‘Pee Wee’ A Big Adventure Playwright’s Success Followed Previous Spokane Premiere

Playwright Rita Nachtmann’s new play, “Pee Wee and the Wheelman,” will have its West Coast premiere on Friday at the Spokane Civic Theatre’s Studio Theatre, and she can only hope it will go as well as the last time she had a West Coast premiere at the Civic.

That play, “How I Spent My Life’s Vacation,” went on to win one of the most prestigious of all literary awards, the PEN Center USA West Literary Award for drama. It was a semi-autobiographical piece about her bout with cancer.

“That award was a shocker,” said Nachtmann, in Spokane to attend rehearsals and opening night. “That really opened a lot of doors for me. I got a lot of requests for the script, and even those people who for one reason or another don’t want to produce it or translate it into film still want to either meet me or see the rest of my work.”

In fact, when she gets back home to Los Angeles next week, she has a meeting with the director of development for Showtime. He wants to talk to her about some movie ideas.

Her writing career so far has been for the stage, but ever since she and her husband moved to L.A. from New York a year ago, she has been thinking about writing for film and TV. Even “Pee Wee and the Wheelman,” her most recent play, may have some film potential.

Right now, however, she is busy making it into the best stage play she can. It had a successful run a year and a half ago at the Passage Theatre in Trenton, N.J. Yet something about the script was not quite right.

“The producer snatched it up before I really thought the play was ready,” said Nachtmann. “As a playwright, it’s very hard to say no to a production. But there was a missing piece in it that I feel I have now found.”

She has done extensive rewrites, including a few in the last few weeks. She said she has been constantly on the phone with Jack Phillips, the Civic’s director, and Bryan Harnetiaux, the Civic’s playwright-in-residence.

“I’m so thrilled to have this production, because this has helped me to find those missing pieces,” she said.

The play is about an aging, paraplegic songwriter who used to write hit songs for Elvis, Fabian and other big names.

“Now, he’s up for a Grammy award and what he feels is his last gasp at fame,” she said. “He’s a very large, obese man, and he needs a big, husky man to push him around in his wheelchair. It’s about the attempted friendship between him and his new home attendant.”

Like most of her plays, it has humor intertwined throughout. Yet it also has its serious side.

“The play deals with some very large themes, which many of us as artists have wrestled with,” she said. “That is, the struggle of balancing your life between your art and the home. Fame and love. It’s a struggle that has split up many marriages. It’s both a blessing and a curse to feel as if you have an artistic calling.”

Nachtmann said she has certainly struggled with this in her life. She said she survives by surrounding herself with lots of animals - dogs, cats, tankfuls of fish.

Also, she said it helps that her husband is “not in the business,” meaning show business. He has worked for years in social services, mostly with the homeless.

“My husband has always had a heart for those people who haven’t been quite as blessed,” she said. “He’s also got the mind of a scientist and he appreciates facts and figures. I feel I struck a great balance in my choice of him. He never imagined that he would marry an actor turned writer.”

Nachtmann hasn’t done much acting lately, preferring to devote all of her energy to writing. However, she did take an acting job about two years ago in Florida.

“I did a British sex farce,” she said. “It was some piece of nonsense - I had a window fall on my head, I ran around in a sheet for half the show. It was so stupid. And I had a ball.”

Meanwhile, she has several other plays in various stages of completion. And, as befits an L.A. resident, she is working on a movie script.

But as a longtime New Yorker, she still doesn’t think of herself as a Californian. In fact, she credits Harnetiaux for reminding her to enter the PEN Center USA West Award, which is for writers who live in the western United States.

“At the awards ceremony, I thanked Bryan for reminding me I live west of the Mississippi,” she said, laughing.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Color Photos

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: “Pee Wee and the Wheelman” opens Friday at the Firth Chew Studio Theatre at the Spokane Civic Theatre, 1020 N. Howard, and continues Saturday, Jan. 29-31, Feb. 5-8 and Feb. 12-14. Show times are at 8 p.m. Tickets are $8 general admission, available by calling 325-2507 or (800) 446-9576.