EVERYTHING GOES IN ABDOH PLAYS

“From the time I was 2, I knew I was different,” Reza Abdoh said. “I didn’t think about it: I just was . And sure, people gave me a hard time. My (army veteran/businessman) father hated me for going into the arts. But I had friends who encouraged me. And also a big influence was that I had an affair when I was very young--almost 13--with a lady who (at 33) was much older than I.”

Abdoh, now 23, does not drop the information for shock value, but as a clue, perhaps, to the origins of his early confidence: “I left home at 13, joined a theater company and traveled around with this woman. At 14, I directed my first play.”

As for his domestic situation, “It was a different experience,” he conceded. “I got a sort of familial love from this lady--but also a very different type of love and support. That was what, I think, galvanized my passion for unseen things, for dreams. And it made me unafraid.”

Most recently, that passion has led Abdoh (Iranian-born, British-reared and USC-educated) to create a new work: “Rusty Sat on a Hill One Dawn and Watched the Moon Go Down,” opening--under his direction--Saturday at Stages.

“For a long time, I wanted to write a play with a vampire in it,” he explained. The story (which Abdoh developed in one evening) also involves a missing moon, a fairy queen, a bat, a beheaded king, an Appalachian love interest, two homicidal brothers, a 1,000-year-old curse and multiple settings, as the play moves from an outdoor stage, to an indoor North Pole room, to another “which is like the inside of a dream.”

Abdoh’s propensity to align himself with eclectic fare has not gone unnoticed. Earlier this year, he staged David Henry Hwang’s “As the Crow Flies” and “The Sound of a Voice” at the Los Angeles Theatre Center, a magical and moving production--for which he nonetheless took some knocks.

“(The Times) referred to my work as window dressing,” he said. “Actually, (it) was very complimentary to the playwright, saying that the plays came through regardless of how hard the director and stage designer tried to manipulate and destroy them. . . . See, I don’t understand that. The play, as it sits on a piece of paper, is to be interpreted, brought out, opened--not torn to pieces, but opened up. So how can a director overpower a good play?”

Abdoh (who’d earlier dabbled in painting and drawing but found theater “the most complete experience: literal, visual, aural--and it’s immediate, not constipated; it’s there “) shook his head.

“That’s what this experience is about: doing the exploration, the discovery. If you do a play by Ibsen, you should give the audience Ibsen’s words. But if you take the story and say, ‘OK, I’m going to start with this structure, then write my own scenario and turn it into something totally different,’ then it’s no longer Ibsen’s. It’s yours.”

Abdoh undertook one such project last July with his “A Medea: Requiem for a Boy With a White, White Toy” (presented at the Hollywood Recreation Center).

“It was not the ‘Medea’ that people expected; it had nothing to do with Euripides’ text. Though actually I did take some of his text and update it, so it would fit the puzzle, the tapestry I was trying to create.”

With “Rusty,” he said, “the inspiration was largely cumulative: I came into rehearsal with a very elemental structure and maybe two-thirds of the text; then I improvised a lot. Some of the text was found instantaneously--a joke one of my actors told me, a newspaper clipping, a poem I liked, a conversation at the supermarket.”

He cannot comprehend those who cling to the old-fashioned, tried-and-true approach to art.

“If a sculptor has an idea to sculpt David and Goliath in 1986, are the critics going to judge it on the same (terms) as Michelangelo, Bernini and Rodin? Yes? Well, then, that’s ridiculous.

“We live with our own mythology: we create it, own it, break it, disregard it. The only way there can be new myths is to re-create them. Because basically, everything’s been done. In every age, we encounter new challenges, new ideas. They might be right or wrong; I can’t pass judgment. But in this chaotic time, we need to be able to dream: to see the world from new angles, with new eyes.”