It’s Classical Lit 1-Oh!-1

Her raw materials are tomes from 9th century China, 12th century Persia, Renaissance Italy or even ancient Greece or Rome--daunting volumes of allegorical materials that have somehow withstood the journey across time. They’re the kind of books on which cultures are founded, most frequently encountered in the Western world via torturous classical literature classes at respected universities. They are not what you’d normally think of as hits-in-the-making, ripe for adaptation to the stage of the 21st century.

But adapter-director Mary Zimmerman knows otherwise. Indeed, she’s made a name for herself by bringing such literary monuments into today’s theater--not as museum pieces, but as visually oriented cultural collages that sometimes call to mind the larger-scale works of pioneering contemporary stage auteurs such as Robert Wilson, Pina Bausch and Julie Taymor. Zimmerman’s “Metamorphoses,” based on the work of Roman poet Publius Ovidius Naso, a.k.a. Ovid, opens at the Mark Taper Forum on Thursday.

“I’ve always been fascinated by the big mythic texts,” explains the 39-year-old artist, speaking by phone from her home in Chicago. “A lot of these texts are oral texts to begin with. They’ve been codified by Ovid, or whomever. So by staging them, I feel like I’m returning them to their natural environment. They’re very amenable to staged performance.”

While she doesn’t work with sacred texts, Zimmerman is well aware that the works she adapts typically hold exalted places in their native cultures. Yet she remains undaunted. “I openhandedly admit that we are doing a version steeped in our own culture,” she says. “These are texts that have been done in so many different forms that it’s as though I’m joining a chorus [of interpreters]. These are texts that belong to the world. I don’t own them. Apart from being intimidated by the baggage these texts carry, I feel like the humility of just another person stepping into the giant stream of people telling these tales.”

“Metamorphoses” is perhaps Zimmerman’s greatest success to date. The piece began four years ago as a project she staged with her students at her alma mater, Northwestern University, where she is now an assistant professor in the department of performance studies.

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As the title suggests, the piece is an episodic collection of short stories about mythological characters, all of whom transform in one way or another. Running only about 95 minutes, it’s based on Ovid’s 15-volume epic, with stories set from the dawn of time to the reign of Julius Caesar and united by the theme of love in its various guises.

The central design element in Zimmerman’s production--and the key conceit that has brought the piece so much attention--is a pool of water that dominates the stage, serving as the primary playing area and, symbolically, as everything from a turbulent sea that separates a devoted couple to the bed in which taboo relationships are consummated. Some of the tales in “Metamorphoses”--such as those of King Midas, Orpheus and Eurydice, and Phaeton and Apollo--are familiar, while others, such as the story of Eros and Psyche, have been interpolated by Zimmerman from sources other than Ovid.

The first professional staging of “Metamorphoses” took place in 1998 at Chicago’s Lookingglass Theatre, where Zimmerman has been a company member since the early ‘90s. Writing in Variety, reviewer Chris Jones found it to be Zimmerman’s “most sensual, romantic and commercial work to date.” The production was also bolstered by the fact that Zimmerman won a MacArthur Foundation grant that same year.

The current production of “Metamorphoses” began at Berkeley Repertory Theatre and moved from there to Seattle Repertory Theatre, where it closed last Sunday. It was added to the Taper season as a last-minute replacement for the previously scheduled new play “Tuva or Bust!” by Peter Parnell, featuring Alan Alda as physicist Richard Feynman, which has been moved to the 2000-2001 season.

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“Metamorphoses” has changed little since Zimmerman first presented it at Northwestern, although “there is a new myth, Eros and Psyche, and other elaborations to the text,” she says. “There’s also a more sophisticated design, although the designer [Daniel Ostling] is the same.”

Compared to her other previous adaptations, “Metamorphoses” may be more bold. “It’s a little bit of a departure in that it has more of my own language in it than any of the other shows I’ve done,” says Zimmerman. “I felt free to use a contemporary idiom. I had more confidence.

“It has to do with something about the stories, how they do belong to the collective unconscious,” she says. “There’s a collective ownership of which I’ve become a part.”

Her confidence also comes from a longtime familiarity with, and love for, myth. In fact, Zimmerman recalls first coming across some of the stories that would be central to her career when she was only a girl. Although she spent most of her childhood in Lincoln, Neb., she and her two university professor parents also spent time abroad in England and France.

“I came across ‘The Odyssey’ when I was 6,” she recalls. “It was read to me in London. I also remember reading Edith Hamilton’s ‘Mythology.’ There was a sense of [these stories] being fairy-tale-like, but also a sense that you were reading something very dark and serious and adult.”

Thus began a lifelong appreciation of fabled stories. Indeed, Zimmerman first enrolled as an undergraduate at Northwestern as a comparative literature major. But she soon switched to theater.

At that time, theater was studied in what was known as the department of interpretation, now the department of performance studies. The departmental bent at the time (although no longer) leaned heavily toward the adaptation of nondramatic literature for the stage, and that gave Zimmerman the impetus for the creative work she continues to this day.

Zimmerman completed her undergraduate and graduate training at Northwestern before segueing directly into Chicago’s thriving off-Loop theater scene. She joined Lookingglass, a company formed by Northwestern alumni, and it has remained her creative base. She is also an artistic associate at the Goodman Theatre. One or the other of the Chicago theaters is where most of her shows develop and premiere.

“The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci,” conceived and premiered in 1993, was Zimmerman’s first hit. Based on the 5,000 extant pages of the artist’s notes, the piece was seen at the Serious Fun! Festival at Lincoln Center and at the Seattle Repertory Theatre. Other notable shows have included “Mirror of the Invisible World,” adapted from a classic Persian text; “Journey to the West,” based on a work of Chinese fiction; “The Odyssey”; and “The Arabian Nights,” the latter of which was seen at both the Manhattan Theatre Club and in L.A. at the Actors’ Gang.

Zimmerman prefers to develop her works at her home theaters in Chicago, largely because few institutional theaters would be willing or able to adapt to the way she works. Unlike most directors, she casts a production and begins rehearsal before there is an actual script. She then writes the piece during the rehearsal process.

She also prefers to work with actors who are familiar with her method. “It is a different game going into a show with Mary,” says actor Doug Hara, a Lookingglass company member who has been working with Zimmerman since the early ‘90s and has performed in seven of her works. “You have to have an extraordinary amount of trust that when you get to opening night there will be a play to perform. You have to give over to her process.

“She is a very image-based director,” continues Hara, whose characters in “Metamorphoses” include Phaeton, Eros, Salinas, Hades and ensemble roles. “Her strength continues to be creating incredible stage pictures and directing the movement of those pictures. Over the years, she’s gotten better at having to fulfill the other requirements of a director. She has developed more of a language for herself to be articulate about character. She has grown as a director.”

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“METAMORPHOSES,” Mark Taper Forum, 135 N. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. Dates: Plays Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7:30 p.m.; Saturdays-Sundays, 2:30 p.m. Ends May 21. Prices: $29 to $42. Phone: (213) 628-2772.