What do you do if you're a writer and one day you learn your unconventional political views have gotten you blacklisted?

If you're Dalton Trumbo, you persevere and rise to the occasion. That's pretty much the plot of the biographical drama "Trumbo: Red, White and Blacklisted," which is getting a Baltimore-Washington premiere Wednesday, Aug. 27 when it opens the 2008-2009 season of the Rep Stage Company.

Trumbo was a screenwriter who flourished in the 1940s, getting acclaim and large paychecks for writing films like "Thirty Seconds over Tokyo" and "Kitty Foyle." But he was against the United States' involvement in World War II and, as such, joined the Communist Party.

A few years after the war ended, Trumbo was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee, to which he refused to answer questions or name names. He not only was sentenced to a year in prison, he ended up blacklisted by the whole Hollywood movie industry.

When he was released, he wrote under pseudonyms. It wasn't until independent producer and star Kirk Douglas insisted on giving him screen credit for writing "Spartacus" that the curse of the blacklist was broken.

It's a fascinating, real-life drama. The story so obsessed Trumbo's son Christopher that he took his father's letters and life's documents and turned them into an unconventional play, that debuted in New York in 2004.

The work had repercussions far beyond Trumbo's personal story, says Steven Carpenter, who is directing the Rep production.

"In looking at Dalton Trumbo's life, you have to look at the question of what kind of American do I want to be?" explains Carpenter. "Do I want to be one who blindly follows leaders, or someone who stands up for the First Amendment and says that it's okay to question authority?"

Carpenter, who is a company member at the Washington Stage Guild, says he found the play interesting because it not only looks at an overlooked period in American history, but it tells a riveting tale of an individual seeking to overcome struggle.

"I didn't really know that much about Dalton Trumbo when I first read the play," confides Carpenter. "But learning about him, and what he was able to do despite the opposition he faced, was very inspiring."

It's a dark chapter in the otherwise golden tome of Hollywood history, says the director. The recriminations and blacklisting opened the door to a period of repression known broadly as the McCarthy era. "This looks at that from the point of view of someone who was very much a hero of that time."

To bring the story to life, Carpenter enlisted Rep Stage regular and Helen Hayes Award winner Nigel Reed to play the title role. Baltimore Shakespeare veteran Jonathan Watkins will make his Rep Stage debut in the role of Trumbo's son Christopher, who serves as narrator.

If a two-person play sounds rather minimalist, well, there's even less to it than that, Carpenter says. The role of playwright Trumbo gets most of the dialogue, so it's largely a one-man show.

"It's not really a two person play," Carpenter explains. "It's not a play with two characters who are engaged in scene work with each other. It's not like the two characters are talking to each other about what is going on in their lives."

The difficulty in staging such a work, Carpenter notes, was keeping the playwright character's large amount of dialogue from sounding like a monologue.

"When I first read the piece, the challenge was how to stage it so it wasn't like just two people sitting there reading," he says. "When they did it in New York that's the way it was presented, because every few weeks they would have a different star come in and play Dalton Trumbo."

Carpenter says he and set designer Milagros Ponce De Leon became interested in having actor Reed take on more of the persona of Trumbo instead of reading from documents like an automaton. Together they devised a way to stage the action to free Reed to do whatever it took to appear more human.

"It's not like he's sitting at a desk and writing a letter when he speaks," Carpenter explains. "He walks and moves around and he breaks that convention. He moves from one place to another, depending on what the context of a particular letter is. It has been a challenge."

To coincide with the production, the Rep Stage is hosting a free "Trumbo Film Festival," featuring three of the screenwriter's best-known films. On the bill will be "Spartacus" (Sept. 8), "Roman Holiday" (Sept. 15), and "Papillon" (Sept. 22). All films will start at 7:30 p.m. in the Studio Theatre, preceded by a 7 p.m. lecture.

Carpenter says that even though the play centers on events that happened over five decades ago, their meaning probably won't be lost on modern audiences.

"There have been things in the last few years that have impinged on or have been on the edge of impinging on personal liberties," he says. "In that respect, the lessons we learn from Trumbo might have relevance today."

The Rep Stage Company opens its 16th season with "Trumbo: Red, White and Blacklisted" Wednesday-Thursday 7:30 p.m., Friday-Saturday 8 p.m., and Saturday-Sunday 2:30 p.m., Aug. 27-Sept. 28, in the Studio Theatre at Howard Community College. Tickets are $15 to $25, depending on the performance date. All tickets for students with identification are $12.

The Sept. 6 performance will be preceded by a 1 p.m. lecture. The Sept. 5 and 12 stagings will offer post-show discussions. Call 410-772-4900 or go to www.repstage.org.

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