N.Y. TO L.A. ... IN STAGES.

Byline: Evan Henerson Theater Writer

When she ``became unglued'' from New York City, writer/performance artist Heather Woodbury pulled up stakes and headed out of the city that -- she felt -- had become ``Los Anglified.''

That she ended up in Los Angeles is perhaps a shade ironic, although present-day Echo Park is, Woodbury claims, closer in feel to the East Village neighborhood she left behind.

``I expected to feel contemptuous,'' Woodbury says, ``but oddly enough, I just found L.A. very interesting. It had this dark, sultry energy, which I found intriguing. Where New York had sort of a razor's edge, L.A. had sort of this sultry swirl. It was like this vortex where you look down -- and there's the abyss.''

But Woodbury likes it here. Really, she does. And if the folks from our tourism entities don't yet have enough for their latest ``Come see L.A.'' publicity campaign, Woodbury opines further.

Pathologically L.A.

``I felt like L.A. had developed the antibodies to Los Angeles-ness because Los Angeles was the disease. It's almost homeopathic,'' she says. ``Everybody knows L.A. is this big cheesy place devoted to illusions, but under the surface of that, I think there's a lot of culture, a lot of really interesting people from all sorts of different countries. It's a very different landscape.''

Woodbury's latest work, ``Tale of 2Cities (An American Joyride on Multiple Tracks)'' is a tribute both to the community she left and to the one she has embraced.

The two-part, 5 1/2-hour odyssey -- which opens UCLA's fifth International Theatre Festival Saturday -- was written in both cities and will be performed both at the Freud Playhouse and at New York's P.S. 122. Audiences can see Part 1, ``Grifters, Drifters and Dodgers,'' and part 2, ``Mega Mixicana Waltz,'' back to back on Saturdays and Sundays, or on consecutive nights during the week.

``2Cities,'' which Woodbury labels a ``performance novel,'' spans 50 years and uses the departure of the Brooklyn Dodgers for Chavez Ravine as its touchstone, eventually spiralling back to the fall of the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, 2001. Scores of characters drift through, from Echo Park DJs to Brooklyn cabbies, pot-smoking rabbis and rabid fans of both the Dodgers and Yankees.

``There's a lot of magical realism to Heather's work, but in this case, it's not so heavily weighted to the playful side,'' says Dudley Saunders,'' ``2Cities''' director. ``A lot of people in the play are dealing with how you survive disaster. Some manage to make new lives, and some try to dig after the past. Some people just get caught between the old and new, caught in stasis.''

As she had done with her previous epic, ``What Ever: An American Odyssey,'' Woodbury originally created ``2Cities'' as a solo vehicle. She even toyed with the idea of making it a novel but soon discovered that she had another live stage piece on her hands.

``Dudley said, `Maybe you ought to write a novel,' and I remember going home that night and just starting this novel, which I then sort of tricked myself into a making a performance piece,'' Woodbury says. ``For me to sustain inspiration as a writer, I think I need to perform in front of people.''

The latest version has seven performers, including Woodbury herself, who plays the activist Miriam Fleischman.

``She's a left-wing woman living on Red Hill in Echo Park, and so am I,'' explains Woodbury.

Coast to coast ... to coast

A Northern Californian by birth, Woodbury lived in New York City since age 17 to ``get'' the city, left to get her inspiration, and returned -- via a National Endowment for the Arts grant -- to see the project to completion. While in residence at the Public Theatre, 9/11 happened, and she ended up weaving the attacks into her saga.

``In a certain way, (Sept. 11) ended up derailing my narrative,'' Woodbury says, ``but then -- as my director points out -- the play is sort of about people being derailed by history.''

It was in the aftermath of Sept. 11 that Woodbury -- who has yet to attend a game at Dodger Stadium -- further noticed how baseball functioned as what she calls ``the theater of America.''

``With the World Series happening so late because 9/11 had postponed it, crazy stuff was happening,'' says Woodbury. ``Everybody wanted the Yankees to win, and the bizarre thing was that the Yankees were sort of the underdog because New York was an underdog. I was really caught up in it, and a lot of people I knew who didn't give a damn about baseball were really caught up in it.''

``Also, when the Red Sox won (the World Series in 2004), I knew that (presidential candidate John) Kerry was going to lose,'' Woodbury adds. ``There was some kind of horrible symmetry there.''

Evan Henerson, [phone]

evan.henerson(at)dailynews.com

A TALE OF 2CITIES

Where: Freud Playhouse, in Macgowan Hall on the UCLA campus, Westwood.

When: 8 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, 2 and 7 p.m. Saturday and Sunday; through Oct. 8.

Tickets: $23 to $35 per part, $36 to $56 for the two-part package. [phone]. www.UCLAlive.org.

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Photo:

Heather Woodbury has definite ideas about what makes Los Angeles and New York the way they are -- and she's not afraid to reveal those ideas in ``A Tale of 2Cities.''

Gus Ruelas/Staff Photographer