced the 1988-89 season in July, it said the production would be the largest in its 25-year history.

“No matter what they say about the play, I don’t think they ever liked it that much,” McLaughlin argued. “They never really got it. But their hand was forced after they put it up for the grant and it won. They had to schedule it. I think they were surprised it won. I know they were surprised at how much money it won.”

Asked why she thought SCR officials would have proposed “Infinity’s House” for a grant if they did not believe in the play, McLaughlin said nonprofit theaters “are always putting plays up for awards. They do it out of habit without expecting to win.”

McLaughlin, who is also an actress, has a reputation among theater insiders as “a hot young playwright,” according to several sources. She has written five other plays and is best known for “Days and Nights Within” and “A Narrow Bed,” both widely produced.

The former was co-winner of the 1985 Great American Play Contest sponsored by the Actors’ Theater of Louisville. The latter also premiered at Louisville and is co-winner of the 1987 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize.

In her letter to the fund, obtained by The Times, McLaughlin noted that while “no one (at SCR) has ever been rude to me or unkind,” she feels “hurt and bitter” over her treatment--principally because of the imputation that she was unprofessional in not meeting deadlines.

“From the very beginning I felt that we were speaking different languages,” McLaughlin wrote, “and that, on the most basic level, we never understood each other. . . . I would also like to make clear that they always gave me the impression that, though rewrites would certainly be welcome, the play would be produced with or without them.”

SCR artistic director Martin Benson, reached at his office Friday, declared otherwise. “We wanted rewrites, and the rewrites kept not happening,” he said. Dropping “Infinity’s House” from the season was “a totally positive thing,” he added, precisely because the script was not ready for production.

“The more we got talking with Ellen, the more we realized that essentially she had written the play she wanted to write,” he recalled. “Were we to persist, we would be dragging her into writing a play she didn’t want to write.”

Despite their misunderstanding, Benson insisted that the playwright and the theater “got along famously.” But the story behind the cancellation illuminates an aspect of play development, not only at SCR but at other powerful regional theaters, that is fraught with tension and psychological pressure.

Moreover, the backstage conflicts tend to remain hidden from public view because playwrights fearful of losing commissions are reluctant to disclose any unhappiness over arbitrary treatment, McLaughlin said.

“Playwrights are a dime a dozen,” she said. “Theaters have the power and the money. They also suffer from a disease in this country, and SCR has a special reputation for it. They like developing plays instead of producing them. It’s very paternalistic.”

SCR kills plays with kindness, McLaughlin said, by “taking off the edges” and polishing them to an immaculate sheen. She cited the changes that SCR had suggested she make for “Infinity’s House” as an example.

“They wanted me to take out all the ethnic, non-heroic characters--the Chinese and the other immigrants--and to a certain extent focus the whole play on Robert Oppenheimer. But look at the title. I named it ‘Infinity’s House’ because that’s America’s story. It’s not just the white guys who built this country.”

Why did she take the commission in the first place? “I’m an actor and a playwright, and I don’t earn much,” she said. If the play had been produced, she stood to earn $17,000, she explained, “more than I’ve ever earned from anything.”

In retrospect, she said, her experience at SCR proved what several friends had warned her about all along: that SCR, its 1988 Tony notwithstanding, “is a theater without a theater sense.”

“It’s a corporation,” she argued. “It deals well with corporations. Better than it does with playwrights. It’s great at getting grants. But I don’t think it has any smarts about plays.”