‘The Monster Builder’ at South Coast Repertory explores art, power and architecture

May 4, 2017 5 PM PT

As she wrote “The Monster Builder,” a play that examines questions about architecture, over-development and city planning, playwright Amy Freed reflected on her earliest memory of recognizing a community’s original history and beauty.

She was 4. Freed and her family had driven from their home in the Bronx to spend the holidays with relatives in Bucks County, Pa. On their return to New York, she remembers crying, not wanting to leave the countryside of rolling hills, working farms and picturesque towns.

Today, the San Francisco-based author, who was a finalist for the 1998 Pulitzer Prize in drama for her play, “Freedomland,” is using art as a vehicle to foster conversations about architecture and its social impacts in her current production, running May 5 to June 4 at South Coast Repertory.

She has home building in her bones. Her father, Richard Freed, who died in 2015, was an architect.

The family always moved into the house he was designing, and Freed recalled growing up in project houses with missing windows and not-quite-installed Japanese soak tubs.

“I got a really early dose of what a designer’s personality is like, and the impulses are very large,” Freed said, calling from San Francisco. “It’s been quite the journey.”

When Freed put pen to paper five years ago, the play’s first draft wasn’t about architecture. Her original vision had to do with a crime committed in a glass house, but during her research, she grew consumed with books written by Jane Jacobs, a journalist and activist best known for her influence on urban studies, and essays by sociologist Nathan Glazer.

The result: a satiric comedy that follows a couple who meet a celebrated architect, only to learn he is a snob who philosophizes architecture as a tool to bully the masses.

Freed, an artist-in-residence at Stanford University, has established a fruitful, 20-year-long relationship with South Coast Repertory. The Costa Mesa theater has produced seven of her plays, including “The Monster Builder.”

Directing the play, which closes the company’s 2016-17 season, is her friend and colleague of 34 years, Art Manke.

Freed and Manke met in American Conservatory Theater’s master’s of fine arts program. Together, they presented the world premiere of “The Monster Builder,” at Artists Repertory Theatre in Portland, Ore.

“Her imagination is so vast, and she’s not afraid to look at big theatrical eras and characters,” Manke said, en route from Los Angeles to Costa Mesa. “Some architects and developers have encroached on humanity, and there’s no turning back.”

The play’s relevant to Southern California’s development boom with subject matter important to everyone, as the environment in which people live plays a large part in determining their happiness, Manke said.

“We have some charming old neighborhoods, but suddenly neighborhoods are being invaded by mega-box stores with huge parking lots, and they become monolithic shadows,” he said. “At what point do you say development has gone too far? Do we want another Target on the corner?”

Urban design, fighting for common space and democracy are some of the subjects delivered in the dialogue, as Freed’s intention was to create a painless visual aid with a mini-lecture.

“Humor punctures pretension and makes people feel a relief in questioning,” Freed said. “I hope that people listen to their instincts on the growing land and development changes foisted on citizens because it just seems like a lot more of our society and environment is at stake.”