CTG Seasons: From Sondheim to Robert Penn Warren : The Taper: ‘Hope of the Heart’ kicks off the season in September. The schedule also features ‘The Lisbon Traviata,’ ‘The Wash,’ ‘Mr. Jellylord’ and ‘Widows.”

Taper subscribers have been told they will receive priority seating for the 23 performances of “The Dragons Trilogy” (“ La Trilogie des Dragons “) at UCLA’s Freud Theatre, Sept. 14-Oct. 14. The production covers a 25-year time span in Quebec City’s Chinatown--hence the connection to the Pacific Rim theme of the Los Angeles Festival. It won first prize at the Theater of the Americas 1987 Festival and also won top awards from Canadian critics’ circles.

The Taper’s regular season will begin in September with “Hope of the Heart.” Director Adrian Hall had hoped--in his heart--to be able to present his earlier adaptation of the rest of “All the King’s Men” along with this adaptation of the book’s Chapter Four--in a two-evening package. Asked if Davidson felt it was beyond the Taper’s resources to do both shows, Hall laughed and replied, “I think he felt it was beyond my resources.” In a mailing to Taper subscribers, “Hope” is described as a “journey into the pre-Civil War heritage of a young reporter, who uncovers the past of a distant relative, Cass Mastern, and his wild, horrifying and disastrous affair with a plantation owner’s wife.”

As previously reported, Terrence McNally’s “The Lisbon Traviata” is expected to occupy the next slot on the Taper season, opening in November.

Philip Kan Gotanda’s “The Wash” is the likeliest candidate for the January slot in the season. An examination of an elderly Japanese-American couple’s divorce and its aftermath, “The Wash” is slated to be directed by Berkeley Repertory Theatre artistic director Sharon Ott--first at the Manhattan Theatre Club in October and then at the Taper in early 1991. The play has been through several Taper workshops, including one that was reviewed in 1985, but the official premiere was at San Francisco’s Eureka Theatre in 1987. A film version received a limited release in 1988 and was seen on PBS’ “American Playhouse” in March.

“Mr. Jellylord,” the musical about Jelly Roll Morton, for which the Taper recently received a $100,000 grant, will probably occupy the next slot, opening in March, though there is some uncertainty about the order of “The Wash” and “Mr. Jellylord.”

The Taper has promised subscribers “the first look” at an American production of a classic play in late spring, before it is dispatched to the United Kingdom as part of an exchange agreement with Kenneth Branagh’s Renaissance Theatre Company, which brought “King Lear” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” to the Taper earlier this year. “Julius Caesar” is the expected choice.

The season’s last slot probably will be occupied by “Widows,” Chilean writer Ariel Dorfman’s play about resistance to a brutal military dictatorship. Originally scheduled to be running right now, the play was pulled from the current season for more rewriting, despite Dorfman’s stated belief that it had been ready to go into production. By phone, Dorfman said he and the Taper now “seem to be in agreement. I think we’ll find the right text.”

In an earlier mailing to subscribers, Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America” also was described as “set for the (1990-91) season.” But now it looks as if the two-part epic won’t receive its first full production, at Eureka Theatre in San Francisco, until next May at the earliest, which would probably postpone its appearance at the Taper until the following season. The first half of the show, “Millennium Approaches,” recently closed at Taper, Too, but the second half, “Perestroika,” is still being developed and may go through a Taper workshop next fall.