Play Looks at Sexual Politics

“We’d all sit around,” says playwright Lori Saveriano, referring to production meetings for her latest play, “and we’d talk and smoke cigarettes--which we’re not supposed to do. I’d come home, and my husband would say, ‘You’ve been smoking with the girls!’ ”

Saveriano laughs as she recalls her answer, “Yes, it’s true!” But they were excited, she explains, because their production was coming together after two years of hard work and hope. The play, “Water Ballet,” is at Hollywood’s Melrose Theatre.

The “girls” Saveriano’s husband referred to are producers Sharon Hallett and Alicia Millikan, and director Allison Liddi. The team of Hallett, Millikan and Liddi was responsible for a stunning revival of “Cloud Nine” at West Coast Ensemble a couple of years ago.

This new team also includes actress Bonita Friedericy (as the central figure in the play), who has been connected to the project ever since Saveriano mentioned “Water Ballet” to her during an after-theater session while Friedericy was appearing in Alan Ayckbourne’s “Bedroom Farce” at the Colony Studio Theatre.

Friedericy’s laugh echoes Saveriano’s as she recalls the play’s first reading soon after. “It was when I was about to go into getting divorced,” she says. “It was funny, because I said to Lori, ‘How did you know what I was feeling?’ ”

Saveriano hadn’t been spying on the actress. Situations in her own life gave birth to the play.

The story concerns a woman who is 8 1/2 months pregnant and in a difficult marriage. Her best girlfriend, single and attractive, dates a lot, and as Saveriano says, has “this fantastic life.” The woman lives her life vicariously through her girlfriend’s stories, until one day she meets the girlfriend’s boyfriend and suddenly considers the idea of not living vicariously.

“When I was pregnant the first time,” says the playwright, now the mother of two, “I had these friends who were male, and whenever I’d go out with them--and I was very pregnant--people would congratulate them, thinking that it was their baby.” Saveriano learned something about the male ego.

“They thought it was neat,” she says. “And I enjoyed it, but my husband didn’t know what to think about it.” It started the creative juices flowing. She also had a real-life girlfriend who was having a really good time, and Saveriano thought she herself was saying goodby to such things.

“That,” she admits, “was what got me excited about the idea, was that I had assumed when I got pregnant I would have this Madonna attitude. It sort of works just the opposite. Between the fifth and seventh month, everything kicks in. ‘Hey, I can’t get pregnant--I am pregnant!’ So you get excited about sex again. It was a surprise.”

Eventually the flood of ideas came together into a play. After the reading, the playwright knew that no one but Friedericy could play the role. She had also seen director Liddi’s work in “Bedroom Farce” and knew she wanted her to stage the play.

“Lori invited me to a reading,” says Liddi, “and I had a lot of questions. We discussed them over a period of a few months.” The play was not going to go away, like others Liddi had worked on. “I have plays brought to me all the time,” she continues, “and there’s a heat around them for a short time. Then all of a sudden it’ll sort of peter out, unless there’s a driving force. With a new play, it’s always the author. That’s the one who says, ‘I want my baby born.’ ”

In their conversation, the imagery of birth in its many forms continues. Their involvement in the project is obvious, along with their sense of humor. After all, “Water Ballet” is a comedy, albeit dealing with a very serious look at sexual politics.

Saveriano says she writes her dialogue like music and that even one missing word can make a difference. “Allison,” she says, “is a stickler for pace, and the play is written on a beat. She’s great with pace and humor, with pain underneath, and that’s what the play is.”

Liddi concurs with an enthusiastic nod. “The music of a play,” she adds, “also has to do with the emotional attachments between the characters. It’s like one person throwing his heart to another. It’s picked up, and it’s tossed, and the exchange flows. The emotional connection creates the music.”

The playwright makes a further comparison between her characters and real-life counterparts. “They pick up each other’s beat,” she says, “which happens if you’re at a party, and someone comes up to you and they’re talking really fast and staccato. You pick it up, because you want them to like you; you want to be on the same ride they’re on. The play is definitely melodic. I get very bored if it’s not there. Thought moves you, but also it’s that melody that you want to keep listening to till the very end.”

Designs for the sets and costumes continue the melody image as colors segue, and Liddi even finds an echo of it in the words water and ballet in the play’s title.

“There is a harmony implicit in dance,” she explains, “that is really imperative in human beings’ learning from each other, existing together. This play is about people who are learning how to grow up. It’s the dance of life. It’s helping each other through it in a very poetic way. Water is life. We start in water. It surrounds us. The dance of it is flowing. It’s like a feeling of water.”

“Water Ballet” plays at 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays and at 7 p.m. Sundays at Melrose Theatre, 733 N. Seward St., Hollywood, through Aug. 23. Call (213) 660-8587.