He’s Waiting for Someone to Act on Prize-Winning Play : Stage: Mission Viejo psychiatrist Joe Hullett’s ‘The Pledge’ took first place in the ’93 Julie Harris competition. But it and his new work, ‘Crossing the Line,’ have yet to be produced.

It’s the rare playwright who can be called a prize-winner. Rarer still is the prize-winner without a workshop staging or a full production.

But Joe Hullett, a 44-year-old psychiatrist from Mission Viejo, may be without equal among winners of major playwriting awards: Not a word of his plays has ever been uttered on stage, not even in a reading.

“I’m certainly used to hearing me read my work--loud--into a tape recorder,” said Hullett, whose three-act drama about an elderly Jewish pawnbroker, “The Pledge,” recently won first prize in the 1993 Julie Harris Playwright Competition, a prestigious nationwide contest for unproduced scripts, held annually by the Beverly Hills Theatre Guild.

“I read the stuff to myself and play it back basically because I need to hear it,” he explained in a recent interview. “But you get so close to it you don’t know what it really sounds like.”

On Sunday, however, Hullett will gain at least temporary respite from the echoes of his own voice with a staged reading of his second full-length play, “Crossing the Line.” The South Orange County Community Theatre will perform the work at the Camino Real Playhouse in San Juan Capistrano.

The drama, which examines a seductive relationship between a psychiatrist and his patient, will be staged by the troupe’s artistic director, Jill Forbath.

Thus boosted to a new plateau, Hullett’s part-time playwriting career may yet lead to his first production--and nothing would please him more.

“Five years from now, I see myself writing pretty much full time,” he said. “I’d like to get to a point in my life that matches what Frost said: Only when love and need are one . “

Every morning before going to work at Cost Care in Huntington Beach, where he administers the health-insurance company’s mental-health services, the Nashville native spends a couple of hours on his plays.

“I used to write poetry in college,” said Hullett, who grew up in Detroit. “I tried to sell my poetry and had a lot of rejections. I figured I didn’t have the moxie, whatever. So I quit writing for a long time--basically out of fear that I wouldn’t succeed--never quite giving it up, but never actually doing it either, which was the worst of both worlds.

“Then about five years ago, I don’t really know why--probably it was a midlife crisis--I decided it was time to give it one more shot. I felt like I was meant to write, like it was my dharma, and the reason I hadn’t succeeded wasn’t because I wasn’t good enough but because I hadn’t tried.”

Hullett, who moved to Mission Viejo in 1984 with his wife (they have a 23-year-old son and an 11-month-old daughter), began writing short stories and found an appreciative audience for his work sooner than expected. He has sold 10 of them to a variety of publications, ranging from the skin magazine Gallery to the Belletrist Review, a small literary magazine.

But he is prepared for the deafening silence that tends to greet little-known playwrights.

Despite the $5,000 prize awarded him last June, for example, Hullett hasn’t had any offers to produce “The Pledge.” (It explores the pawnbroker’s need to balance a lifetime of disappointment against a seemingly impossible dream.)

South Coast Repertory rejected the script twice, once when Hullett submitted a first draft and again when he submitted the rewrite that won the prize. The Detroit Repertory Theatre--perhaps the most logical fit for a play with a Detroit setting--turned it down after long consideration.

The Actors Theatre of Louisville asked to see the script for its annual Humana Festival of new American plays but has taken no action. And although it is also under consideration at the Laguna Playhouse, artistic director Andrew Barnicle was noncommittal earlier this week about its chances for a Playhouse production.

Prospects could improve in October, when the Beverly Hills Theatre Guild has its annual banquet. Besides honoring the actor Charles Durning, the guild “may do a reading of the second act at the banquet,” said Hullett, who will also be a guest of honor.

Otherwise, the best chance “The Pledge” has of reaching the stage at the moment rests with a Los Angeles director who is seeking financial backers to mount it.

Hullett also has written “Killing Rain, Killing Fire,” a detective novel set in Orange County. And he’s working on a screenplay called “Double Blind,” a psychiatric thriller.

* “Crossing the Line” will have a staged reading Sunday at 7:30 p.m. at the Camino Real Playhouse, 31776 El Camino Real, San Juan Capistrano. Free. (714) 489-8082.