Curtain Rises on Program of Drama Festival : Stage: South Coast Repertory schedule will feature 7 plays, including the premiere of a work about Helena Modjeska’s years in Orange County.

Seven plays dealing with an eclectic array of subjects--from Nazi romance to feminist fantasy to the myth of Don Juan--will compose South Coast Repertory’s second annual California Play Festival, company officials announced Wednesday.

CalFest, to run April 20 through June 3, will have three full productions and four staged readings. All seven works will be on view at least once in repertory-style scheduling during the most intense period of the festival, May 11 to 19.

The world premiere of Richard Hellesen’s “Once in Arden,” a drama about the renowned actress Helena Modjeska, who lived in Orange County at the turn of the century, will launch the festival on the SCR Mainstage. Nan Martin, last seen at SCR in Athol Fugard’s “The Road to Mecca,” will star as Modjeska.

The other two full productions, on the Second Stage, will be the world premieres of Shem Bitterman’s “The Ramp,” about a concentration camp doctor who falls in love with a young woman, and Octavio Solis’ “Man of the Flesh,” a darkly comic Chicano version of the Don Juan myth.

Mark Lee’s “Pirates,” this year’s winner of SCR’s California Play Competition, will be read on the Mainstage. Robert Daseler’s “An Office Romance” will be read on the Second Stage, as will Milcha Sanchez Scott’s “The Architect Piece” and Neena Beber’s “The Course of It.”

SCR spokesman Cristofer Gross said “Pirates” is not being given a full production “because everybody thought it was too large for the Second Stage” and “Once in Arden” already had been scheduled for the Mainstage.

Lee’s play is a fantasy drama that revolves around a repressed woman academician and a feminist graduate student whose clash with a male college faculty draws inspiration from swashbuckling female pirates of the 18th Century.

Both “An Office Romance,” about contemporary marital expectations, and “The Ramp” are this year’s competition runners-up.

‘Once in Arden” had placed high in the 1989 play competition before being withdrawn by Hellesen. An SCR staffer, Hellesen had submitted the script under a pseudonym. When he learned it was being considered for a prize, he revealed his identity and had to withdraw under the competition rules.

“The Course of It,” about a young woman and an adulterous affair, was entered in this year’s competition but didn’t win. Neither “The Architect Piece,” about nature versus technology in a South American rain forest, nor “Man of the Flesh” was entered in the competition. “Man of the Flesh” was developed in SCR’s Hispanic Playwrights Project.

The CalFest schedule is as follows:

* “Once in Arden,” Mainstage production, April 20 to May 24, previews April 13 to 19.

* “Man of the Flesh,” Second Stage production, May 4 to 13 and May 16, 18 and 20 (two performances), previews May 1 to 3.

* “The Ramp,” Second Stage production, May 15, 17 and 19 (two performances) and May 22 to June 3.

* “The Course of It,” Second Stage reading, May 11 (2:30 p.m., free).

* “Pirates,” Mainstage reading, May 14 (7:30 p.m., last of NewSCRipt series, $6).

* “An Office Romance,” Second Stage reading, May 18 (2:30 p.m., free).

* “The Architect Piece,” Second Stage reading, May 19 (11 a.m., free).

A NewSCRipt reading of Alan Havis’ “The Habit of Lying” will be given Monday at 7:30 p.m. on the SCR Mainstage. The new play, about a wealthy Jewish family, is set in Connecticut. Havis has had two plays produced at SCR, “Haut Gout” and “Morocco.” He is a professor of play writing at UC San Diego.