It’s ‘Great Day’ as SCR Gets Grant

South Coast Repertory is one of six regional theaters chosen to receive a grant from the Washington-based Fund for New American Plays. The money will go toward developing and producing Thomas Babe’s “Great Day in the Morning,” which is scheduled for its world premiere on the SCR Mainstage in February.

The $37,000 grant will pay for a private workshop of the play in November as part of a final script revision and an extra week of rehearsal, says SCR producing artistic director David Emmes, who will stage the play. Emmes was in Washington Thursday to accept the highly competitive award. Babe, who lives in Darien, Conn., also received $10,000.

Emmes said “Great Day” is set in the social swirl of New York high society during the closing years of the 19th Century. It deals with a young widow’s quest for self-fulfillment. The play received a NewSCRipt reading at the Costa Mesa theater last season as well as a private workshop during the summer.

SCR commissioned an earlier play from Babe, “Down in the Dumps,” but chose not to produce it after giving it a NewSCRipt reading in 1988. Babe offered “Great Day in the Morning” to SCR, Emmes said, because “even though we didn’t do that first play, he had a good experience working on it with us.”

The five other theaters receiving grants were: Los Angeles’ Mark Taper Forum, for Tony Kushner’s “Perestroika: Angels in America, Part II” ($100,000); the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, for Sherry Narens’ “Theresa Bassoon” ($50,000); the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, for Anthony Clarvoe’s “The Living” ($50,000); and the Capital Repertory Co. in Albany, N.Y., for Dan Owens’ “The Gang on the Roof” ($40,000), and the New Federal Theatre in New York, for J.E. Franklin’s “Christchild.” Each of the playwrights also won $10,000.

This is the second grant SCR has received from the Fund for New American Plays, a joint project of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the American Express Co. SCR’s first grant in 1988--for $64,000 to help underwrite Ellen McLaughlin’s “Infinity’s House”--had to be returned, however, when the theater ultimately chose not to do its winning entry after a disagreement with the author over further revisions.

Among this year’s other winning playwrights, Clarvoe has a particularly close tie to SCR.

His “Pick Up Ax” had its world premiere in 1990 on the SCR Second Stage. He subsequently received an SCR commission, which resulted in a play titled “Show and Tell.” Though SCR decided against a production of that work, his most recent comedy, “Let’s Play Two”--also written on an SCR commission--is currently on the Second Stage.

In addition, “The Living” received a public reading last season at SCR as the theater’s contribution to the nationally observed Day Without Art.