Tom Donaghy

The house has a "mold spore issue." So the baby at the center of Tom Donaghy's sharp, eccentric new comedy "The Beginning of August," now at South Coast Repertory, must remain in a bassinet in the backyard, surrounded by adults ostensibly in charge, minus a conspicuously absent mother. Donaghy's characters are coping with a period of transition. But what is life if not an extended transitional clause?

The phrase "homeland security" had not been coined when New Yorker Tom Donaghy finished his first draft of a play about an anxious Manhattan mom's desperate need to flee and create a secure home in the suburbs. His inspiration, during that summer of 2001, was not the vision of towers collapsing in dust and smoke but his memory of a quiet visit to a friend's country home.

Tom Donaghy learned early in his playwriting career that telling the truth about family life could have serious consequences. His father, Tom Sr., went to his son's first play, "The Dadshuttle," recognized himself in it, and wouldn't speak to him for months. Eventually, Donaghy's mother interceded to break the freeze. "I thought it was a very genuine and loving portrait of him," said Donaghy, whose latest look at family life, "The Beginning of August," opens Friday at South Coast Repertory.

The house has a "mold spore issue." So the baby at the center of Tom Donaghy's sharp, eccentric new comedy "The Beginning of August," now at South Coast Repertory, must remain in a bassinet in the backyard, surrounded by adults ostensibly in charge, minus a conspicuously absent mother. Donaghy's characters are coping with a period of transition. But what is life if not an extended transitional clause?

The phrase "homeland security" had not been coined when New Yorker Tom Donaghy finished his first draft of a play about an anxious Manhattan mom's desperate need to flee and create a secure home in the suburbs. His inspiration, during that summer of 2001, was not the vision of towers collapsing in dust and smoke but his memory of a quiet visit to a friend's country home.

* Theater. Second annual "Pacific Playwrights' Festival," workshop productions and staged readings of works by Rogelio Martinez, Jose Rivera, Jonathan Ceniceroz, Eduardo Andino, Richard Greenberg, Marlane Meyer, Donald Margulies, Nicky Silver and Tom Donaghy, plus mainstage premiere of John Glore's "On the Jump," opens June 10 at 8 p.m. at South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Call for schedules. $8 for readings, $12 to $18 for workshop productions; "On the Jump," $28 to $43.

Jazz historian and collector Mark Cantor has organized "Jazz on Film," a two-hour program of film clips of such jazz greats as Duke Ellington, Joe Williams, Ella Fitzgerald, Howlin' Wolf, Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson, Big Mama Thornton, the big bands of Count Basie, Woody Herman and Charlie Barnet, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Thelonious Monk and Jack Teagarden. The film program, which is presented by the L.A.

Main Stage: * "The Philanderer" by George Bernard Shaw. Opens Friday, plays through Oct. 10. * "The Piano Lesson" by August Wilson, Oct. 15-Nov. 21. Part of series chronicling decade-by-decade the African American experience in the 20th century. This play, which won the 1990 Pulitzer Prize, is set in the 1940s. * "The Hollow Lands" by Howard Korder, Jan. 7-Feb. 13. A man in search of the American dream sets out from New York in 1815 to cross the nation. * "All My Sons," by Arthur Miller, Feb.

A new Randy Newman musical will cap South Coast Repertory's 1999-2000 season, which also will feature premieres by Howard Korder and Jose Rivera as well as the company's first production of an August Wilson play. The theater is announcing nine of the 11 shows that will make up the subscription season. The main stage season so far: * George Bernard Shaw's "The Philanderer" (Sept. 10-Oct. 10), to be staged by SCR artistic director Martin Benson.

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.

Tom Donaghy learned early in his playwriting career that telling the truth about family life could have serious consequences. His father, Tom Sr., went to his son's first play, "The Dadshuttle," recognized himself in it, and wouldn't speak to him for months. Eventually, Donaghy's mother interceded to break the freeze. "I thought it was a very genuine and loving portrait of him," said Donaghy, whose latest look at family life, "The Beginning of August," opens Friday at South Coast Repertory.

Fast-lane people who leave the city for the supposed serenity and stability of rural roads are the theme of the month at La Jolla Playhouse, with two productions examining ex-urbanites. The premiere of Tom Donaghy's "Eden Lane" in the Mandell Weiss Theatre is more engaging than Martin Crimp's "The Country," in the smaller, adjacent Mandell Weiss Forum. Both plays share an elliptical quality. In "Eden Lane," as in "The Country," some details are not spelled out.

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.