South Coast Rep Plans Four World Premieres

South Coast Repertory, the Costa Mesa theater that has built a national reputation as a nurturing ground for new plays, will offer four world premieres in its 2000-2001 season.

“Edward Beekin” by Richard Greenberg (Sept. 8 to Oct. 8) and “The Beard of Avon” by Amy Freed (June 1 to July 1, 2001) come from playwrights who were 1998 Pulitzer Prize finalists with plays first produced at SCR--Freed’s “Freedomland” and Greenberg’s “Three Days of Rain.”

Next season’s two other world premieres spotlight emerging playwrights new to SCR: “Modern Orthodox,” by Daniel Goldfarb (Nov. 3 to Dec. 3, rights pending) and “Kimberly Akimbo” by David Lindsay-Abaire (March 16 to April 15, 2001), whose “Fuddy Meers” is a current off-Broadway success at the Manhattan Theatre Club.

A fifth new play, “Tom Walker” by John Strand (April 27 to May 27, 2001), will debut at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., before arriving at SCR for its West Coast premiere next spring.

In their 37th season, founding artistic directors David Emmes and Martin Benson will finally present a work by Edward Albee, his 1967 Pulitzer winner, “A Delicate Balance” (Jan. 12 to Feb. 11, 2001).

“It’s astonishing we have never put together the pieces to do one of his plays,” said Benson, who will direct Albee’s play and two others.

In choosing a season, Benson said, SCR does not seek any set ratio of old to new and makes no attempt to establish a cohesive theme or pattern.

However, there are resonances among many of the plays.

Albee’s play and “The Homecoming” by Harold Pinter (Sept. 22 to Oct. 22) both are mid-1960s standards about deep family dysfunction. “Kimberly Akimbo,” set in Teaneck, N.J., is another treatment of a family askew.

There are two takes on the Bard: “Much Ado About Nothing” (March 2 to April 1, 2001) and “The Beard of Avon,” in which Freed joins in that cherished sport of literati--speculation about who really wrote all those purportedly Shakespearean plays.

“Edward Beekin” and “Modern Orthodox” both deal with the pressures on American Jews to assimilate, or not.

Also on the list are “Tom Walker,” about a man who battles Satan in colonial Boston, and “Art” (Oct. 20 to Nov. 19), French playwright Yasmina Reza’s 1994 depiction of friendships unraveling in a debate over a white monochrome painting. “Art” played Hollywood’s Doolittle Theatre in 1999.

Two slots in the 11-play season remain unannounced.

The 1999-2000 SCR season has featured plays by a black playwright (August Wilson’s “The Piano Lesson”) and a Latino (“References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot” by Jose Rivera) as well as “The Summer Moon,” built around Japanese American actors and themes. While next season’s playwrights come from varied backgrounds, there are no blacks and just one Latino on the agenda: Octavio Solis, who contributes the company’s Christmas perennial “La Posada Magica.”

“It’s something we’re sympathetic and attuned to, but we don’t set out with a quota,” Benson said. “Really good theater [rather than multicultural imperatives] is what lights a fire under us.” Since 1986, SCR has been home to the Hispanic Playwrights Project, geared to nurturing Latino authors, but with no guarantees the plays developed will receive full-run productions.

Tickets for the coming season are on sale on a subscription basis only; the two annual Christmas plays, “La Posada Magica” and “A Christmas Carol” are not included.

“Edward Beekin,” “Art,” “A Delicate Balance,” “Much Ado About Nothing” and “The Beard of Avon” will play in the 507-seat Mainstage theater; “The Homecoming,” “Modern Orthodox,” “Kimberly Akimbo” and “Tom Walker” are on the 161-seat Second Stage.

Subscription prices are $132 to $267 for the six Mainstage plays and $120 to $212 for the five Second Stage plays--up 4% to 6% from the current season. Information: (714) 708-5555.

Mainstage (507 seats): “Edward Beekin,” by Richard Greenberg, Sept. 8-Oct. 8; “Art,” by Yasmina Reza, Oct. 20-Nov. 19; “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens, Nov. 29-Dec. 24; “A Delicate Balance,” by Edward Albee, Jan. 12-Feb. 11, 2001; “Much Ado About Nothing,” by William Shakespeare, March 2-April 1, 2001; an April 13 opening to be announced; and “The Beard of Avon,” by Amy Freed, June 1-July 1, 2001.

Second Stage (161 seats): “The Homecoming,” by Harold Pinter, Sept. 22-Oct. 22; “Modern Orthodox,” by Daniel Goldfarb (pending rights), Nov. 3-Dec. 3; “La Posada Magica,” by Octavio Solis, Dec. 10-24; a Jan. 26, 2001 opening to be announced; “Kimberly Akimbo,” by David Lindsay-Abaire, March 16-April 15, 2001; and “Tom Walker,” by John Strand, April 27-May 27, 2001.