Gambling With Secrets : Unmasking of characters is in the cards in ‘Poker Face,’ which opens tonight at the Little Victory Theatre.

Masks are not new in drama. Their use began with the Greeks. In this century the use was made memorable by Eugene O’Neill, with masks used in communicating to the outside world, their removal the sign of a character’s speaking his inner thoughts.

In real life we all wear masks, often different ones for different groups of associates. That’s the point of Cornelia Koehl’s “Poker Face,” opening tonight at the Little Victory Theatre.

A man who lives in a large apartment complex has just been dumped by his wife. Distracted and lonely, he decides to have a macho poker party to renew his faith in his sex. He drops an invitation at every nearby apartment with a man’s name on the register.

What follows is based on an intriguing premise. A poker face is, after all, just another mask.

Playwright Koehl--Cornelia as a writer, Corny as an actress--says the premise came to her in a dream, and that she wrote the first draft in two days.

“It just flowed,” Koehl says. “There’s one man who is independently wealthy. He ends up winning everybody’s money, and he says, ‘I’ll tell you what . . . you can gamble, but now you have to gamble with your secrets.’ That’s why the poker game works, the concept of ‘poker face.’ And hiding behind that face. People are using their poker face within the realm of the game, and then in their overall life. When the facades come down, people can then grow.”

For Koehl, who claims to be the only performer in Hollywood who has never appeared on “The Young and the Restless,” this is her second play to be produced. The first, “Extremes,” had a successful run last year at the Playbox Theatre in Hollywood. A third play, “A Day in the Life of Cappuccino,” will open in January in Los Angeles.

But Koehl feels particularly close to the elements in “Poker Face.” On the surface, it might seem difficult for a woman writer to capture the flavor and grit of men’s dialogue and, yes, what goes on behind the masks that men wear. She laughs at that. She was raised with two brothers and says she’s intimately familiar with the workings of the male mind.

“It was a challenge to me,” Koehl says. “I think I have insight into that. That’s not a haughty thing. I take a lot from my brothers. My last play was based on them. I’m so close to them, and I know their inner workings. They’re such boys. They represent men to me.

“True, honest feelings, be they men’s or women’s, are the same underneath the mask. We all have the same insecurities. I know men well enough to understand that.”

She also appears in the production as one of the two women invited to the game. Why were they invited? Their names are Danny and Bobby, so much to the host’s dismay they got flyers. Koehl admits that their roles are probably less deeply written than the men’s roles.

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Director Gerald Castillo agrees with Koehl.

“She’s written more depth in the men than the women,” Castillo says, “but more than the depth, it’s the knowledge of those little hiding places that only a man would know how to react to, which I find so interesting. Corny does that more for the men than she does for the women.”

Castillo, who received an L.A. Weekly award for his direction of “The Goldfish Bowl” at the Mise En Scene, and who will next direct Arthur Miller’s “The Price” at the Santa Paula Theatre, is especially interested in the characters’ personal admissions that are the outcome of the wagers in “Poker Face.”

“There are very personal revelations here,” he says, “very interesting revelations, right to the core of who they are, why they are the people they are when they walk through that door. You identify them as certain people, and you learn why they are who they are. They’re all different from what you thought they are.”

What would be the element most people would resist gambling with? Many people will gamble anything--money, their cars, the shirts off their backs. But the secrets behind their mask?

“These are things that are very personal and intimate,” Koehl says. “That’s about as intense a stake as you can get, outside of betting your life.”

“Poker Face” begins as a comedy. But, like most poker games, it gets serious as it goes along. Comedy is just another mask. Koehl says: “That was the challenge that I put in front of myself. I’ve tried to take away the facade.”

Where and When What: “Poker Face.” Location: Little Victory Theatre, 3324 W. Victory Blvd., Burbank. Hours: 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. 7 p.m. Sundays. Ends Nov. 21. Price: $15. Call: (818) 841-4404. Box for page