BACKSTAGE: PLAYWRIGHT : A Role Reversal : Richard Stayton quit his job as a newspaper drama critic to stage plays of his own creation.

Richard Stayton found himself back in his old job a couple of weeks ago, for a post-performance analysis of a play. Sitting in the courtyard outside the Plaza Players Theater in Ventura, the former theater critic was discussing an experimental, one-act production with the producers.

Nothing to it, one might think--only a one-act play, after all. And Stayton had been a critic for Los Angeles’ second-largest paper, the now-defunct Herald Examiner, for nine years, and has lectured on drama at institutions including USC and the Yale University Drama School.

The suggestions are coming from all directions: The stage is too dark at the beginning of the play; the audience might be confused. They might still be confused after the 35-minute show; perhaps there should be a discussion between the principals and members of the audience.

But Stayton isn’t making the suggestions, he’s answering them. “I don’t want the people to see too much,” he responds to the “too dark” challenge, but allows that a discussion with the audience might be interesting and rewarding.

He’s not the critic, this time. Stayton, 43, is the playwright. His post-apocalyptic drama, “After the First Death” (the title is from Dylan Thomas) is being performed Sunday nights at the Plaza Players Theater, in the Old Livery.

Artists on the end of unfavorable reviews often salve their emotional wounds with the observation that the critic has never written a play, performed a concert, painted a landscape, or whatever. Stayton has written his play and received mixed reviews: favorable when “After the First Death” was performed in Sweden, in Swedish; not so favorable when it was produced by the British Broadcasting Corp., in English.

The play won a prize in Indiana, the 1984 Goshen College Peace Prize. But the deck was slightly loaded, Stayton admits: Goshen is affiliated with the Mennonite church, and “After the First Death” fantasizes the devastating aftermath of nuclear war.

Has being on the other side of the footlights dulled his critical teeth? Actors, directors and authors everywhere will be pleased with his reply.

“I had no idea how hard it was to do theater,” he said. “I had never been involved in a production of my own work, where it’s my imagination.

“I don’t think that I could be a critic again--I know too much about what goes into producing a play, and can’t be objective. Now, when I look at a production, I can see why certain things don’t work. In the past, I was very intolerant. Now, I look at a show and see how close they came, than how far they are from it.”

(Stayton, in fact, did continue trying to balance play writing and criticism. He quit the Herald Examiner in June, 1989, in order to pursue creative writing full time.)

Like any other artist, Stayton was pleased with the favorable press. “In Sweden, the play was produced by an avant-garde company who lived in a farmhouse out in the country. They were very tense before the notices came out,” because reviews are how they validate their government funding.

“It was a real pleasure to see their pleasure as they read the reviews. First, they read them in Swedish, and then they translated them for me. I felt good for the company. I don’t want to seem arrogant, though, but reviews don’t mean that much to me--I’ve done too much of it, myself. But learning how to write better is enormously pleasing to me.”

The Ventura production is a milestone in the life of “After the First Death,” Stayton said. “We’ve had more rehearsal time here than in previous productions. The Plaza Players Theater is a real theater, instead of the box space of an experimental theater. And now I have the cast and director that I like, and see it as a production that I can control.”

“After the First Death” has a cast of two, a young boy and his even younger sister. The director of the current production is 30-year-old Allison Liddi of Los Angeles; Ventura County residents Brian Parker Smith (understudied by Chris Demetral) and Kira Friedman portray the two children.

“The BBC director was afraid of casting a 9-year-old,” Stayton added, “and tried to get a 12-year-old to act as though she was 9. The point of the play, though, is that these are kids who are forced by circumstances to try to act like adults.

“People kept asking where I was going to find children who could handle this. We went through a professional casting service in Los Angeles, and in they came, kid after kid, escorted by their parents. They were little adults, shaking my hand and asking what I wanted them to do. Many had already memorized the entire play.

“Kira was impressive to me because she’d memorized the script, had a spacey delivery that I liked, and was already in some ways a young woman. What I saw in Brian was that, at 13, he was at the edge of childhood and adolescence, which is what we wanted--the age of promise.”

The current production is in Ventura, Stayton said, “by accident. Kira Friedman’s father and mother live and work here, and Brian’s parents are from Oxnard. They shuttled down to Los Angeles for rehearsals for the production we did at San Jose State University on April 18. When Kira’s father suggested the Plaza Players Theater, we checked it out and were very pleased.”

* WHERE AND WHEN: “After the First Death” plays Sunday nights at 8 at the Plaza Players Theater, 34 N. Palm Street in Ventura. Admission is $6.50, with reservations required. There will be a panel discussion, with the audience encouraged to participate, following this Sunday’s performance. For further information, call (805) 643-0460.