Working In and Out of the System : Theater: OCC student and playwright Dave Barton explores the interaction between our culture and those left outside of it.

Novelist and playwright W. Somerset Maugham once said that a writer really had nothing to say until after he’d reached the age of 30.

Orange Coast College Theatre Department student playwright Dave Barton is 34 and has plenty to say.

Barton, the most visible writer out in the OCC Original Play Workshop series that opens tonight, is practically the only visible writer on the festival’s list.

The one other playwright represented is Bryan Prince, whose “Mouse Tails and Velveeta,” a short parable about the dangers lying in wait outside your front door in today’s society, will only be shown at the final matinee of the series next weekend. A fourth Barton play, “Vacation,” which he says is little more than a sketch, will also be seen at the final matinee.

That leaves the dramatist’s burden on Barton. As for the gospel according to Maugham, Barton has prepared himself well. His plays in the festival--”In the House of the Lord,” “A Better Man” and “+/-”--all come out of life experiences.

Barton was once an English major at Cal State Fullerton, but felt he wasn’t getting anywhere. He dropped out--the first thing they say you shouldn’t do.

He went into business managing a bookstore, and over the next few years became involved in several activist causes, including ACT-UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) and family-planning clinics. Along the way, Barton was arrested four times for his activism--a sign to a playwright’s mind that he’s doing something right.

That all might presumably lead a writer onto a soapbox. But that isn’t the way Barton thinks.

Although “In the House” is about a fundamentalist Christian couple who take over an abortion clinic, “A Better Man” about a man who buys a homeless woman dinner, and “+/-” concerns two gay men--one HIV-positive, one negative--Barton doesn’t consider his writing political.

“What I’m saying in the plays,” Barton explained, “is that I’m interested in people who have a tendency to be dismissed in this culture. People with AIDS, the mentally ill, young adults.

“But I’m also interested in how people within the system interact with people outside of it,” he said.

“Here is this man who doesn’t have too many concerns, who sees this homeless woman and is forced to deal with her, to actually sit down and talk with her. He’s humanized by the encounter.

“I think that the (political) left has a tendency to have us believe that homeless people are victims who are quickly approaching sainthood. And then the right wants to demonize homeless people as irresponsible leeches. It’s really somewhere more in the middle. I try to put a human face on what we all try to walk away from.”

Barton, who said he also is writing screenplays, said he will continue writing plays for the obvious advantages.

“It’s the immediacy of the experience,” he said. “You’re right there. That’s extremely attractive to me.

“You experience people’s tears and shock and astonishment. You can share your feelings with other people, and other people are paying to listen to you and experience the emotions together.”

Barton says that theatergoers expect not just to be entertained, but to experience a world outside of their own.

“With ‘+/-,’ ” Barton said, “I am not necessarily trying to preach compassion for people with AIDS.”

The play deals with a man who is HIV-positive, who accuses his ex-lover of responsibility for his condition by his act of leaving their relationship.

“My intent is to write about how we finger-point at each other, and blame each other,” he said. “Blame just ends up harming people more.”

The Original Play Workshop is part of OCC’s Repertory, which is almost entirely student-produced. Barton is directing “A Better Man,” and Heather De Michele is directing “+/-.”

The director of Barton’s abortion-clinic play, “In the House of the Lord,” is Pilou Chapeaud, who says that when he first tried to read the play he couldn’t finish it. Chapeaud was still struggling with memories of his own visits to an abortion clinic with his pregnant girlfriend, her decision and his frustration. Directing the play, he said, has helped him sort out his own feelings while sorting out the emotions of the characters.

Before the new play series begins to sound like a Dave Barton festival, OCC faculty member Rick Golson explains that the other writers weren’t able to get their projects off the ground in time, probably due to two major school productions also in preparation, “Amadeus” and “Assassins.”

“It’s more of a testimony to Dave’s abilities than anything,” said Golson, who is in charge of the workshop. “He’s able to get it together and get the plays on. That’s the major reason.”

Once in a while, Golson says, faculty members do get involved, but they’re mainly supervisorial. Turning everything over to the students gives them the chance to learn by doing, he says.

“That’s sort of the philosophy we’ve got here,” Golson said.

“We’ve found that the more liberal we are with that, and the more opportunities we give them, the more we just sort of let them carry the ball, the better it is.

“The more they do, the more they get involved, and the quality is higher.”

* Orange Coast College Original Play Workshop opens tonight in the Drama Lab Studio Theatre, Orange Coast College, 2701 Fairview Road, Costa Mesa. Dave Barton’s “In the House of the Lord,” “A Better Man” and “+/-” will be performed tonight, Saturday and Feb. 24 and 25 at 8 p.m.; “In the House” and “A Better Man” will be staged Sunday at 3 p.m. All three plays plus Barton’s “Vacation” and Bryan Prince’s “Mouse Tails and Velveeta” will be presented Feb. 26 at 3 p.m. Ends Feb. 26. $5. (714) 432-5932.