THE TUBE'S THE THING THE INTIMATE, CHARACTER-DRIVEN STORIES OF POPULAR PLAYS HAVE PROVED TO BE A GOOD FIT FOR TV.

Byline: Evan Henerson Staff Writer

THERE WAS a time, even after film musicals fell out of fashion, when Hollywood consistently mined the hot-ticket Broadway shows for future big-screen fodder. Plays still become movies, but with far less regularity. These days, your best seat for a filmed play remains in your own living room. Television producers are snapping up the rights to some of the country's most acclaimed new dramas almost as fast as playwrights can write them.

That's right: television, a medium not generally known for widespread distribution of culture.

Whether we're talking about an original film on HBO - easily the reigning king of stage-to-screen drama - or a filmed live performance on PBS or Showtime, stage drama is going to the small screen as often as - or more frequently than - to film.

Another opening

Consider: Of the 44 plays nominated for the Best Play Tony award since 1990, six have become feature films while seven have ended up as TV adaptations. During that same span, one winner of the Pulitzer Prize for drama - Neil Simon's ``Lost in Yonkers'' - became a film compared to five that are slated for the tube. The fate of David Auburn's ``Proof,'' the 2001 winner of both the Pulitzer and the Best Play Tony, is up for grabs, especially with Gwyneth Paltrow scheduled to act in the play's London premiere and probably its screen adaptation as well.

The film version of ``The Laramie Project,'' Moises Kaufman's docudramatic investigation into the hate-crime death of Matthew Shepard, airs on HBO Saturday. Just starting production for the same network is a star-studded, six-hour adaptation of Tony Kushner's ``Angels in America'' to be directed by Mike Nichols. And ``Copenhagen,'' Michael Frayn's ``what if?'' examination of physicists during World War II, will be the next entry in PBS' ``Hollywood Presents'' series, likely to premiere sometime in the fall.

The symbiosis between stage and small-screen adaptations is, if not easily explained, at least somewhat understandable. Contemporary playwrights looking to get their works produced these days are writing smaller, more character-driven stories that don't necessarily lend themselves to being ``opened up'' for expansive film treatment. ``Wit,'' Margaret Edson's play about an English professor battling ovarian cancer, has six characters. Donald Margulies' ``Dinner With Friends,'' a relationship drama about two couples, has four.

Both plays - which remain among the most frequently produced in America - have minimal set demands as well as few actors. Both won Pulitzers. Both became HBO films.

Size and scope may not have been the deciding factor when PBS executive Mary Mazur was scoping out projects for her new series, ``PBS Hollywood Presents,'' but they certainly didn't hurt. She opted for John Henry Redwood's ``The Old Settler'' and Margulies' play, ``Collected Stories.'' Like the stage play, the filmed version of ``Stories'' - which aired in January - has two characters.

``Stage plays have a certain intimacy that's mandated between the characters and the audience for success,'' says Mazur, senior vice president of programming and production for KCET and the executive producer of ``PBS Hollywood Presents.'' ``The experience in your living room is a very different experience than being in a theater, whether it's the live theater or film, but perhaps the storytelling is a little more conducive to segue from theater to a small screen than it is to a big screen.''

Whatever works

Not that it's in any way a priority...

``I've never contemplated the compare and contrast of film vs. TV. I've just sought out properties I thought would be wonderful television,'' says Mazur. ``I'm sure the development executive who first read 'Driving Miss Daisy' had a very different approach to moviemaking and was thinking about it in ways that were obviously quite successful. But I bet it could have made a really good TV show, too.''

``Daisy,'' Oscar's best picture of 1988, was one of the rare film adaptations of a play to enjoy both critical and commercial success beyond the art house. ``Amadeus'' and ``A Few Good Men'' were others.

More often, you're looking at adaptations of popular plays such as John Robin Baitz's ``The Substance of Fire,'' Terrence McNally's ``Love! Valour! Compassion!'' Brian Friel's ``Dancing at Lughnasa,'' John Guare's ``Six Degrees of Separation'' and Willy Russell's ``Shirley Valentine.'' Hardly the kind of material that will cause around-the-block lines at CityWalk.

``There are some pieces that are easier to make into film,'' says Kaufman, the playwright and director of ``The Laramie Project.'' ``Theater is such a text-based medium. What does it even mean to 'open something up?' ''

Indie's dandy, but cable's quicker

The HBO ``Laramie Project'' is Kaufman's first foray into film directing, and he couldn't be more pleased that it's happening on a cable station. ``It gets into the bloodstream of the culture much quicker,'' says Kaufman. ``I really admired the work HBO has been doing. Also the possibility of doing it quickly. Just over a year from the time we started talking, the film was done.''

Colin Callender, president of HBO Films, and the man responsible for green lighting ``Wit,'' ``Dinner With Friends,'' ``The Laramie Project'' and ``Angels in America,'' points out that a cable network like HBO doesn't have to worry about things like opening-weekend grosses, box office, focus groups or even winning an evening time slot. In short, the network can afford to spin the roulette wheel.

And make no mistake: a two-part, six-hour ``Angels'' - a fantastical epic of love, AIDS and politics during the Reagan years - is risky programming, no matter who you cast.

The British-born Callender, who produced an eight-hour stage broadcast of ``Nicholas Nickleby'' for Britain's Channel 4 network 20 years ago, knows something about risk-taking. He also knows that there is a niche between the big-budget film epics and high-concept comedies that feature filmmakers can't easily fill.

``It's clear the studios are primarily focused, and quite appropriately so, given the market place, on big event movies like 'Black Hawk Down' or 'Lord of the Rings,' '' says Callender. ``It's a tough time for any serious-minded drama in the motion picture business that starts out as an original screenplay or a stage play.''

Callender considers the HBO projects to be films, not staged plays. He'll leave the broadcasts of live recorded performances to others - PBS through its ``Great Performances'' series and, more recently, Showtime. Through Showtime, we've seen the acclaimed revival of ``Death of a Salesman,'' starring Brian Dennehy, and Neil LaBute's ``Bash,'' with Calista Flockhart and Paul Rudd. Both productions visited Los Angeles, and ``Bash'' was recorded from the 1999 engagement at the Canon Theatre.

You won't, executives concede, find an enormous fan base for live or recorded-before-an-audience drama. Then again, most of us aren't given the opportunity - much less have the finances - to be fifth row center watching Helen Hunt in Shakespeare's ``Twelfth Night'' or Nathan Lane in ``The Man Who Came to Dinner.''

A tube version may be a poor substitute, but it's better than nothing. Culture's culture no matter what size the screen.

CAPTION(S):

3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) FROM THE STAGE TO THE (SMALL) SCREEN

Character-driven stories proving perfect for TV

(2) The film version of ``The Laramie Project'' - featuring Andy Paris, left, Nestor Carbonell, Grant James Varjas, Clea Duvall and Kelli Simpkins - a docudramatic investigation into the hate-crime death of Matthew Shepard, airs Saturday on HBO.

(3) ``There are some pieces that are easier to make into film. Theater is such a text-based medium,'' says Moises Kaufman, ``Laramie Project's'' playwright and director.