SCR audiences enjoy fruits of festival

Tom Titus

One of South Coast Repertory’s primary claims to fame in the realm of

professional theater is its status as an incubator for new plays -- a

direct outgrowth of the company’s Pacific Playwrights Festival, which

the company created in 1998.

However, South Coast Rep was introducing audiences to new works

long before the festival was established. Try 32 years before.

Theatergoers of a certain age may recall that in 1966, the

company’s second year of local activity, a play called “Chocolates”

was presented at South Coast Repertory’s first theater, the Second

Step on Villa Way in Newport Beach. That one came from a local

playwright, Laguna Beach’s Ian Bernard, whom trivia buffs may recall

as musical director of “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In,” a few years

after “Chocolates” premiered.

Today, the two-theater complex in Costa Mesa’s South Coast Town

Center is awash in new material, having already birthed 80 new plays

over its first 40 seasons. The world premiere of Christopher Shinn’s

“On the Mountain” currently occupies the Julianne Argyros Stage,

while Sarah Ruhl’s “The Clean House” is about to make its West Coast

premiere on the Segerstrom Stage.

Upcoming, during the early weeks of May, will be the world

premieres of “A Naked Girl on the Appian Way” by Richard Greenberg,

who has seen many of his plays given birth at South Coast Repertory,

and “Vesuvius” by Lucinda Coxon. They are part of the 2005 Pacific

Playwrights Festival, which also will feature four to six more plays

presented in readings or workshops.

According to Jerry Patch, the company’s dramaturg and director of

the festival, “virtually every play presented (at the festival) has

gone on to productions at SCR and/or theaters around the country. The

festival’s impact has truly extended beyond our initial hopes.”

Patch has made his own contribution to South Coast Repertory

history -- he adapted Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” for the stage, and

it’s been running each yuletide season for 25 years.

Playwrights whose scripts have first been unveiled here in Costa

Mesa include Craig Lucas (several, including “Prelude to a Kiss” and

“Reckless”), Beth Henley (“The Debutante Ball”), Howard Korder

(“Search and Destroy”) and Octavio Solis (“Man of the Flesh” and the

Repertory’s other Christmas favorite, “La Posada Magica”). Nilo

Cruz’s “Anna in the Tropics” won the Pulitzer Prize just prior to its

local production.

Other plays which have premiered at South Coast Repertory and gone

on to major productions elsewhere include Margaret Edson’s “Wit,”

Donald Margulies’ “Collected Stories” and “Sight Unseen,” Amy Freed’s

“Freedomland” and “The Beard of Avon” and several by the prolific

Greenberg -- including “The Dazzle,” “The Violet Hour,” “Three Days

of Rain” and “Night and Her Stars,” among others.

Margulies was represented in South Coast Repertory’s 2004-05

season opener, “Brooklyn Boy,” which opens in New York this month.

Noah Haidle, who gained some notoriety last season with “Mr.

Marmalade,” returns later in the season with a new play, “Princess

Marjorie.”

For those keeping score at home, the current season includes five

world premieres and two West Coast premieres. One wonders how Arthur

Miller’s “A View From the Bridge” managed to crack that lineup -- it

arrives late in May -- but South Coast Repertory has been consistent

in its presentation of American classics as well as its introduction

of new works.

Theater lovers who check out the readings and workshops at the

Pacific Playwrights Festival this year most probably will be able to

witness the finished product on the South Coast Rep stage in 2006.

* TOM TITUS reviews local theater for the Daily Pilot. His reviews

appear Fridays