THEATER : A Chekhovian ‘Sisters’ Act : Moving from screenwriting to the theater, Richard Alfieri has modernized a classic.

It’s Chekhov all over again, as Richard Alfieri’s “The Sisters” revisits literature’s most famous sibling trio.

“It is an homage,” acknowledges Alfieri, whose contemporary drama has its world premiere July 16 at the Pasadena Playhouse. “Chekhov’s plays are filled with situations and events, but they’re driven by character--so deeply etched they leave an indelible impression.” Alfieri’s characters are contemporary siblings (the setting is the faculty lounge of a Manhattan college), ruminating on life, love and family--longing not for Moscow but the peace and comfort of their Charleston, S.C., childhood home.

The cast features Meg Foster, Season Hubley, Charlotte Ross, Pat Corley, Alan Feinstein, Tammy Lauren, Matthew Letscher, Tony Musante, Paul Regina, Pamela Sam and Craig Wasson. In deference to their Russian counterparts, the siblings’ names have been only slightly altered in Alfieri’s text: Masha is now Marcia, Irina is now Irene, Andrei is now Andrew--and Olga is Olga.

“The similarity between the characters is apparent,” the first-time playwright allows. “In Chekhov’s play, the characters are yearning for a cultured, more civilized life. With my family, the Priors, I put them in New York, yearning to go back to a simpler place and get out of the complicated, violent city. When I knew I wanted to write this play, I reread ‘The Three Sisters’ once, then put it down; I didn’t want to get too close to it. You allow [the original] to inspire you, excite you--then you move on. This is not an adaptation or a translation. It’s a new work.”

Although he was introduced to Chekhov’s play more than 20 years ago, it wasn’t until recently that Alfieri, 42, began thinking about creating his own take on it.

“I saw a production of ‘The Three Sisters’ at Yale when I was an undergraduate there,” he explains. “My older brother Sam had died in a car crash around that time; he was my only sibling. We had just become young men together, and suddenly that was gone.”

Of course, the horror was not. “Grief inflicts its pain randomly,” Alfieri says with a sigh. “A moment can bring it back. If anything, writing this was a way for me of vicariously participating in a sibling relationship. You always feed on those experiences, no matter how long ago they occurred.”

Alfieri believes that his parents also figure prominently in the theatrical equation.

“My family relationships very much come into play in anything I work on--because you learn to communicate at home,” he says. “My mother was second-generation Spanish, my father was Italian. So there was a lot of Mediterranean temper and conflict--and a lot of love. They were both teachers; they prized education. There’s a line in the play: Irene says, ‘They learned each other’s combat skills.’ I think that applies to my writing. I learned the conversational patterns and argument skills growing up in my family.”

B eyond his familial influences, the Florida native acknowl edges a debt to his former acting coach Sanford Meisner (with whom he studied in New York after college). “What I learned from him, that serves me as a writer, is a sense of truth and honesty,” Alfieri says. “He insisted on complete honesty. It was kind of a cultural utopia being in that class: Integrity was demanded of you. To this day, I write from the inside of each scene; I write from the inside of each character.”

“Sisters’ ” Emmy-winning director Arthur Allan Seidelman (who had previously worked with Alfieri on the films “Children of Rage” and “Echoes”) agrees with the writer: “This play is so honest, so unflinching--and yet so funny. A real punch in the gut, then you’re laughing,” says Seidelman, 50, whose Broadway and Off Broadway credits include “Vieux Carre,” “Awake and Sing,” “The Four Seasons” and “The Most Happy Fella,” produced by the New York City Opera.

Alfieri says he always knew he wanted to be in show business--ever since he saw “The Member of the Wedding” as a child. In college, he combined acting and writing: His senior thesis was a three-act play. Yet a career as an actor proved more problematic. “Moving to New York was a wonderful, rude awakening,” he says ruefully. “I learned what the price is--what it really takes to lead a life like that. When I finally did leave acting, it made such sense to me: I’d reached a place where I couldn’t do that anymore. After a point, the vanity aspect is gone and you’re left with, ‘Is this what I want to do with my life?’ ”

Fortunately for Alfieri, the alternative--writing and producing--has worked out quite well since he resettled here a decade ago. (“When my building in New York went co-op five years ago,” he says with a laugh, “I had to admit not only that I lived in L.A., but that I’d lived here for many years.”) The geographical and artistic transition was, he recalls, “joyful and shocking.” “But I’ve been very lucky. My writing took off when I got here. I started out being a script doctor for movies of the week--those are the dues you pay to enter the club, as it were--then started producing, which I loved.”

As a writer, Alfieri’s films also include “Moonlight Blonde,” plus the TV movie “A Friendship in Vienna” and his co-authorship of the TV special “I Love Liberty,” which won him an Emmy nomination and a Writers Guild Award. He has also written a novel, “Ricardo--Diary of a Matinee Idol” (a ‘20s-era Hollywood-skewering about a would-be Rudolph Valentino replacement), which he has since adapted into a screenplay. Alfieri hopes to do the same with “The Sisters.”

Yet the writer is pleased the piece is originating in the theater.

“It had to start its creative life as a play. Obviously, there were things I couldn’t do in a film or teleplay. You can say serious things in TV, but you can’t go beyond a given point; you have to push certain entertainment buttons. The boundaries are narrower: what the network wants, the viewers’ attention span. In theater, you have the freedom to explore feelings and emotions. I hope this gives audiences a point of recognition in their own lives. But I wrote it because I had to. I had to allow myself to explore the family relationships and ghosts that haunt me.”

“THE SISTERS,”Pasadena Playhouse, 39 S. El Molino Ave. Dates: Opens July 16, 5 p.m. Regular schedule: Tuesdays-Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 5 and 9 p.m.; Sundays at 2 and 7 p.m. Through Aug. 20. Prices: $11.50-$33.50. Phone: (818) 792-8672 or (800) 233-3123.