It’s all in the ‘Family’ for this playwright and theater

By Eric Marchese

Aug. 26, 2019 9:16 AM PT

For more than a decade, Orange County playwright Dave Macaray and director Phil Brickey have been producing original shows together at Fullerton’s STAGEStheatre.

It started when Brickey suggested Macaray pitch his play, “Larva Boy,” to the downtown Fullerton storefront venue. Produced in the 2008 season, it became the first of many collaborations, including seven one-acts (for example, “No Salesmen Will Call” and “Freud and the Android”) and six full-length plays (including “Revenge: A Love Story” and, most recently, “Brain Freeze”).

September 6 brings a three-weekend run of two new Macaray one-acts under the banner title “Family Matters.”

The first, “Megan the Merciless,” centers around the reunion of three very disparate sisters.

“It focuses painfully and, we hope, humorously on the question of forgiveness,” Macaray said. “When family is involved, should everything be forgiven? More importantly, can everything be forgiven?”

The second, “The Affair,” is about a rocky romance between a doctor’s wife and a boyish gardener.

The woman at the heart of the comedy, Macaray said, “is looking for nothing more than a romantic distraction” and her boy-toy is “obsessed with doctors.”

One might think: why would a small storefront theater company with limited resources take chances staging previously-unproduced scripts by playwrights largely unknown to the public? But Brickey noted he and Macaray have collaborated with STAGEStheatre often enough that they have gained a local following.

From the theater’s inception in 1993, founder and former managing artistic director Brian Kojac has provided playwrights a showcase for new, original works.

A considerable percentage of the almost 200 productions they’ve staged in the last 27 years have been world premieres.

Amanda DeMaio, who took over as managing director for Kojac in 2009, said the company “began by primarily producing new works written by its company members.”

“Those early years were transformative and the material that came out of that time was eclectic,” she said. “We had several writers in the company, and most of what was written was tailored to our company of actors and actresses. We were really lucky to have in-house writers, so you can see how our commitment to produce new plays and work with new playwrights is ingrained.”

In addition to Macaray, STAGEStheatre has produced plays by Terry McNichol, who co-ran the theater company Crossroads with Kojac in the ’80s; Cameron Young, also from Kojac’s days in Los Angeles; Jim Breslin, who co-created and ran KOBRE with Kojac in Fullerton; and prolific playwrights like Todd Langwell, Bill Mittler, Arthur Kraft, Carol Wolf, Johnna Adams, OC Weekly theater journalist Joel Beers and even DeMaio herself.

They continue to accept submissions, which come from all around the world, during the first half of each year.

“It’s the perfect theater: great seating, spacious lobby, plenty of parking and, most importantly, wonderful people running the place,” Macaray said. “ ‘Larva Boy’ launched Brickey and me, and we’ve never looked back.”

“Over these years, Mr. Macaray has evolved as a very prolific playwright covering a lot of themes focused on the human condition,” said DeMaio. “And his voice for women has grown much stronger as well.”