Playwright Thrives on Living in Chaos and Writing About It

Get out your pens and note pads, friends. Cynthia Heimel’s tart-tongued comedy, “A Girl’s Guide to Chaos,” opens tonight at the Tiffany Theatre in West Hollywood.

“It’s similar to my actual life,” the New York-based writer says of her characters’ tragicomic battle for emotional survival in the modern world. “I mean, I can write about stuff, I can think about stuff, make a lot of cogent sense in my writing. But my personal life is absolutely, hopelessly out of control, useless, non-functional. Not dysfunctional,” she says with a laugh. “Non-functional.”

“Girl’s Guide” marks a theatrical debut for Heimel, 40 (“a hideous landmark for women,” she says ruefully), who is a columnist for Playboy and the Village Voice and a contributing editor at Vogue.

As for the Playboy affiliation, “It’s a good thing to be doing, but I get a lot of flak for it,” she says. “It’s like I’m out there saying, ‘Listen, guys, this is how women feel. This is how women think.’ ” She sighs. “Right now, I’m kind of fond of Playboy, because of all the First Amendment repression going on--and they’re always so pro-personal rights, a beacon of liberalism . . . and really irritating about women. They need to be set straight.”

With this stage detour (Heimel was sought out by Wynn Handman of New York’s American Place Theatre, who originally mounted “Girl’s Guide” there in 1986), the writer has also enjoyed the collaborative aspects of the form. “It was just so great to get out of the house and out of my nightgown and be with other people,” she says. “Working with the director, lighting guys, fighting with the costumer--it was wonderful.”

She also found an enthusiastic response: The successful New York premiere was followed by a recent 1 1/2-year stint in Chicago. “What attracted me was the language,” says “Girl’s Guide” co-producer Craig Strong, who also produced Robin Schiff’s “Ladies’ Room” at the Tiffany in 1988. “For a piece that’s so funny, Cynthia’s language is complex and interesting and rich. It has a real edge and wit--and wisdom. You don’t find that in a lot of writers doing comedy material.”

Although Heimel gets very personal in her columns (“People know a lot about me-- too much,” she says grumpily), the writer stresses that this play is not a therapeutic purge. “Yes, one of the characters is named Cynthia,” she says with a shrug. “All along, Wynn called her Cynthia; she was just the Cynthia character. I didn’t care. But it’s not me. At least, it’s not me now. The other characters are based on real people I know--except Lurene, who’s made up. There’s also a generic man.”

Heimel has found that audiences are quick to identify with her.

“The idea of this play was to take the Everywoman part of me and use that. I think the more you delve into your own weirdness, you’re tapping into everybody else’s at the same time. I don’t know how it works or why it works. It’s a tricky thing. I mean, who cares about me? But then someone comes up to me, a data processor from Kansas, and says, ‘I’m just like you ‘ -- and I think, ‘You’re not like me in the least.’ But somehow it reverberates . . .”

One of the aspects of the play that resonates for her is the concept of these women as family. “It’s my version of the nuclear family,” Heimel says. ‘It’s the only kind I can understand. I come from a dysfunctional family--just like everybody else, I guess.”

Her words tumble out quickly, flatly, without emotion. “No support, no understanding, I’ve been in therapy since 1976. I mean, everybody kind of hates their parents, don’t they? It’s a very normal thing,” she says.

Growing up in a suburb of Philadelphia, Heimel rebelled early on: “barely graduating high school, running away from home and living downtown with hippies.” Married at 19, a mother at 20 (and later divorced), she moved up from an assistant in ad paste-up at the Soho Weekly News to features editor, to writing stints at New York Magazine and the New York Daily News. In 1983 came her book “Sex Tips for Girls”; in 1986 “But Enough About You.” Coming in 1991: “If You Leave Me, Can I Come Too?”

The successes come with a price. “I’ve sacrificed a lot of my personal life by writing about this stuff,” she says. “If I go to a party and say I’m a nurse, guys are very flirtatious. If they know who I am, they keep away. Hey, I can understand wanting a nice wife in a pretty flowered dress who makes you dinner. I wrote a column once called ‘I Wish I Were a Man.’ It just seems a lot easier. If I were a guy, women would be lining up around the block with casseroles.”

The assurance is real. So is the occasional bout of self-doubt. “Well, I have enough confidence now; after being called ‘Dorothy Parker’ 80 times, I start to feel like maybe I’m OK. But at like 3 o’clock in the morning, I think, ‘What if Vogue doesn’t renew my contract? I’m going to be poor,’ ” she says.

Besides herself, there’s 20-year-old son Brodie to support. “He’s in London on a semester abroad,” Heimel says proudly. “He’s so great, so cool. And he’s had a girlfriend for 2 1/2 years! I keep thinking, ‘He knows more about having a decent relationship than I do.’ ”

“A Girl’s Guide to Chaos” plays Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 7 and 9:30 p.m., indefinitely, at Tiffany Theatre, 8532 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood. Tickets $18-$22. (213) 289-9999.