From the Page to the Stage

A spirit of adventure enlivens the script these days for Orange County’s two leading grass-roots playwrights’ circles.

The Orange County Playwrights Alliance is presenting “The Writes of Spring,” a sampling of members’ work this weekend at the 199-seat Curtis Theatre in Brea--an unusually large venue in which to stage previously unseen plays by unknown authors.

OCPA’s younger sibling, the New Voices Playwrights Workshop, is on the verge of something even more ambitious: not just writing for the theater, but running one.

The New Voices board of directors is expected to vote Thursday on whether to establish a new theater in the Artists Village district of downtown Santa Ana. Christopher Trela, the organization’s president, says it appears likely that New Voices will go ahead with the $20,000-plus project and open a stage dedicated to its members’ work as well as to new plays from outside the group. Like OCPA, New Voices is a tenant that must squeeze its activities into gaps in a host theater’s schedule.

The two organizations serve as creative nurseries and proving grounds for budding playwrights. Members, numbering about 15 in each group, meet twice a month to discuss, critique and help refine each other’s writing. The results emerge in public readings and occasional fully staged productions--such as OCPA’s “Writes of Spring” and New Voices’ current presentation, “The Bed Plays,” an evening of 10-minute theatrical quickies playing this weekend at the Costa Mesa Civic Playhouse.

Both groups sprang from the same source--the Advanced Playwrights Workshop course taught annually at South Coast Repertory, Orange County’s leading professional theater. The Playwrights Alliance celebrates its fifth anniversary on Saturday; New Voices is approaching its third birthday.

Playwrights’ mutual-support organizations exist in most big cities, said John Glore, the SCR literary manager who ran the workshop that spawned the Orange County Playwrights Alliance.

“They allow members to feel they’re not working in a vacuum and to get feedback from their peers,” Glore said.

“The Writes of Spring” production grew out of the Playwrights Alliance’s relationship with its host theater, the Vanguard in Fullerton.

The Vanguard Theatre Ensemble periodically expands beyond its 58-seat venue to produce plays at the Curtis Theatre. As part of this season’s three-play series at the Curtis, Vanguard decided to try something adventurous--new works from its affiliated playwrights group.

It’s an unprecedented move for the 9-year-old Vanguard, which has not performed new plays in its own theater, according to artistic director Wade Williamson. Likewise for the Curtis, a city-owned hall, where theater manager Christian Wolf could not recall any previous performances of untested plays.

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At Vanguard Theatre Ensemble’s invitation, the Playwrights Alliance submitted about 15 one-act scripts, from which the Vanguard’s selection committee chose five for “The Writes of Spring.”

“Original plays are generally seen as a programming risk in Orange County, and doing them in a 199-seat house is a bold move,” said Eric Eberwein, director of the Playwrights Alliance.

Last weekend’s results--a combined attendance of 120 for three performances, according to Wolf--confirmed that attracting a crowd for unknown work isn’t easy. An average draw of 40 playgoers per show would be a solid box office performance at a small theater such as the Vanguard, but at the mid-sized Curtis, Wolf said, the first weekend’s turnout was “lower than my expectations, even though we knew it was a risk.”

Williamson said that bringing new, Orange County-spawned drama and comedy to a big stage fits the Vanguard ensemble’s mission and is worth at least a one-time experiment.

“We feel it’s our responsibility to offer . . . an alternative to just the popular fare,” he said. “We feel we’re sort of the PBS of the local community theater.”

Williamson said “The Writes of Spring” gives theatergoers a chance to see the earliest stage of a play’s development and learn more about their production in question-and-answer sessions with cast, director and playwright that follow each performance.

One of the five short plays, “Ghosts,” by Martin E. Williams, is a bittersweet valentine to the world of the stage. A janitor about to retire from his job at a theater gives his replacement a tour, educating the newcomer about the foibles of theater folk and introducing him to the specters of Shakespearean characters who haunt the place. “The Encounter,” by Anna Winslow, is an unpredictable play of ideas in which Joan of Arc and Sigmund Freud meet on a train and have a surprising therapy session.

The current New Voices production, “The Bed Plays,” owes its existence to the group’s creative way of coping with not having its own venue. When its host, the Costa Mesa Civic Playhouse, dumped two tons of sand on the stage last month for a play set at the beach, New Voices came up with “The Beach Plays.” It found that writing for a prescribed setting was fun--hence “The Bed Plays,” in which all the action takes place on or around a used queen-size model bought at a swap meet for $40.

As it moves toward starting its own theater, New Voices aims to prove that a company devoted to new plays can attract a steady audience.

With its own venue, Trela said, the group will be able to stage readings and productions whenever it chooses with whatever scenery it prefers and not have to adjust to the schedules and stage layout of its host.

The plan calls for a 50-seat theater, housed in a building at Broadway and 3rd Street. The same neighborhood already is home to three other theater companies--Rude Guerrilla, Hunger Artists and Alternative Repertory Theatre, and the Orange County Crazies comedy troupe expects to open its new theater in May.

ART’s leaders have cited a lingering, if undeserved, stigma against downtown Santa Ana and a too-precipitous plunge into new play production as reasons for the theater’s financial struggles since moving to the Artists Village early in 1999. The Chance Theater in Anaheim Hills was established last year as a venue solely for new work, but low turnouts prompted its operators to bring established fare, including “The Mikado” and “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” into this season’s mix.

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New Voices is different, Trela said, having already managed to build an audience. And he is confident the Artists Village will soon achieve its goal of turning into the popular center for bohemian culture that Orange County lacks.

The four-member executive committee of New Voices is unanimously recommending that the full, nine-member board commit to the Santa Ana site, Trela said. The building is unoccupied and under renovation, he said; the rent for a 2,700-square-foot theater would be a “very, very reasonable” $1,350 a month.

New Voices would have to raise $15,000 to $20,000 above the $5,000 to $7,000 it already has in order to outfit the theater for a projected fall opening, Trela said. It would be called the New Voices Playwrights Theatre “unless somebody comes up with a good chunk of money and wants to have a theater named after them.”

Trela and Eberwein use phrases such as “on good terms” and “friendly competition” to describe the relationship between New Voices and the Orange County Playwrights Alliance. They differ, though on whether grass-roots playwrights need a theater to call their own.

“We don’t want to really run a theater,” said OCPA’s Eberwein. “I admire the people who do, but it’s a tremendous amount of work.”

BE THERE

“The Writes of Spring,” five one-act plays presented by the Orange County Playwrights Alliance and Vanguard Theatre Ensemble, at the Curtis Theatre, 1 Civic Center Circle, Brea. Friday and Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 2 p.m. $7 to $10. (714) 990-7722.

“The Bed Plays,” nine 10-minute plays presented by New Voices Playwrights Workshop, at the Costa Mesa Civic Playhouse, 661 Hamilton St. Saturday, 2 p.m.; Sunday, 7:30 p.m. $10 to $12. (949) 225-4125.