Justin's time: Justin Tanner's outrageously hilarious plays--including Zombie Attack! and Oklahomo!--have made him an L.A. cult phenomenon. And now he's got an entire season of shows to play with.

It's taken a decade and a half and 18 productions for out playwright Justin Tanner to put gay characters front and center in one of his shows. "The dramaturge I worked with for 10 years insisted that I not be known as a gay playwright," explains the Los Angeles-based writer, whose slice-of-life comedies include Pot Morn, Wife Swappers, and Happytime Xmas. "Plus I was also going through my own issues. Until I met my boyfriend [musician Kristian Hoffman, formerly of Mumps], I saw gay relationships as something to get out of. I would never have any intimacy between gay characters onstage, ever. With Oklahomo! I finally felt safe doing that."

Oklahomo! is Tanner's current laugh-till-it-hurts hit, about a ragtag gaggle of theater folk and their misbegotten attempt to mount a version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! set in a Los Angeles leather bar. In terms of gay subject matter, Tanner is clearly making up for lost time here, taking on such hot-button issues as male sex roles--"Oh, the top man and the bottom should be friends" goes one lyric--recreational drug use, and gasp, carbohydrates. "I had a doughnut meltdown during rehearsal," confesses Tanner, who also appears in the play as Darren, the show's monstrous director who can't seem to stop playing mind games with his playwright ex, Arthur.

Oklahomo! is one of three Tanner productions currently running at the playwright's new home base, the Third Stage in Burbank. The others are Tanner's modern-day adaptation of the 1933 Southern comedy Tobacco Road and Voice Lessons, a new Tanner original about a deluded community theater diva (Roseanne's Laurie Metcalf) who hires a hard-up-for-cash voice teacher (My So-called Life's Tom Irwin) to help her train for an American Idol-type talent competition. "It's my Educating Rita," explains Tanner, who's been friends with Metcalf since the '90s, when she came to see Pot Morn, a show she later appeared in. "I've always wanted to write a part for Laurie, and her favorite thing to play is what she likes to call 'a victim with an attitude.' That's what this character is, pushy but easily wounded."

"I can't sing," laments Metcalf, "so I'm perfect for the part. My character has a very huge ego based in nothing, which I find funny and I think Justin does too." When asked what she admires about Tanner personally, Metcalf quips, "He makes a hell of a margarita," then thinks for a moment. "He can be as sarcastic and gossipy as the rest of us, but he's actually a superpositive person and he has an energy about him that I love."

Though Tanner's been a favorite of L.A. audiences and critics for years, he's never broken out nationally. Does that frustrate him? "Of course," admits the writer, whose TV credits include My So-called Life and Gilmore Girls, "but I'm really patient." It might help Tanner score points with the theater elite if he were just a little more artsy-fartsy and didn't make what he does seem so effortless. "I don't write titles like The Lavender Mists of Autumn," notes the man behind such "Oh, I get it" titles as Teen Girl, Bitter Women, and the often-revived Zombie Attack! "Believe me, if I knew how to compromise, I would. Eventually, Ill get my due. I'm really committed here, and every year we'll get bigger. I know something good is coming."

Might that something include more gay characters and themes? "Definitely, because they're the most fun," says Tanner, whose current writing ritual involves having reruns of Dynasty, Dallas, and Knots Landing playing in the background. "I'm working on a play called The Pink Section. It's about Bush's eighth term, when all the gays get forced into a ghetto. It's going to be like Prisoner: Cell Block H."

The modern gay experience seems to be in sync with Tanner's overall creative philosophy. "I want to show people that you don't have to follow the cultural guidebook in order to have a satisfying life," he explains. "My plays are all about letting people off the hook for being human."

Even if it means having a doughnut.

Hensley is the cowriter of Testosterone (Strand).