There's a long history, in movies, theater and television, of writers running screaming from actors who want to tamper with their work. But in his latest commission for L.A.'s Geffen Playhouse, "Time Stands Still," Donald Margulies took the unusual step of inviting in his lead actresses, at an early draft stage, to help develop the characters they would ultimately play.
The result, with those two collaborators Anna Gunn and Alicia Silverstone onstage, has its world premiere Feb. 11.
After decades of writing plays -- and getting feedback from a close circle of friends -- Margulies expanded that circle on this project to shape his female characters in a way that mirrored aspects of their personalities.
The first time Margulies, Silverstone and Gunn sat down with the play, at the time titled "The Elephant in the Room," it consisted of 40 pages -- not necessarily even a first act. They were fragments, the playwright says, "little beats here and there."
"I began several of my early plays with actors in mind and developed the roles with those actors in mind," Margulies says. But casting invariably changed by the time the plays were fully produced.
"This is a unique situation," he says. "At the first reading, I think they were well cast and the characters' voices clearly emerged. It solidified the impression I had of who these characters are, made them tangible."
"Time Stands Still" opens on the heels of the Off Broadway debut of Margulies' "Shipwrecked" which played the Geffen in June after premiering at South Coast Rep. While Margulies has an affinity for readings and workshops, he notes "Time" came together in a unique fashion: It was the first time he went into a reading without a complete draft and the first time the actors who originated the roles went on to do the world premiere.
"We were able, as actors, to discover and change so many things that now I want every play to be like this experience," Gunn says.
A third collaborator arrived when Daniel Sullivan came onboard to direct, which required that the play be moved out of the playhouse's 2007 season.
"Dan has an affinity for my material, so I trust him completely," offers Margulies.
It will be Margulies' fourth collaboration with Sullivan, their best-known effort being Pulitzer-winner "Dinner With Friends," but his first with these actresses. He had seen Silverstone in "Speed-the-Plow" at the Geffen and heard Gunn's perf in L.A. Theater Works' radio production of his own 1992 play, "Sight Unseen."
Gunn, who is doing the play while on break from AMC series "Breaking Bad," stars as Sarah, a photojournalist in Iraq who survives the blast of a roadside bomb that claims the life of her colleague. She returns to the States where she and partner James (David Harbour) struggle with their readjustment to domestic life. Sarah's former mentor Richard (Robin Thomas) enters the picture with his much younger girlfriend, Mandy (Silverstone).
Both Gunn and Silverstone found the experience of shaping the characters unique, in readings and once Sullivan came aboard.
"He's open to hear opinions -- really working in rehearsal, watching and hearing our ideas," Gunn says. "If someone would say a point isn't clear, he'd ask how can he make it clearer. Even in technical things, he would rework and reconfigure. A week ago he took one of our scenes, chopped it into three bits and made it work better."
Gunn says the women are set up to be polar opposites, her character a committed war-zone photojournalist, Silverstone's Mandy a party planner with little understanding of activism. A trauma becomes their catalyst for change.
If the play is a success, the challenge will be to make it work as well in future productions, in which the actresses who helped sculpt their characters are not involved.
"He has to make the play work without us in it," points out Silverstone.
Margulies makes one comparison to his earlier work, suggesting "Time" is similar in some ways to "Sight Unseen," which was revived on Broadway in 2004.
"For me, ultimately this is a love story," he says. "The backdrop is very much of the moment. I want to dispel the notion of this being an Iraq play.
"I did not need to write a political play about the debacle of the last eight years. This is touching on the problems of being a moral person. The particulars are more mutable. But these themes are eternal."
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