Writing of Wrongs : Playwright explores crime and punishment in 18th-Century England. Though some things change, he finds many stay the same.

You might think from the sound of it that “petty treason” would be a petty offense, with an equally lenient punishment. Not so in 18th-Cen tury England, where the sentence for the crime--usually attached to women who killed their husbands--was being burned at the stake.

Of course, “high treason” was worse. For that offense against the Crown, wrongdoers were decapitated, then drawn and quartered.

Ruminations on crime and punishment, guilt and innocence, morality, brutality and humanity are at the core of Jon Bastian’s “Petty Treasons,” a seven-character drama that has its world premiere at the Road Theatre Company, beginning previews Wednesday.

“I was reading Colin Wilson’s ‘Mammoth Book of True Crime,’ looking for ideas,” says Bastian, 32, whose Civil War-era “Noah Johnson Had a Whore . . .” won South Coast Repertory’s 1991 California Playwrights Competition. “Crime is such a great field for drama.” His attention was drawn to the case of Catherine Hayes, who was living with her husband and two lovers when the husband was murdered, his head left on the banks of the Thames. The trio were subsequently arrested and convicted of murder; the men were hanged, and Hayes was burned at the stake.

“When I wrote my first draft 3 1/2 years ago, the story went from A to Z chronologically--and it didn’t work,” says Bastian, a Woodland Hills native. “It was ‘Act 1: They did it; Act 2: They got caught.’ There was no surprise. In my third draft, I restructured the piece, told it from the point of view of the hangman--who’d been a minor character in the earlier version--telling the story 50 years later. So what we see is like a kaleidoscope: time flowing through itself. The style is more emotional than temporal.”

That element was particularly intriguing to director Brad Hills. “We were just coming off of ‘Pirates,’ which had a similar thing of two different time periods,” Hills says. “But this takes it a step further. Characters from a later period show up in a scene during the earlier period and even manipulate the characters. In 1777, the executioner Jack Frye is an old man, speaking to the nature of justice--and flashing back on these actual events. Yet you never really get the whole truth; you’re free to make your own judgment.”

That is because, Bastian notes, although the trio confessed to the murder, “it’s not real clear that they did it. There was probably torture involved. But even beyond their guilt, you’re dealing with: ‘Was what they did any different from what was done to them? What’s different (about killing) when the king commands it?’ ”

Bastian likewise sees parallels to the O. J. Simpson case. “We may never know the truth,” he points out. “There are already so many versions of the story, questions if the verdict will be ‘right.’ ”

Bastian was a communications major at Loyola Marymount’s film school when the theater bug bit. “I was acting, directing, painting sets, playing in the orchestra for the musicals,” he says. He’s now a nine-year member of Golden West Playwrights, based at the Road Theatre. Bastian was recently one of 10 screenwriters (out of 3,500 applicants) chosen to participate in the Chesterfield Writers Film Project, an annual program sponsored by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment.

Returning to the topicality of “Treasons,” Bastian says: “At the time of this case, London was having serious problems with poverty, crime and gangs. People used to enjoy public executions; the trials were covered by their version of today’s tabloids. That’s what I like about historical drama: finding the human things that never change.”

WHERE AND WHEN

What: “Petty Treasons.”

Location: The Road Theatre Company, 14141 Covello St., No. 9-D, Van Nuys.

Hours: Previews 8 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday and opens Sept. 9, playing at 8 p.m. Fridays through Sundays. Sept. 25 is “Pay What You Can Night” for San Fernando Valley residents. Closes Oct. 16.

Price: $12.50; discounts for students and senior citizens.

Call: (818) 785-6175.