Two New Plays Part of SCR’s ‘88-89 Season; Talks With Directors, Choreographers End

South Coast Repertory’s 1989-90 season will include at least two brand-new plays, one American premiere and one Southern California premiere, artistic director Martin Benson has announced.

The first productions of Howard Korder’s “Search and Destroy” and Richard Hellesen’s “Once in Arden” and the first Southern California staging of Hugh Whitemore’s “Breaking the Code” will be on South Coast’s main stage.

On the Second Stage, South Coast will produce the American premiere of Sharman MacDonald’s “When I Was a Girl, I Used to Scream and Shout” and the previously reported “Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune” by Terrence McNally.

Only five of next season’s 11 offerings--and no dates--were announced. A theater spokesman said the rest of the season should be firm within a month. “We’re attempting to give subscribers whatever we can,” he said. The theater’s annual subscription campaign has just begun.

Three productions for the 507-seat Mainstage and three for the 161-seat Second Stage have yet to be decided. For the Mainstage, Benson and producing artistic director David Emmes are considering Moliere’s “The Miser,” Noel Coward’s “Design for Living,” Bertolt Brecht’s “Mother Courage” and, more remotely, Alan Ayckbourn’s “Woman in Mind.”

“There are other possibilities as well,” Benson said, but he declined to disclose them.

Korder’s “Search and Destroy,” which was commissioned by SCR, is about a Florida businessman who encounters tax troubles and decides to seek meaning in his life. It was read at SCR earlier this year.

“Once in Arden” is the first script by an Orange County resident to win a berth on a South Coast subscription season since 1973. Hellesen lives in Fullerton and teaches at Cal State Fullerton. His play is about Polish-born Helena Modjeska, the renowned Shakespearean actress who retired to Orange County around the turn of the century after touring the country for three decades. The play received a staged reading, starring Nan Martin, earlier this month at SCR’s California Play Festival.

“Breaking the Code” chronicles the life of Alan Turing, the British mathematician who helped decide the outcome of World War II by cracking the German secret code “Enigma.” It opened in London in 1986 and on Broadway in 1987, both times starring Derek Jacobi.

“When I Was a Girl . . . ,” a Scottish play, takes place at the beach and tells the story of a mother-daughter relationship. It opened in London in 1988.

“Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune” will be a vehicle for two SCR veteran players, Richard Doyle and Karen Hensel. It was on the Mark Taper Forum season last fall.

DIRECTORS MAY WALK: The Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers (SSDC) has broken off contract negotiations with the League of Resident Theatres (LORT). LORT’s final proposal, judged unacceptable by union officials, will be voted on at an SSDC membership meeting in New York June 12.

If the offer is rejected, the union’s members nationwide will be directed not to work at the 67 theaters that belong to LORT--which include the Mark Taper Forum, South Coast Repertory, the Old Globe and La Jolla Playhouse. However, the union’s executive board voted Tuesday to allow work to continue on any productions that have begun rehearsals by June 12.

Most Southern California LORT members would not be immediately affected by an exodus of SSDC directors.

The Taper’s summer production, “Temptation,” went into rehearsals Tuesday. South Coast’s next production, “Sunday in the Park With George,” opens next week. However, South Coast’s Benson said an SSDC walkout could alter the theater’s choice of its opening play for next season: “The only thing that will affect us is the timing, in other words which directors we can approach first to begin rehearsals. And that could affect which play we open with.”

At La Jolla, the season’s only shows that won’t start rehearsals by June 12 will be directed by the theater’s artistic director, Des McAnuff, or the artistic director of Chicago’s Goodman Theatre, Robert Falls; most artistic directors are expected to side with the theaters rather than with the union.

Similarly, at the Old Globe, two of the three summer productions that haven’t begun rehearsals will be directed by the theater’s executive producer Craig Noel and its artistic director Jack O’Brien. John Hirsch, who will stage the remaining summer show, “has indicated he would honor his contract with us,” said Old Globe managing director Thomas R. Hall, who is also the president of LORT.

An informational meeting for West Coast members of SSDC is scheduled for June 15 at 6 p.m. at the Directors Guild of America headquarters in Hollywood.

MESMERIZING?: The team of Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee (“Inherit the Wind”) has collaborated with Norman Cousins on a new play, “Whisper in the Mind,” about the efforts of hypnotism pioneer Franz Anton Mesmer to convince 1786 Paris of the value of his treatments. It’s the first theatrical endeavor for Cousins, the former editor of Saturday Review and author of books about the healing powers of the mind.

The play will be read by David Dukes, E. G. Marshall, John Randolph and Mala Powers at UCLA’s Freud Theatre on June 17 at 7:30 p.m. as the first project of the newly formed Audrey Skirball-Kenis Theatre, which hopes to present four to six professional play readings a year. Paul Heller and Martha Scott are the producers.

Admission is free, but reservations are required: call (213) 284-8965.

GROUNDLING RUMBLINGS: Tom Maxwell, director of the Groundlings for the last decade, has resigned to pursue television and movie ventures. His responsibilities as artistic director will be assumed by Bill Schreiner, at least temporarily, while Oren Michaels has been hired to run the business side of the troupe as executive director.

WHOSE SET IS IT? Nicholas Dorr, credited as set designer for the West End Playhouse’s “Absurd Person Singular” in the program and in a recent Times review, said he left the production on April 10, before the scheduled April 29 opening, and disclaimed responsibility for the set. David Brown, a spokesman for the production, replied that Dorr’s design was still used, even after he left, but that his departure had delayed the opening of the show by one week.