New Plays Take the Spotlight

In the market for a new movie? Sundance, the nation’s premier film festival, is a good bet. Searching for a new play? South Coast Repertory extended its spring hours for shoppers’ convenience at its Pacific Playwrights Festival in Costa Mesa.

“Some of the writers they had are among the most distinguished contemporary American playwrights working today,” said Gordon Edelstein, artistic director of Seattle’s A Contemporary Theatre (ACT).

Edelstein is referring to the 10 playwrights who wrote works presented during SCR’s second annual 10-day festival, which ended Sunday. He was among 30 artistic directors, dramaturges and other theater professionals from as far away as New York City who attended the two-week affair, a shopping opportunity, if you will, for managers to see new plays in development in SCR’s hope of getting them staged around the country.

Ten plays--by Nicky Silver, Donald Margulies, Jose Rivera, Marlane Meyer, Eduardo Andino, Jonathan Ceniceroz, Tom Donaghy, John Glore, Rogelio Martinez and Richard Greenberg--were presented, most of them as script-in-hand readings, some as more polished works-in-progress with sets and costumes. SCR officials said six of eight plays staged last spring have since been produced elsewhere.

Festival productions “definitely give us a good idea of the value of the work as a piece of art,” even though they aren’t in final form, said Kurt Beattie, associate artistic director of the Seattle Repertory Theatre. Beattie was one of several attending for the second time.

SCR based its festival on similar ones across the country. They include the Midwest Play Labs in Minneapolis, the Southern Writers Conference in Knoxville, Tenn., and the Humana Festival at the Actors Theater of Louisville in Kentucky.

Michael Dickson, who heads Humana, said organizers read as many as 900 new American plays every year in search of about eight to produce for the festival.

Attending SCR’s event, as he has twice, “helps us get through 10 of 900,” he said. “They do a lot of work to pick out the 10 or so they are working on, and we take advantage of that good work and good spirit.”

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Unlike most festival sponsors, SCR co-produces some of its festival plays with other theaters, allowing out-of-town directors and producers to develop their pet projects. The local festival is funded in part by a $175,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; guests--such as Edelstein, who directed the reading of “God of Vengeance”--receive stipends.

“Collaboration is one of the things we hope kind of distinguishes our festival,” said its director, Jerry Patch. “It’s like a a county fair, where we try to get people to bring in things they’re excited about to share with others.”

Last year, Michael Greif, artistic director of the La Jolla Playhouse, got excited about “Dogeaters,” Jessica Hagedorn’s surreal comedy set in the Philippines.

The play’s progression was typical of the often long, drawn out development process: Greif, who commissioned Hagedorn years ago to adapt a book by the same name, directed two readings of the play before doing the same at SCR last year, he then staged a final production in La Jolla, said Neel Keller, La Jolla’s associate artistic director. Greif will take the helm once again when the play is performed next year at New York’s prestigious Public Theatre.

The SCR rendering was particularly helpful because it was read by the same cast members who performed it in La Jolla, Keller said.

“It was a great way to start the final stage of its development.”

The La Jolla Playhouse didn’t co-sponsor a play this year, and Keller, who attended, wasn’t “shopping” for anything particular.

“But,” he said, “we share a lot of the same writers (such as Jose Rivera) whose plays we both produce and whose careers we like to stay involved with. So we come to see their plays and stay in touch.

“The festival provides an opportunity for West Coast theaters to share ideas. It’s great for brainstorming about developing new plays, talking about what’s worked and what’s not worked.”

Of course, SCR reaps direct artistic benefits from its festival.

This year, it staged the world premiere of SCR dramaturge Glore’s “On the Jump,” which was presented as a reading last year, as was Howard Korder’s “The Hollow Lands,” which will have its world premiere in January.