THE WORK BEHIND THE PLAY

THESE days, it’s getting trickier to be a playwright. Changing tastes and shrinking budgets have prompted theaters to cut back on, or at least rethink, the ways in which they cultivate new material. Writers programs have been closed, safe bets favored over creative risks, and alternatives -- both bold and bleak -- sought to replace the familiar development cycle of commission, reading, workshop and (if you’re lucky) production.

One exception is South Coast Repertory. Thanks to financial foresight and a committed board, founders Martin Benson and David Emmes have maintained a tradition of investing in playwrights as well as plays. The results -- 107 world premieres in 44 seasons -- have helped make SCR one of America’s leading regional companies. On Friday, South Coast will open its 11th annual Pacific Playwrights Festival, a showcase for authors known and soon-to-be-known, at the Costa Mesa theater. The weekend of staged readings and productions attracts artistic directors from around the country as well as regular theatergoers eager for an early look at pieces by the likes of Nilo Cruz, Julia Cho, Richard Greenberg or Donald Margulies.

The Times talked with five writers from the 2008 festival about how they come up with story ideas, characters and curtain lines, and their sometimes glorious, sometimes bumpy experiences in going from page to stage.

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LAUREN GUNDERSON

Atlanta native Gunderson, 26, started acting when she was 10 and wrote her first play in high school. A reading of “Emilie: The Marquise du Chatelet Defends Her Life at the Petit Theatre at Cirey Tonight” will be held at 3:30 p.m. Friday.

“Alot of my pieces are science- or history-based, so most of my creative development starts with research. I cram a lot of information into my brain and there’s spillage that ends up on the page. Many of my plays are biographical, so I have that person’s life to go on as well as the time period they’re in. But it’s not like a documentary. As the dramatist, I can say who the story is really about and how we are going to tell it.

Most of my development experiences have been good. I started when I was young, so I didn’t have a guide for how all of this would work. I did have to learn a couple of things the hard way. Sometimes dramaturgs and directors were too heavy-handed. The story also got lost when there were too many cooks in the pot. Other times, however, there’s been a great balance. The dramaturg can be critical and very serious and harsh and yet can be helpful when you need someone to tell you that a character is absolutely ridiculous.

Part of what play development teaches you is to know what you want, and to be flexible, when to say, ‘I think that’s the total wrong direction’ and not take everyone’s advice. The theaters that gave me my start, the first thing they gave me was confidence. The best development begins with that -- the permission to tell the story you want to tell, not the way the director wants to tell it, or the theater itself. It’s a fun dance, especially as you get more successful, because you deal with bigger and bigger personalities.

‘Emilie’ takes a form that I’ve never worked through before. Time is a fractured thing. Also, this play acknowledges itself as a play, so there are a number of lenses the story is seen through. We have the history and biography and my version of Emilie, and then the meta-theatrical level of her knowing she’s in her own play, and then the science. The play folds back in upon itself a few times. I think that’s fun, but I know some people may say, ‘I’m lost.’

My work is very heady, so I want to make sure the audience finds the love stories compelling and the relationships of a mother and daughter true and important. I don’t want things clouded over by all of the smarty-pants things I put into my play.”

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LYNN NOTTAGE

Best known for the prize-winning “Intimate Apparel” (an SCR co-commission), Brooklyn-born Nottage, 43, spins imaginative tales that zip through time and space.

A reading of “By the Way, Meet Vera Stark,” the story of a woman’s improbable journey from maid to movie star, will be held at 1 p.m. Friday.

“Iam interested in the personal aspects of history, more than history in big, bold letters -- the kinds of intersections that occur between people who might not normally come into contact. Each play happens in a different way. It can begin with a quotation I can’t get out of my head, or I can hear the character speak to me. Sometimes something I read will outrage me. ‘Vera Stark’ began when I saw a 1930s film called ‘Baby Face,’ with Barbara Stanwyck and Theresa Harris. I was surprised by how progressive the film was, how it showed a relationship between a black woman and a white woman that seemed somewhat authentic. Harris was so beautiful and strong and magnetic. I began to wonder who she was, and how she would negotiate Hollywood.

As a writer, I know a play because I’ve been living with it for a year. What I find interesting is the play that I haven’t heard -- what I can discover through development, which is what happens when a director and actors get involved. This festival allows you to hear a play for the first time with a rehearsed reading in front of an audience. It’s exhilarating and terrifying. First, you have people who are actively involved in the process giving you feedback, including people who are playing the specific roles. I will spend two or three days around the table, fleshing out the text, answering questions, rewriting, clarifying, ripping my hair out. Then I get to share with an audience.

At the festival something truly terrifying occurs: The audience can write feedback. I got a stack of 200 responses and it took me two weeks to read the first comments. Once I did, it was really helpful and a little vexing. But for a playwright, the final collaboration is with an audience. Unless you are willing to engage them creatively, why are you writing a play?

I certainly dwelled in development hell for a long time. That’s when you’re given readings over and over, but you don’t move beyond that to production. But to be in a process and feel like you have some aspects of forward momentum is much more useful than sitting alone at the computer not knowing whether your play is going to have a life. I’d rather be in development hell than be nowhere.”

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SHARR WHITE

White, 37, grew up in Orange County and lives in New York. “Sunlight,” in which a university president turns the world upside down in a single night, will have workshop performances at 7:45 p.m. Friday, 2:30 and 7:45 p.m. Saturday and 2:30 p.m. next Sunday.

“Iread the newspaper incessantly. I’m always clipping, always looking for compelling ideas. The hardest part is sitting down, the daydreaming part. I can’t feel like I want to sit down and start on something until I have the architecture of the world intricately woven enough that I can tell the story in the way I want to tell it. What I look for is scene that is inseparable from character and plot. I am looking to put together a world in which every movement of every character affects the movement of every other character. The introductory paragraph for the play will take a number of days because I’ve got to get all the ducks in a row.

If I haven’t explored characters’ motivations or feelings, then it starts feeling false. I’ll keep reviewing everything I’ve done. It’s three steps forward and three steps back. With each new bit of information I discover I need to make the plot tighter or the characters more alive. A slight change in character is going to change everything you say, from periods and semicolons to how much they curse.

With South Coast, you’re in communication every few months. Whenever I’m ready to send some new drafts and scenes, I talk with Megan Monaghan, the literary manager. They are very careful in the manner in which thoughts are given. Megan would front the thoughts of [artistic director Martin Benson, producing artistic director David Emmes and associate artistic director John Glore]. It’s always very Socratic. It’s left me feeling the play has been mine the whole time.

With any play, the big issue is when you have worn out your welcome. South Coast is such a great place for testing, a place where you can start building the relationship between the play and the audience. You can see where people shift in their seats, where they need to breathe, or have a rest from language or ideas. With ‘Sunlight,’ I went out and did a small workshop in late November, and it was very helpful to see it and to hear it in the actors’ mouths. There was one character that was not quite rounded out for me -- he was more of an argument than a character -- so it was nice to see him in an actor’s body. I could take the steps I needed after that.”

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AMY FREED

Bay Area resident Freed, 50, has won acclaim with “The Beard of Avon” and “Freedomland” (both SCR commissions) as well as other nightmarish comedies and historical riffs. “You, Nero” will be read at 10:30 a.m. next Sunday.

“Ilearned to write plays by acting. I also started directing before I started writing. So, when I turned toward language for the theater, I saw it as the whole event -- everything that takes place on a stage: the physical, the emotional, the striving.

I’m interested in the intersection of people’s inner lives, fascinated by the drive of character, the terrible things that people do and why they do them, and how these things play out in the real world. I crave a kind of theater that operates on several levels, which is not a particularly fashionable thing.

In terms of big-D Development, anything I have in the way of an established identity is due to the consistency of SCR’s support. I think plays that are developed around tables or in your study are at a disadvantage. SCR gave me the experience of hearing a new play with a substantial audience that included dramaturgs and literary managers and a critical mass of normal people. They take a lot of trouble to get plays cast right, which is great because your work needs to be read by actors who are in a position to let you really hear it.

Sometimes, I’ve come away from readings feeling really happy, or feeling like something’s off -- which isn’t always bad. If there’s work to be done, and if you’re clear about why and where, then that’s good. Stuff is always wrong at this stage. The harder things -- what has to be fleshed out by light, gesture, time, meaning -- sometimes will fall flat. This is where readings can be treacherous, where you have to stay your hand. You can play it safe by cutting very severely, but you don’t want to harm the play. And you do want to be surprised. Stuff you thought had no chance of succeeding will work and stuff you thought was sure-fire won’t. Just leave it shaggy, and don’t be defensive.

I’ve suffered a few setbacks with development too. A theater may not know the play, or understand the reason why it was written. Producers can be nervous and feel that a false step in their season is a disaster. They want to know that a play is going to work like a dream on their main stage. There’s a big difference in a theater doing a reading because they’re trying it out for their own needs and doing it because they believe in the playwright and want to fertilize the garden.”

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JOHN KOLVENBACH

New Yorker Kolvenbach, 42, creates what he calls “personal dramas that are some combination of funny and sad,” including “Love Song.” The festival is presenting a reading of his quirky romance “Goldfish” at 10:30 a.m. Saturday.

“Usually, I don’t develop plays by using anyone else’s process. By the time I get to the theater, the play is reasonably complete. I write, then I do a hundred drafts, then I do readings in my house with actors I know. I rewrite, we do another reading, I rewrite, then I usually do a reading for an invited audience, rewrite, then do a reading for an audience of about 30 people. Then I decide whether it’s garbage or something that should be seen. Part of this comes from not wanting to show anyone anything I’d be embarrassed by. Also, I feel like before you want to look to somebody else for an idea, you want to work from the original source.

And yet I find the best way to judge a play is to listen to it with an audience. To sit in the back and just hear it. Billy Wilder said that, individually, the audience is a dimwit, but collectively, they are a genius.

When I write, I start from character. I do a ton of monologue that never ends up in the play, especially while I’m trying to find the voice of the play and make sure the characters are individuals. I’m reasonably conscious of plot. I usually have a fairly detailed outline about how the scenes play out, but by the time I get into the second act, my outline is no longer totally relevant so I throw it away. I try to load up, almost like you have a jet pack and you fill the jet pack with as much fuel as you can. Then you go, hoping you don’t go careening into a building.

‘Goldfish’ is kind of a delicate play, so a misplaced syllable would be a disaster. There’s a lot of unsaid stuff in it. Weirdly, it is more difficult to write a play with fewer words. It is hugely actor-dependent and director-dependent. We did an earlier reading at South Coast and we learned a crucial thing, which was that the end didn’t quite work. It was insufficiently bold, insufficiently dramatic. It didn’t allow the audience a cathartic experience. That was very helpful.

Anytime you go from a very private enterprise to a very public enterprise it’s a kind of tearing away. People with good development are very sweet and careful not to be too rough with you. Truth is, it’s going to be a rough process at one time or another.”