Stephen KARAM was not like other teenagers. For this Scranton, Pa., native, "play" didn't mean pickup basketball or keg parties -- it referred to one-acts he'd write and mail off to publishers and contests listed in the Dramatists Sourcebook.
"What kind of 16-year-old does that?" wonders Karam, now 28, with a self-deprecating laugh. Well, maybe the kind of 16-year-old who grows up to have a hit play run off-Broadway and subsequently in small theaters around the country, as has Karam's dark comedy "Speech & Debate," now in an acclaimed production at Hollywood's 2nd Stage Theatre, and in development as a feature film.
Remarkably, the new L.A. production, and even the Hollywood connection, marks a return of sorts for the young playwright.
"I was sending off my plays almost like an 8-year-old would send letters to Santa Claus," Karam recalls. "So it was a bit of a miracle when the Blank Theatre Company actually called and selected a terrible little play that I wrote."
He's talking not about "Speech & Debate," of course, but about an early effort portentously titled "A Work of Art" (the action of which, incidentally, anticipated the setup and punch line of Yasmina Reza's "Art" by a few years). That was produced as part of the Blank Theatre's Young Playwrights Festival, which for 16 years has solicited short plays from teenage playwrights nationwide and produced the dozen best of them with name actors and directors. Karam was a winner for three years running in the late 1990s, and he credits his first visit as a crucial turning point for him.
"To see professional actors do my work, to take it seriously -- that was the thing that made me think playwriting could actually be what I do," Karam says. "It's not a profession that has some sort of clear career track, like, 'This is what you do to be a playwright.' For me, that festival was the first step."
Blank Artistic Director Daniel Henning, who directed "Speech & Debate," remembers Karam's first Young Playwrights visit to L.A. for another reason. He and the young scribe were standing outside the theater on the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and Wilcox Avenue, Henning recounts. "Stephen mentioned something about being in Hollywood, and I said, 'Have you seen the Hollywood sign yet?' And he said, 'I can't wait to go see it!' I said, 'You don't have to go anywhere. Just look over there.' " Karam looked up, Henning recalls, and broke into a huge grin. "Here's a kid who wrote a play in his basement, and not only are people he knows from television doing it, but it's all happening right in view of the . . . Hollywood sign."
