Scripting a Play’s Evolution

Before the 1960s, a play’s path from creation to the stage was fairly cut-and-dried. Someone wrote it, a producer optioned it, and they chose a director with whom the playwright worked in shaping it. Then it went onstage.

Today, “the process,” as it is known in theater circles, is much more involved. A perfect example is the Playwrights Festival, a program in its ninth year at Fullerton College. The festival, which opened Jan. 2 and continues through Friday, is held under the auspices of the school’s Resident Theatre Company and has been guided for the last several years by dramaturges Bob Leigh and Pamela Richarde.

In this process, followed by most professional theaters, the play first gets a “cold reading”--a group of actors reads a script before an audience. There is no rehearsal and no staging, and the actors have not been directed.

The playwright and a director are thus able to get a feeling for the script at its barest. After the cold reading, audience input helps determine changes that might make the script more accessible or believable.

Then the director begins working with the actors, giving the play further adjustments to illuminate the author’s intent through performance, shading of character, momentum of scenes and rhythms.

Finally, there is a “hot reading,” also done before an audience. A post-reading discussion indicates how the playwright’s alterations and shaping by the director and actors have helped improve the play.

There is no dearth of playwrights anxious for the input and wisdom of these readings. The Resident Theatre Company placed notices in Southland trade papers and newspapers and received nearly 100 entries this year.

Leigh said the most notable play to have come through the program has been Scott Munson’s “Fatzer,” based on the life of Bertolt Brecht. After going through Fullerton’s festival in 1996, it went on to a successful production in Chicago last year.

“The success of the program is twofold,” Leigh said. “It allows [student actors] to participate in a process that is not only an academic exercise, but involves them in something that has real consequences in the professional life of a play. Also, playwrights indicate that it is a valuable process because it allows them to hear their work onstage with no commercial pressure.”

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Leigh and Richarde said the five plays selected each year are not necessarily perfect plays. But they show promise and appear to be on a level that would allow them to benefit from the process.

On Friday, two plays were on view before audiences of 30 or so people. Leigh said that is typical, but they would like to have even more viewers for added feedback.

A cold reading was given to Susan Merson’s “Hope,” based on an incident that occurred near Seattle, about a born-again Christian security guard who stops a couple on their way to an abortion clinic and forces them to his church and into a prayer meeting in hopes of discouraging them.

Through several revisions since 1993, Merson altered the couple to a mother and daughter. After the reading, audience members expressed some confusion over which of the three characters was the protagonist, indicating that the play needs further reworking.

The festival’s first “hot” reading followed--Jay Parker’s “Chic Golden’s Big Comeback,” an absurdist sendup of life for a flawed TV comedy team in the late 1950s. Directed with gusto by Michael Miller, the short rehearsal period showed that, although Parker’s play could benefit from minor revisions, it is well written and might have a future.

The remaining plays had cold readings last week, except Jack Treynor’s “Omerta,” which was scheduled for its cold reading Monday night.

A hot reading will be given tonight for Linda Whitmore’s “Life in the Old Country,” about a Japanese American who denies her heritage but discovers her roots in Japan, directed by Raymund Manukay; on Wednesday for “Burning Bridges,” Victor Raymond Rodriguez’s study of William Randolph Hearst’s intervention in the Pancho Villa revolutionary movement, directed by Michael Ambrosio; on Thursday for Merson’s “Hope,” directed by Erin Davis; and Friday for “Omerta,” a fictional depiction of Joseph P. Kennedy’s behind-the-scenes efforts, with Mafia involvement, to get political power for his sons. All the readings are open to the public.

This year’s participating playwrights are mostly Los Angeles-based, except for Treynor, who lives in Newport Beach and Whitmore, a sports copy editor for The Times’ Orange County Edition who lives in San Clemente.

* Playwrights Festival, Bronwyn Dodson Theatre, Fullerton College, 321 E. Chapman Ave. Readings nightly at 7 p.m. through Friday. Free. (714) 992-7425.