Staging Areas : * Labs and workshops in the Valley give playwrights a forum for developing their works in progress.

It may be that playwright Marlane Meyer had the final word on the subject of new play development during a 1988 playwriting symposium significantly titled, “Developed to Death.” Meyer said succinctly that theaters have to develop playwrights, not plays. “If you do the first,” she added, “good plays will follow.”

It’s for that reason, some would argue, that playwrights such as Alan Ayckbourn and Lanford Wilson have been able to be so prolific while others flounder. Each has had theaters which have invested in them, not their individual plays.

So, is the usual process, in which theaters work on one play at a time, all washed up? Not at all, judging by visits to a variety of Valley-based theaters and playwriting groups.

(The Hollywood area doesn’t monopolize such labs and workshops. The Valley lays claim to several, and no two are quite alike, including age: The Road Theatre Company has been in Van Nuys for less than 12 months, while Theatre East’s writer-director workshop is 32 this year.)

They are alike, though, in that the workshops allow playwrights to test the waters with new works. Meyer would be unhappy to know that none of the hosting theaters invests in the playwright; then again, few American theaters do.

This survey found every type of lab / workshop. There is the most rudimentary (and most intimate) kind--practiced by Golden West Playwrights in Van Nuys and the Writers Group in North Hollywood--in which writers sit in a circle, read works in progress and offer comments.

There is the sit-down reading of an early draft, most often by actor members of the hosting theater. Such readings vary: A Road Theatre reading of Judy O’Sullivan’s tragi-comedy, “The Finalist,” has a small invited audience and no post-reading critique. Interact Theatre Company readings of a section of Richard Broadhurst’s satiric “The Dead Man Wore a Dress” and Joseph Rubanoff’s drama, “78,” conclude with a probing critique session almost as long as the pieces.

The next evolutionary phase of play development tends to be the stand-up reading, with actors still on script. Depending on the theater, the playwright--even at this phase--can hear the play with truly talented actors. Skip Usen enjoys that benefit at Theatre West, where his black comedy, “If You Had Six Holes in You, You’d Be Dead, Too” can have a cast with such veterans as Tom Dahlgren, Len Lesser and Marvin Kaplan.

A major phase, before a full production, is the rehearsed and staged reading. In the case of Christopher Williams’ cop drama, “A Style of Sympathy” at Group Repertory Theatre in North Hollywood, there are light and sound cues.

Then, a piece may receive a workshop production. This is the stuff of “Interactivity,” a two-week festival of new works, solo pieces and classics continuing at Interact through April 17.

Whatever the phase, and whether it’s held under the auspices of a theater or by a group of writers who have banded together for each other, the key word is “process.”

Process is what Williams seems a tad tired of the second night of a two-night “run” of a rehearsed staging of “A Style of Sympathy.” The performance is over and the audience--largely friends of the theater and friends of Williams--are giving notes.

Williams is very young for this kind of thing--23--a recent graduate of Whittier College, and finding that his violent, scatological, intensely male play is on the fast track at Group Rep. It has gone from baby steps of a sit-down reading of the script in August, 1993, to this adolescent phase of script-in-hand performance, and may achieve adulthood in full production.

No one can say why, exactly. The normal pace of a play’s development in the theater’s playwrights group is two years, minimum. Williams is silently taking in a flurry of emotional, astute and challenging comments, until someone asks him what he thinks his play is about. Group Rep artistic director Lonnie Chapman interjects, “Harold Pinter wouldn’t answer that.” Williams does, probably to the frustration of the questioner: “Good is evil, and evil is good.”

Does Williams have any use for the verbal notes and queries? “This was a good crowd, much better than last night, but these people were like ‘Alien,’ right on my face. Some wanted more, some wanted less. We do know that we gotta trim it.”

In many of the labs, the work isn’t as far along as Williams’, so trimming isn’t an issue. In Donna Robb’s case, with her untitled work in progress being read at Theatre East’s Thursday writer-director workshop in Studio City, the issue is “The Scenes That Weren’t There.”

Robb is in the midst of writing her first play, a drama blending a father-daughter conflict regarding the missing mother (who’s in a mental institution) with the daughter’s budding romance with a nice guy named Joe. The reading, though, includes only the scenes with Joe, not with Dad.

Robb’s audience, strictly Theater East members (of which there are approximately 110), gropes through a post-reading critique. One member wants the Joe scenes to be more “realistic,” but Robb says that isn’t her aim. They like her way with dialogue; they don’t like the cliches.

The play started as a six-page scene and has grown, reading by reading, to a two-act. Clearly, the process is getting results. Still, Robb says, “It’s a hellish, terrifying, embarrassing experience. The next step is to put all the scenes together for another reading.”

Theatre East has a reputation for being about readings. “I had a parting of the ways with them,” says Dennis Connor, director of new-play development at the Actors’ Company in Burbank, “because all they wanted to do was projects and endlessly workshop things.” Yet the work read after Robb’s is “The Triumph of Mave,” a play by Victoria Thompson slated for a full production at Theatre East this summer.

“Mave,” set during the 1890s British suffragette movement, is one indication that the new plays being written are not just set around a kitchen sink in the 1990s. Contemporary L.A. playwrights are actually writing history plays; indeed, no less than two get a reading around the intimate Golden West circle on a sunny Saturday morning in the Road Theatre’s upstairs loft. Jon Bastian’s “The Wonder of the World” deals with the dark side of show biz in the 1880s, while Joseph Puterbaugh’s “The Roaring Girl,” written in precise period cadence, concerns a female highway robber in 1611.

The discussion of these works tends to focus on language. For other works in progress, such as a 10-minute piece by Golden West coordinator Barbara Lindsay, “Todd and Guy Go Camping,” discussion flows around such favored workshop questions as “What’s the event?” (Translation: What is it that gets these people into a dramatic situation?)

The Golden West members have been around each other as long as 11 years, maintaining the low-key atmosphere of friends. They, nevertheless, are open to new members. Zavaglia says his four-year-old group can’t take new members. Newcomers, however, may audit the workshops.

The heart of the development process, says Doug Haverty, who with Arden Lewis leads the Theatre West playwriting workshop, is the writer hearing the play live with an audience. “What you see on stage, in the audience, is a chemical reaction,” says Haverty, also a member of Group Rep. “It’s an education to see an audience fidgeting in the seats.”

That chemical reaction, though, can be risky, says Connor of the Actors’ Company: “There’s nothing tougher than working all alone on a play for two years, have it read on stage, and realize that it’s really lousy. You want to go into a hole and die. But the serious writer faces up to the criticism, goes home, works on it and comes back. That’s how it happens.”

What: “Interactivity,” a festival of new works, solo pieces and classics.

Location: Interact Theatre Company at Theatre Exchange, 11855 Hart St., North Hollywood.

Hours: 8 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays; 1, 4:30 and 8 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays, through April 17.

Price: Donation requested; reservation recommended.

Call: (818) 773-7862.

New-Play Workshops

The following theaters and groups have organized workshops and readings of new plays on a regular basis. Reading audiences are by invitation only, unless otherwise noted.

Actors Alley Repertory, (818) 508-4200. Starting in May, readings will be held the second Thursday evening of each month at First United Methodist Church, 4832 Tujunga Ave., North Hollywood. Workshops include the only Latino playwrights unit in the Valley, although it is currently on hiatus.

The Actors’ Company, George Izay Park, 1111 W. Olive Ave., Burbank 91506. (818) 954-9858.

American Renegade Theatre Company, 11306 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood 91601. (818) 763-4430.

Golden West Playwrights, P.O. Box 2149, Los Angeles 90078.

Group Repertory Theatre, 10900 Burbank Blvd., North Hollywood 91601. (818) 769-7529. For playwrights group information: (818) 761-1623.

Interact Theatre Company, P.O. Box 8830, Universal City 91608. (818) 773-7862.

L.A. Connection Comedy Theatre, 13442 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks 91423. (818) 784-1868.

Playhouse West, 4250 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood 91602-2742. (310) 285-3311. Monthly public readings begin in May.

Road Theatre Company, 14141 Covello St., 9D, Van Nuys 91405. (818) 785-6175.

Theatre East, 12655 Ventura Blvd., Studio City 91604. (818) 760-4160.

Theatre West, 3333 Cahuenga Blvd. West, Los Angeles 90068. (213) 851-4839. Frequent public readings.

The Travis Group, 12229 Ventura Blvd., North Bldg., Suite 204, Studio City 91604. (818) 508-4600.

Victory Theatre, 3326 Victory Blvd., Burbank 91505. (818) 843-9253 or 841-4404.

West End Playhouse, 7446 Van Nuys Blvd., Van Nuys 91405-1946. (818) 904-0444. Monday night public readings begin in early June.

The Writers Group, (818) 981-6732. North Hollywood.