Maisel’s ‘Eden’ Wins SCR Playwright Prize

South Coast Repertory has chosen “Eden,” an unproduced, Holocaust-related AIDS drama by Los Angeles playwright Jennifer Maisel, as the top prize winner in its seventh California Playwrights Competition.

Maisel, who was a runner-up in the competition two years ago for “Mad Love,” will receive $3,000 and a Mainstage reading of “Eden” on April 15 in the theater’s NewSCRipts Series.

Second prize, worth $2,000, goes to San Francisco playwright Prince Gomolvilas for “Big Hunk o’ Burnin’ Love,” an Asian American screwball comedy about a man who must get married to avoid a family curse.

SCR describes “Eden” as “the story of a mother’s search for the mysterious man she is certain saved her from death during the Holocaust. She hopes he will return to save her daughter, who is HIV-positive.” It is also the story of the daughter, “who escapes to a club called Eden, waiting to die until she can somehow learn to live,” while her “best friend gets ready for her wedding.”

Maisel, 30, who has a master of fine arts degree in playwriting from New York University, moved to Los Angeles four years ago.

“Winning this prize puts me in a whole new playing field,” the native New Yorker said Friday. “Hopefully, I’ll end up with a South Coast production. There’s a big difference between regional theater and off-off-Broadway.”

Maisel’s “Mad Love” was produced at the Acting Studio in New York, and another, “Dark Hours,” has received productions at small theaters in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.

SCR, a Tony Award-winning theater company, launched its play competition in 1988 as an annual event but decided in 1994 to hold it less regularly because of budgetary constraints. SCR officials said then that they hoped the competition would become biennial, although it might also be held less frequently.

Various plays submitted for the competition, though not necessarily the top prize-winners, have gone on to SCR productions, including Shem Bitterman’s “The Ramp” and Robert Dasseler’s “Alekhine’s Defense,” both produced in 1990.

The most recent full production to come out of the competition was Newport Beach playwright Cecilia Fannon’s comedy “Green Icebergs.” It won first prize in 1994 and went on to a full production on the SCR Mainstage, where it had a hit run in 1995. “Green Icebergs” will be published by Smith and Kraus in an anthology called “Women Playwrights: The Best Plays of 1995.”

In this year’s SCR competition, four plays took honorable mentions, which do not carry a cash award: Julie Herbert’s “The Knee Desires the Dirt,” John Lee’s “Blood and Milk,” Carter Lewis’ “Soft Click of a Switch” and Ryan Teller’s “Habits.”

“Eden” will be read April 15 at 7:30 p.m. at South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. $7. (714) 957-4033.