My play “The Size of Pike” opens here in Los Angeles in April. We just finished two days of auditions, with callbacks tomorrow night. More news to follow about this when I have more news.

This is a new production of the play, by Moving Arts, which premiered it in… 1995, I think. (I could check on that, and will at some point.)

A lot has happened since 1995, and even 1994, when I wrote it. (I think. Again, I could check on that.)

One of those things is called the World Wide Web.

Another of those things is called the smartphone.

I could go on in this way.

This came to my attention, as it has in recent years with so many of my plays from the 1990’s or, gasp, the 1980’s, when someone has asked to read one or perform one or something: I look it over and suddenly see that elements of the play are now dated thanks (or “no thanks,” actually) to technology.

Witness “Happy Fun Family,” wherein editions of a newspaper are thrown in through the window at key moments. Here’s something that’s not too far off in the future: “Hey, Grampa, what’s a newspaper?” My kids don’t know what a cassette tape is. Not one of them has a wristwatch. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

While listening to actors audition to sides from “The Size of Pike,” I came to realize that an argument in the play — a central argument, one that winds through about, oh, 20 pages of the script — would be easily settled in 2013 by pulling out a smartphone. So I’m presented with two options:

Option A: Update the script, bring in the smartphone (or the threat of using it), and develop a new comic riff involving that;

Option B: Talk to the director about staging this as a period piece, i.e., set the play prior to that pesky World Wide Web / smartphone era.

Further complicating this matter: This play was selected as one of 20 plays drawn from its 20-year history that Moving Arts is revisiting. In other words, it’s a revival. Is it right to contemporize a revival? That seems somehow… wrong. Except I’m pretty sure it’s going to happen with at least one of the other 19 productions. Also, if I’m going to bring this play up to date, I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me with at least 10, maybe 15 other plays too — and I have new plays I’d rather write. I don’t know which path to take, yet, with this particular situation. I do know that I’m not the person who wrote it in 1994 — how could I be? — and tampering with it will not necessarily improve it. I’m well-versed in the bad tradition of writers seeking to improve or update their past successes and making them worse. No, I didn’t want or need the prequel to “The Zoo Story,” and I didn’t want most of the 388 poems Whitman added to the original 12-poem “Leaves of Grass” over four decades. On a lower plane of art, I also don’t want all the various versions of “Star Wars” — I liked that first one, complete with crummy models and bad prosthetics. The more it got “fixed,” the further removed it was from my appreciation of it. I’d rather I didn’t wind up accidentally contributing to the weakening of my own play.

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