In Provincetown, 25 playwrights take their turn in 'Line'

The freshly penned play that will inaugurate a new theater in Provincetown starts, appropriately enough, on an Outer Cape beach with the sea, gulls, sun, and summer. It includes a gay wedding, love triangles, mistaken identities, and the Cheney family -- Mary, Lynne, and Dick.

The rest of the plot, says Lynda Sturner -- the artistic director of the Provincetown Repertory Theatre, who conceived of the project -- is under wraps.

The play, called "The Direct Line Play," is modeled after a chain letter. Each of the 25 three-minute scenes was written by a different prominent playwright. The list includes John Guare, Christopher Durang, Wendy Wasserstein, and Terrence McNally.

"I wanted it to start in Provincetown," Sturner says. "Once the first person wrote that, the others could have taken it anywhere they wanted. But the play stayed there."

"The Direct Line Play" will be given two staged readings next weekend at the Provincetown Theater. Sturner, the new artistic director, was looking for a piece to celebrate the opening of the theater, which will house both Provincetown Rep, an Equity company, and the Provincetown Theatre Company.

She got the idea while online planning a trip to London, where she stumbled across a reference to an original play at the National Theatre made up of 25 scenes written by different playwrights to celebrate the theater's 25th anniversary.

When she called the National for more information, she found out that "The Chain Play" was in the process of being written on Sept. 11, 2001.

"It started out as a comedy," says Sturner. "But when 9/11 happened the playwrights brought that in and it got very dark."

For Provincetown's "Direct Line Play," Sturner made a wish list of playwrights and got most of them -- and for free. The play got its name from a reference in McNally's "Master Class." In it, Maria Callas says when she's singing at La Scala, she feels a direct line back to the Greeks.

Sturner feels the same way. "What we're saying is when the new theater opens, I will feel the sands of Provincetown beneath our floorboards; the place where Eugene O'Neill, Susan Glaspell, and Tennessee Williams lived and worked is a direct line from them to us."

Directed by actress Phyllis Newman, the readings will feature an original score, with lyrics by Susan Birkenhead, lyricist for "Jelly's Last Jam," and music by Henry Krieger, who composed "Dreamgirls."

The first writer (names aren't being revealed until the performances) wrote Scene 1 according to sketchy instructions from Sturner. The scene was sent back to her by e-mail, then sent out to the second writer, who added his or her bit. And so the chain went on.

Along the way, the number of characters had ballooned from eight to 13, and Sturner had to put on the brakes.

"There was a clear message attached to my script that forbade me from adding any new characters, and for once in my life I played by the rules," playwright Douglas Carter Beane writes in an e-mail. In the readings, the audience will have to wait until each scene concludes to find out who wrote it.Sturner is planning a gussied-up opening with a cocktail party before Friday night's reading ($100 for both, $50 for the reading alone), and a dinner before Saturday night's reading ($200 for both, $50 reading alone.)

Catherine Foster can be reached at foster@globe.com