The Text’s the Thing : First Stage gives dramatists the chance to read their works in a supportive atmosphere before braving the fires of production

On a recent Monday night, the Black Death swept through a cathedral-like Methodist church in Hollywood, killing most of the population of a small town, while about 100 writers, directors and actors watched and listened, then discussed what had happened.

It was the first staged reading of a new play, “Rattus Rattus” by James Engelhardt, a darkly humorous but sometimes preachy tale about disease, stigma, intoler ance and responsibility. The performance was sponsored by First Stage, a nonprofit organization that sponsors weekly, one-shot, open-to-the-public readings of new plays.

“First Stage is the only place in L.A. I know where you can go and see a new play every week,” said Engelhardt, who has been a member since 1984. Engelhardt earns his living by writing for theatrical, television and video productions and teaching part time. Two of nine Engelhardt scripts initially presented at First Stage have gone on to full productions elsewhere. “I get a lot out of First Stage. I learn a lot about writing. Not only from having my plays read, but from going and seeing other plays,” he said.

“I’ve always wanted to write a play about the Black Death,” Engelhardt added, “but I couldn’t find a reason to justify it. And then I was reading more and more about the AIDS crisis, and I noticed there are parallels in how people treat disease. So I said, ‘Aha! There’s the hook.’ I set the play in the 14th Century, but I’m really writing about today.”

In the discussion after the play, comments from the audience indicated that Engelhardt’s messages came through--sometimes too loud and clear. The opinions were mostly direct but not unkind. “What’s needed is for the outspoken moralizing to be cut. That will help tighten it up,” said one participant. Several others offered similar comments.

Engelhardt’s writing also won praise, particularly his many wickedly funny lines.

The supportive atmosphere at First Stage is deliberate, said Peter Hay, First Stage’s founding artistic director and dramaturge. “There are groups where you have discussions that get very hostile and vicious, and the writer gets mauled,” Hay said. But at First Stage, “what you do get occasionally is too much positiveness. I don’t think you will ever find a really hard-hitting discussion. I think you get through to a writer more if you do it gently.”

First Stage was created in 1983 by several Los Angeles theater professionals who had attended the playwrights’ program at Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute. Now the organization includes about 75 playwrights, 25 directors and 100 actors.

First Stage differs from many other play-development programs because of its policy of welcoming new writers (the New Dramatists in New York, for example, accepts only writers who have achieved some recognition); the quantity of new work read each year, and a de-emphasis on commercial considerations. Many theater companies present staged readings of new work, but “you’re hoping they will do your play,” Hay said. “We’re adamant that we’re before that stage, we’re really the first stage. The writer should feel he’s writing for the theater before any practical and commercial considerations come in.”

Dues are $100 a year for local residents and $50 a year for those who don’t live in the Los Angeles area. Members attend the staged readings, receive a newsletter, arrange off-night stagings of their plays at the church and participate in biweekly playwriting workshops. One doesn’t have to be a member, however, to have a play considered for a staged reading, and scripts come from all over the country. “In the beginning, we had to beg people for plays. Now we get quite a lot,” Hay said.

Carol Sorgenfrei, a UCLA theater professor, attends First Stage most Monday nights. She has belonged to the group for five years. “It’s like an addiction, but a positive addiction,” she said. “There’s a sense of warmth and goodwill at First Stage, which is why I keep coming back.” Sorgenfrei’s play “Fellow Travelers” was staged by the group in late 1989. “The First Stage reading helped a great deal; I made huge changes,” she said. Renamed “The Jamaica Jar” after extensive rewriting, the play was a finalist for the Los Angeles Theatre Center’s New Play Festival last spring, although ultimately it was not produced.

“I personally have had a lot of help from seeing my plays at First Stage,” said Dennis Safren, who joined the group six years ago and has been its literary manager for the last two. “I don’t send a play anywhere until it’s had a reading” at First Stage, he said.

However, the first time First Stage presented one of his plays, Safren found the results disconcerting. Attracted by the group’s honorary board of directors (Edward Asner, Paul Newman, Lily Tomlin and others, who lend their names for fund-raising purposes), “I didn’t understand that this wasn’t a ticket to Broadway,” Safren said. Now, he said, “I try to tell everyone, ‘Use the reading for what it’s there for,’ which is to learn what’s good” for the work.

The First Stage experience is “not cutthroat,” Safren added. “We try to help each other; we try to leave our egos at the door. It works, for the most part.”

Actors also often benefit from participation in the readings, said Safren, who worked as an actor for 20 years before writing his first play, “Goodbye Hester,” which won the Jane Chambers International Playwriting Award in 1984. Acting in a First Stage play offers “a chance to just work out, to practice your craft in a safe environment,” he said.

Virginia Morris, an actor and director who’s had small parts in several films, noted that “you’re typed in the business. I’m typed so far as an Earth mother, a therapist, a lawyer. Here, in a given month, I was given the opportunity to play Emily Dickinson, a woman dying of cancer, and a woman who loved watching Lucille Ball reruns.”

Plays accepted for staged readings are usually close to production quality, according to Safren, and are rehearsed three times. Playwrights are encouraged to attend rehearsals and can rewrite lines up to performance time.

Jerry Patch, South Coast Repertory’s dramaturge, called First Stage “probably, for Los Angeles writers, one of the best outlets” for developing new plays. Similarly, Richard Toscan, dean of USC’s school of theater, said, “First Stage is very valuable for young writers who are trying their first legs as playwrights.” However, added Toscan--who belonged to First Stage from 1983 to 1986--”after a certain number of years, you reach a dead end with what you can do with that format.” He would like to see the group become more of a pipeline for helping plays move on to theaters.

In past years, buoyed by celebrity donations, First Stage was able to rent theater space full time and developed a few plays for brief, full-scale runs. Lately, however, tight funds have restricted the group’s activities. First Stage organizers are now looking for a theater space in which to resuscitate the extended workshop performances.

No First Stage play has had a “really spectacular” success, Hay said, but last year Engelhardt’s “Slave Trade” became the first play dealing with race relations by a white playwright to be imported to the Republic of South Africa. “L-Dopa,” by Bradd Saunders, was recently turned into a film starring Buck Henry and Amanda Plummer, and “Danny and the Deep Blue Sea” by John Patrick Shanley, read at First Stage in 1984, went on to Broadway before Shanley turned it into the Oscar-winning screenplay for “Moonstruck.”

“But that’s not really what we’re about,” Hay said. “We’re not a showcase place, but we’re happy when something goes on and has a real life.”