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ASHINGTON--Matthew Burnett had no intention of becoming a playwright.
"I never considered pursuing writing as a serious career choice," he said. "I wanted to be an actor."
So how is it that Arena Stage is presenting the world première of a play written by Burnett?
"It was a creative exercise," Burnett said of his adaptation of "Theophilus North," Thornton Wilder's final novel.
Burnett, now 36, was pondering life choices when he first read the book at the suggestion of a former teacher. That was 10 years ago.
The novel deals with the adventures of a young man who sets out to see the world but is stranded in Newport, R.I., when his car breaks down.
Burnett drove across country from his native California to seek his fortune as an actor in New York City. His car broke down in New Haven, Conn., stranding him there before he could get started in New York.
"I responded emotionally to something in 'Theophilus North,'" he said. "His situation was similar to mine."
The novel, constructed of a number of loosely connected episodes and rich in dialogue, appealed to him as something that belonged on stage. He started turning it into a play just for his own satisfaction.
Burnett spent a year and a half in New Haven, picking up acting jobs at the Long Wharf Theatre, the Yale Repertory and Shakespeare on the Sound. Then he moved to New York and found acting jobs there as well.
But they weren't all that plentiful. To pay the bills, Burnett took a job as office manager with a legal support firm.
"I would get frustrated when I wasn't acting," Burnett said.
As an outlet for his creativity, he'd work on the play.
Eventually, he got to the point where he was having readings in his apartment. He began to think about the possibility of putting his play on stage.
To do that, he needed permission from Thornton Wilder's estate to adapt the novel as a play.
The book had a lot of dramatic material, but it dealt primarily with the title character's interaction with others, not his own personal growth. Burnett had to create material to fill the gaps and bring the play to a satisfying dramatic conclusion.
That didn't bother Tappan Wilder, Thornton Wilder's nephew and executive director of the estate.
"He said, 'Yes, go do it. This is yours to interpret,'" Burnett said.
Only one other novel of Wilder's has ever been adapted for the stage, and that was during Wilder's lifetime.
"All the Wilders have been so encouraging," Burnett said. "They've been 100 percent on board."
In creating his play, Burnett had to prune the novel's dozen episodes to something more manageable. He eventually chose four that he felt supported the growing process he wanted to show in the title character.
"The question was, 'How does Theophilus get changed by that?'" Burnett said.
The novel was written in 1973, but is set in 1926, when Wilder himself was a young man who lived for a time in Newport.
"He created the characters out of experiences he actually had, but he fictionalized the story," Burnett said.
Wilder uses all strata of society--the fabulously wealthy, the middle class, tradesmen, servants--in a specific time and place to illustrate universal truths.
"Class and wealth are important, but it's through the human struggle, how we connect with other people, that you learn where you belong in the world," Burnett said of the novel's message.
Once the script was complete, the next step was finding a theater willing to produce the play.
Burnett sent out letters to all the regional theaters in the country and got a response from Geva Theatre in Rochester, N.Y. Artistic director Mark Cuddy asked Burnett to come up and refine the play through a workshop there.
Burnett said he found the process very helpful.
"You find out what works with the play and what doesn't," he said.
Some changes were evident to him right away; others took more time.
"If you hear the same comment enough times in enough places from enough people, it warrants consideration," Burnett said with a laugh.
Cuddy got in touch with Molly Smith, Arena's artistic director, and suggested a joint production. Cuddy and Smith decided to open the play here, then move it to Rochester later this spring.
Asked what his next move would be, Burnett laughed and said, "I'm going to sleep for a little while! Then I'll see who else might be interested in the play."
There has been some "sniffing around," he said.
The development of a successful playwright has taken a while.
Burnett grew up in Agaura Hills, Calif., outside Los Angeles. His first role was the Second Baseball Player in Wilder's "Our Town" when he was a freshman in high school.
He went to UCLA and majored in theater, film and television.
Burnett wanted a stage career, and it soon became apparent that he wasn't going to get that in California.
So he came east, discovered "Theophilus North" and began to write.
He's pleased with the reception his play has gotten.
"I have put a lot of time and effort into this," he said. "It's very gratifying to see that other people think it's been a worthwhile vision."
And the future?
"Maybe I'll go back to the keyboard. There are other novels I've read that I've considered doing the same thing."
Or, he said, he might write an original work.
"It depends on the strength of ideas I may have."
