Despite almost daily drives to Hollywood at one time, playwright and screenwriter Stephen Metcalfe never left La Jolla. This is where he lives with his wife, Claudia, and their two children, ages 19 and 13. From their Upper Hermosa home they have a lovely view of the ocean. As a matter of fact, Metcalfe had his own view in mind when writing his play, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” which will have its world premiere at San Diego’s Cygnet Theatre in January. Metcalfe, who is an associate artist of the Old Globe, had eight plays produced there between 1984 and 2003. In fact, the first of them, “Strange Snow,” became the 1989 movie “Jackknife,” starring Robert De Niro, Kathy Baker and Ed Harris. This initial foray into film led to more than a decade of freeway mileage for Metcalfe, who adapted French director Jean-Claude Tachella’s “Cousin-Cousine,” released as “Cousins” and starring Ted Danson, Isabella Rossellini, William Peterson, Sean Young and Lloyd Bridges. In the early 1990s Metcalfe took the darkly realistic work “3000” and turned it into the hit film “Pretty Woman,” starring Richard Gere and Julia Roberts. Numerous rewrites followed, among them “Arachnophobia,” “It Could Happen to You,” “The Air Up There” and “Mr. Holland’s Opus,” among many others. In addition, Metcalfe adapted numerous novels and plays by others, and in 2002 wrote and directed the Indie film “Beautiful Joe,” which starred Sharon Stone and Billy Connelly. Then around 2004, an epiphany of sorts occurred. “I suddenly realized I was doing nothing but other people’s work,” Metcalfe said. “So I decided to start writing my own screenplays.” The timing was not good, and despite a lot of interest and a lot of meetings, nothing came to fruition. Metcalfe began writing plays again, among them “World of Their Own” and “The Tragedy of the Commons.” Before programming the world premiere of “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Cygnet Theatre did a script reading 2009. In the company was Jim Winker, who is an acting professor at University of California, San Diego, where Metcalfe teaches playwriting. The relationship goes back farther than that, however; both were at the Globe during the same era, and through Winker never acted in Metcalfe’s plays, the two met frequently at Globe parties. “He has a keen understanding of how people work,” said Winker of Metcalfe. Anyone familiar with Metcalfe’s Old Globe-produced plays — among them “Strange Snow,” “Vikings” and “Emily” — can attest to that. And lest one think that Metcalfe has all his eggs in the playwriting basket, he is working on a novel — but he’s not saying what it’s about. Stay tuned. Metcalfe isn’t going anywhere.
