Pacific Playwrights Festival

It's draft week at South Coast Repertory, and like the coaches and scouts of a National Football League team, the two leaders of the Costa Mesa theater and their top advisors are gathered around a table to evaluate talent. There are no times in the 40-yard dash to consider, no statistics of passes completed and points scored.

Marvel Studios had decided not to give a formal presentation at the largest venue at San Diego's Comic-Con International in July, the company said Thursday. In recent years, virtually every Hollywood studio has brought film clips and actors and directors to Hall H, the 6,000-seat room where fans, bloggers and journalists from around the world come to see filmmakers introduce and promote their upcoming spectacle movies. The leadership at Marvel Studios pointed out, however, that sitting out Hall H is not synonymous with sitting out Comic-Con, which runs July 21-24.

Two decades ago, having defied the odds by creating a vibrant regional company in Orange County, South Coast Repertory decided to pursue what co-founder David Emmes called "our next great passion" -- developing works for the American theater. Things went so well that he and his colleagues soon had more offerings than they had slots in a season. Hence the Pacific Playwrights Festival was born.

Octavio Solis and Adam Gwon met six years ago in a New York workshop on musical theater, where they were assigned to write a song together. Solis, a Texas-born Mexican American playwright in his early 50s, and Gwon, a Chinese-American Jewish composer and lyricist in his early 30s, hit it off and decided to turn that song into a show. "Cloudlands," the chamber musical that resulted, will receive its first public reading Sunday at South Coast Repertory's 14th annual Pacific Playwrights Festival.

South Coast Repertory aims to create an artwork within an artwork come June, when it will use the "California Scenario" sculpture garden in Costa Mesa as a backdrop for five short plays, called "California Scenarios," about the Latino experience in the state.

They could rename this year's Pacific Playwrights Festival at South Coast Repertory the Pulitzer Playwrights Festival. And the Pulitzer cachet appears to be enhanced by some notable Hollywood names participating in the readings at the Costa Mesa theater. This year's Pulitzer winner for drama, "Anna in the Tropics" by Nilo Cruz, will receive a staged reading, with Jimmy Smits and Tony Plana. South Coast will produce the West Coast premiere in October.

COSTA MESA 7:45pm Theater South Coast Repertory's third annual Pacific Playwrights Festival begins with the first of two weekends of readings and workshop stagings of new plays. "The End of It All," a vaudeville-era show-biz story by Cusi Cram, and "Fighting Words," a boxing tale by Sunil Kuruvilla, include costumes and scenery. Previews are this weekend. "The End of It All" plays tonight and Saturday at 7:45. "Fighting Words" plays Friday and Sunday at 7:45. Also on tap are two 2:30 p.m.

South Coast Repertory's second annual Pacific Playwrights Festival June 10-20 will offer four plays by Latino authors among the eight new ones being presented. The festival is designed to develop new works and expose them to representatives from theaters around the country in hopes of getting them staged. For theatergoers, it offers a chance to view works in their developmental stages, either in script-in-hand readings or in more polished workshop productions with costumes, sets and lighting.

Actors tend not to improvise at South Coast Repertory, where the guiding ethic is a faithful adherence to the words and meanings that playwrights put on the page. But a whole lot of improvising--logistical, not dramatic--is going on in connection with this year's fifth annual Pacific Playwrights Festival. Hardhats, not actors, will inhabit the theater in June, when the festival devoted to showcasing and developing works in progress customarily takes place.

Octavio Solis and Adam Gwon met six years ago in a New York workshop on musical theater, where they were assigned to write a song together. Solis, a Texas-born Mexican American playwright in his early 50s, and Gwon, a Chinese-American Jewish composer and lyricist in his early 30s, hit it off and decided to turn that song into a show. "Cloudlands," the chamber musical that resulted, will receive its first public reading Sunday at South Coast Repertory's 14th annual Pacific Playwrights Festival.

Eight years ago, Julia Cho came to South Coast Repertory for the first time. She was a novice author, still in grad school, and excited to have her play, "99 Histories," read at the Pacific Playwrights Festival. Her visit was "amazing," she recalls. "I couldn't believe they were going to fly me to Costa Mesa from New York and put me up in a hotel, let alone put on my play." The experience also proved to be "a little intimidating," she says. "I was glad to be there, but I wasn't sure I belonged with all the older, more established playwrights."

MARIN IRELAND ADEPT AT THE RISIBLE OR THE RADICAL Ethereal yet grounded, actor Marin Ireland is magnetically attracted to theatrical projects that are at once ineffably abstract and vulnerably flesh and blood. Patrons of South Coast Repertory had the chance to experience her eccentric comic side last spring in Richard Greenberg's "The Injured Party." But she's revealed rawer nerve endings in darkly radical plays by Caryl Churchill ("Far Away") and Sarah Kane ("4:48 Psychosis" and in this fall's critically acclaimed New York premiere of "Blasted."

Pulitzer Prize winner Donald Margulies and Tony winner Richard Greenberg are among the veteran playwrights whose work will be presented at this year's Pacific Playwrights Festival, South Coast Repertory's annual weekend of new plays. The festival, a breeding ground for plays that have achieved national prominence, takes place May 4 to 6.

Two decades ago, having defied the odds by creating a vibrant regional company in Orange County, South Coast Repertory decided to pursue what co-founder David Emmes called "our next great passion" -- developing works for the American theater. Things went so well that he and his colleagues soon had more offerings than they had slots in a season. Hence the Pacific Playwrights Festival was born.

NO bankable-name playwrights are on the bill for this year's Pacific Playwrights Festival, but South Coast Repertory, which produces the annual weekend of new plays, has long been in the business of getting in on the ground floor with commercially unproved talent. Past festivals have featured works in progress by such acclaimed names as Donald Margulies, Richard Greenberg and Beth Henley, balanced with scripts by unknowns.

They could rename this year's Pacific Playwrights Festival at South Coast Repertory the Pulitzer Playwrights Festival. And the Pulitzer cachet appears to be enhanced by some notable Hollywood names participating in the readings at the Costa Mesa theater. This year's Pulitzer winner for drama, "Anna in the Tropics" by Nilo Cruz, will receive a staged reading, with Jimmy Smits and Tony Plana. South Coast will produce the West Coast premiere in October.

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation will give South Coast Repertory $300,000 over the next three years to continue the Pacific Playwrights Festival, an annual late-spring event designed as a creative caldron and launching pad for new plays. The Pacific Playwrights Festival will have its third run this June at the Costa Mesa theater. The Mellon Foundation helped underwrite the first two festivals with a two-year, $175,000 grant.

* "House," Thomas McCormack's new play starring Harry Hamlin, Christine Eastabrook, Marian Mercer and William Schallert, plays Wednesday-July 22 at the Falcon Theatre, 4252 Riverside Drive, Burbank, $25 to $35. (818) 955-8101. * "4th Annual Pacific Playwrights Festival," a 10-play series that incorporates the Hispanic Playwrights Project, takes place June 22-July 1 at South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. $8 to $49. (714) 708-5555. * "Common Ground Festival 2001," A.S.K.

Large pieces of Julia Cho's family past in Korea are missing, and she concedes they may never be found. Her play, "99 Histories," is partly a reflection on that loss. It also is the product of Cho's conviction that in the absence of facts, the imagination must take over, and that it can suffice. The play is one of five unproduced works-in-progress that will have public readings in the annual Pacific Playwrights Festival, Friday through Sunday at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa.