In Ojai, writers try to get it letter perfect

Hell, for many of those caught up in the arts world and the entertainment business, is other people not being able to reach you on your cell phone.

At the annual Ojai Playwrights Conference, it’s part of the price to be paid for purposeful seclusion -- or perhaps it’s one of the benefits.

“It’s glorious. My play is growing daily,” Charlayne Woodard reports. The actress-writer, known for her one-woman shows, is using the conference to branch out: She is honing “Flight,” an adaptation of African and African American folk tales that is her first play designed for other actors.

To hear Woodard tell it, this is writers heaven -- and never mind doing without the cell phones, which don’t work well on the mountain-ringed prep school campus where the conference takes place. For a week, she gets to write without the daily distractions she usually faces.

Woodard and the other playwrights are staying on an estate-like ranch owned by one of the conference board members, Helene Gordon. Joe Loya, an essayist, memoir-writer and novice playwright, is working on his one-man show, “The Man Who Outgrew His Prison Cell.” Danny Hoch, who comes from the world of hip-hop and solo performance, is, like Woodard, fleshing out one of his first scripts to be acted by others, “Till the Break of Dawn.” Jon Robin Baitz (“Chinese Friends”) and Lee Blessing (“Flag Day,” a pair of short plays) are the established, widely acclaimed playwriting eminences, and New Yorker Peter Morris (“Pro Bono Publico”) the young contender.

After a week of rehearsals and rewrites on their works-in-progress, the playwrights -- and the public -- get to hear how they sound in readings today through Sunday.

Folksy and bucolic as the atmosphere may be, plugged-in networking -- which commonly involves cell phones -- has had a lot to do with the Ojai conference assembling this year’s notable array of writers and an ensemble that includes such well-known actors as Emmy winner Peter Strauss (“Rich Man, Poor Man” and “The Jericho Mile”) and Maggie Gyllenhaal (“Secretary” and “Adaptation”).

Robert Egan, known for fostering new plays as the Mark Taper Forum’s producing director, became the conference’s artistic director last year and has recruited some of the big names. He says their artistry, not their drawing power, is the attraction, since readings sans stars typically have played to full houses in the 145-seat theater.

Egan says he also values the grass-roots, communitarian spirit that launched the conference on a $13,000 budget in 1998, and aims to keep a place for actors and managers who have been there from the start. It began with about 10 members of two small theater companies, Theater 150 in Ojai and L.A.’s Echo Theater. They wanted to foster new work, and they were not without networking skills themselves: Star writer Christopher Durang was an attraction at the first conference, along with David Lindsay-Abaire, an unknown New Yorker who was soon to become prominent.

In 2001, organizers began reaching out to highly placed theater pros, asking them to suggest plays for development. That led to Egan’s arrival, first as director of a single reading (Lynn Manning’s “Middle Passage”), then as artistic director after he was taken by Ojai’s charm and its vibe as a sheltering bower for creative chance-taking.

Egan is leaving the Taper on Sept. 7 to become a freelance director but says he wants to continue directing the Ojai conference, where the budget is now about $80,000.

“Bob brought in a whole different kind of artist we didn’t know,” says Manny Treeson, a conference co-founder who is now managing director. “It’s like a genetic pool. The more diverse the genetic material, the stronger the body.” He also credits Egan with sharpening the focus: Instead of just casting a net for promising plays, the emphasis is now on work that touches on social concerns.

Strauss, a 13-year Ojai resident, has supported the conference from the beginning, but this is the first year he could break free from film and TV work to act in it, playing the lead in Baitz’s play about a self-exiled politician plotting his return. “Your job is to put aside your ego and your needs and serve the writer,” Strauss said. “It’s not high profile or high paying, but for the actors here, it shows they have a clear understanding of what the theater is about.”