Playwright, 17, Brings Characters to Light in Darkness of Barroom

Seventeen-year-old Logan Abbitt thinks his life lacks excitement.

“Life in itself is too mundane,” he said. “If you don’t have an escape you will wither and die. Take my life, for example. I wake up, eat breakfast, go to school, come home and do chores.”

To combat his restlessness, this Chatsworth High School senior has found an antidote. His elixir is his imagination.

“I create,” he said. “I can dream anything. I’m one of the world’s greatest dreamers.”

Abbitt’s fertile mind manifests itself primarily through his writing--among them a one-act play titled “Scratch” that was one of three winning entries in the first Young Playwrights Contest sponsored earlier this year by A Directors’ Theatre in Hollywood.

The more than 70 entries, all one-acts, represented 23 high schools and junior highs in the Los Angeles Unified School District and Los Angeles County. Besides Abbitt, the other winners were Ji Yoon Francis Kim, 17, of Whitney High School in Cerritos with “La Fantasia,” a play about a priest and his young penitent’s quest for fulfillment, and Michelle Fugate, 14, of Hill Junior High School in Long Beach with “The Unborn Problem,” a drama about teen-age pregnancy. The three winning entries--which were not ranked--were chosen by a panel of 12 readers and seven industry judges.

In addition to having their plays produced in December at the Lex Theatre in Hollywood, the three winners each received a $1,000 savings bond, and their schools will be given $500, said Dorothy Lyman, founder of A Directors’ Theatre, which owns and operates the Lex.

Established as a nonprofit corporation in January, 1987, A Directors’ Theatre focuses on producing plays by contemporary playwrights that deal with a variety of subjects. The producers, directors and actors are all professionals.

Lyman was interested in developing the Young Playwrights Contest to encourage young people to write for the theater. “We’re interested in developing writers from the next generation,” she said. Described as a black comedy, “Scratch” deals with the struggle of Scratch, who learns that he is dying of cancer at the age of 40. Coming from a wealthy family that never quite met his needs, Scratch instead makes a “family” of his acquaintances at the bar where he plays pool. But when he learns of his illness, Scratch lacks the courage to tell his friends--and thus he avoids having to say goodby.

A pool enthusiast, Abbitt said his mother was once a bar manager, “so I used to go to the bar sometimes to help clean up. . . . I got to know the inside of the bar. Mom told me so many stories about the people that would go there. Some of the jokes in the play are from actual stories she told me.”

Although “Scratch” includes the theme of dying, Abbitt says that “when you get right down to it, it’s about relationships. It’s about the separation of friends and the ending of relationships.”

Lyman chose Caroline DuCrocq Hesseman, the wife of actor Howard Hesseman, to direct Abbitt’s play. (The cast of four men and one woman will be selected through open auditions.) Hesseman said she was particularly impressed with the way Abbitt handled the subject.

“I think it’s a remarkable piece for a young person,” she said. “He’s dealing with a profound American tragedy--parents giving in to material values and dedicating their lives to accumulating money. The individual that happens to be their child feels he has lost.

“This is the case with the main character. He’s incapable of building a life for himself. He has a terror of love and attachment,” she said. “In pool, someone who cannot win is called ‘Scratch.’ Even his name means he has become a loser. He is a man who is doomed.”

“Scratch” was Abbitt’s first attempt at a play. The idea came to him about three years ago but it wasn’t until he saw a poster at school announcing the contest that he decided to turn it into a play. Abbitt said the writing took only about a week, although he did three rewrites before entering the contest.

Since finishing “Scratch,” Abbitt has started two other plays, both set in bars. “I like bars because they’re social places,” he said. “Everyone is equal there. All the regulars are like family. And it’s dark. I like dark.”

Among Abbitt’s other works in progress are two novels: One dealing with a group of friends who become shipwrecked, the other focusing on a challenge between a boy and his stepfather.

Abbitt said he never considered writing as a career until about a year ago. After completing a paper on “Huckleberry Finn” and getting a good grade on it, he figured he must have some talent. “It hit me, if I enjoy doing this--and I do it well--why not do it for a living?” he said.

To help with character development, Abbitt said, he relies on years of role-playing games, among them “Dungeons and Dragons.”

“I look at the situation from the character’s point of view,” he said. Since Abbitt is involved with acting at school, the role playing has also helped him develop the characters he portrays.

Besides living in Oregon, where he attended grades seven through his sophomore year in high school, Abbitt has also lived in Kentucky, Indiana, Oklahoma and Northern California. His parents divorced when he was 6 and he lived with his mother until last year, when he moved to Reseda to be with his father, a theater professor at Cal State Northridge.

Abbitt is undecided what he’ll do after he graduates from high school. Along with writing, Abbitt has also toyed with the idea of moving to Alaska to study broadcasting. At 17, armed with abounding eagerness and optimism, the possibilities seem endless.

“I guess I want to do everything,” he said. “I want to be in the entertainment field. I want to be like Woody Allen--direct, act and produce. Anything that’s creative, I’ll do it.”

The Lex Theatre is at 6760 Lexington Ave. in Hollywood. Performances of the three winning one-acts are at 8 p.m. Dec. 21-23 and 26-30, with additional performances at 2 p.m. Dec. 23 & 30. For reservations and additional information, call (213) 465-8431.