Where New Playwrights Are Heard (and Helped) (Published 2002)

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A man and a woman meet in an undisclosed location. Is this a psychiatrist's office or perhaps a party in a private house? Like the characters in ''The Stronger'' by Strindberg, they test and taunt each other, and the audience's allegiance wavers as everyone wonders which character is the more resilient.

After the actors read this provocative scene from her play in progress, Kelly Stuart explained to the other members of the Lark Theater Company's Playwrights' Workshop that she wanted to get ''a sense of the characters, to see how vulnerable, dangerous and manipulative'' they were. She added that she was not sure where the play was headed. Leading the post-performance discussion, Arthur Kopit said to Ms. Stuart: ''I applaud you for jumping in, for writing on the diving board. It's dangerous. Jump! It's the Discovery Channel.'' His advice to young writers: ''Don't write about what you know, write about what you didn't know you knew.''

It was a typical Tuesday evening at the Lark, at 939 Eighth Avenue (near 55th Street) in Clinton. Created eight years ago by John Clinton Eisner, the company's producing director, this organization nurtures venturesome new work for the theater. Mr. Kopit is the director of its Playwrights' Workshop, founded last year, which he runs with other experienced writers. At this session, David Ives was in the second chair.

The workshop's members were recommended by theaters or by playwrights on the Lark advisory board: Mr. Kopit, Mr. Ives, Tina Howe, A. R. Gurney, Marsha Norman, Christopher Durang, Wendy Wasserstein, John Guare and David Henry Hwang, among others. Although most of the participants are not well known to the public, they are not novices.

The idea is to offer emerging writers a second step after they have had staged readings and perhaps a professional production. Even if a first play is successful, it is often difficult to find a stage for subsequent work. In the theater, as in publishing, there is always a search for the new: the debut of a playwright or a novelist.

The Lark ''is artist-centric,'' Mr. Hwang said, ''a sort of think tank for the artist, trying to come up with new methods, strategies and formats for play development.'' He emphasized that most of the playwrights were chosen by other playwrights, ''which helps to bypass bureaucratic structures'' in other theaters, he said.