Writing plays is like committing crimes, Portlander Sue Mach says: "You always tell yourself you're only going to do one more."

Playwrights might not face jail time for their work, but they're engaged in risky business nonetheless. It's tricky to pull off, and the rewards are unpredictable. But there's that lure, the dream of taking one more shot and making a big score -- artistically at least, if seldom financially.

For Mach, it's an ideal combination. She loves theater, and did some acting in her 20s, but never had a drive to make that her career. It made her too neurotic, she once said. She's more comfortable with the words themselves.

"I've written poetry," she says, "but with big-idea stuff, I always come back to plays."

The compulsion to keep pursuing one more big idea has brought Mach to an unusual point: She has not one, but two plays opening Friday night, getting their world premiere productions by prominent Portland theater companies.

"Lightning in a bottle"

debuts Mach's "The Lost Boy," a highly theatrical drama inspired by an 1874 kidnapping that became an early example of what we now call a media circus.

And a half-mile away at the Winningstad Theatre,

stages her topical critique of the education reform movement, "A Noble Failure."

Getting a production by such well-respected theaters is no small feat for a writer without a big national reputation. Getting two at once is a remarkable achievement. "It's unheard of," says Scott Yarbrough, Third Rail's artistic director. "I couldn't give you any other examples of it -- two plays in the same season, much less the same night. There's a real lightning-in-a-bottle aspect to it."

Says Artists Rep director

: "When I invite other artistic directors to town, as I do when I'm pushing a new play, they'll be able to see more of her work in the same visit. That is a rare opportunity and really speaks well of Sue's talent. I would expect she'll get some mileage from it."

In recent weeks, Mach's mileage has come in trips between rehearsals, trimming and polishing each script as the productions come closer to stage-ready form.

"Translating the work from page to stage, there's always some wrestling," Nause says. "Having the playwright there in the room is really helpful, and Sue's so good at it, because she has such a background in theater.

"In a very good way, we're fighting over her: 'What do you mean, you're going to their opening night?!'"

Career launches, then lags





Mach, 48, has tasted playwriting success before. In 1993, her first play -- "Monograms," a biographical piece about Oregon poet Hazel Hall -- had three Portland companies, including Artists Rep, vying to produce it. The largest of them, the now-defunct Portland Rep, had two successful runs with it. The play later was staged at the Theatre for the New City, an Obie Award-winning company in New York.

Born in Germany and raised in Eastern Washington, Mach acted in her first play while at Pacific University in Forest Grove -- and promptly changed her major from physical therapy to English. After graduation, she did a little acting and stage managing in Portland.

When a friend suggested that she write a show about Hall, she took a playwriting class at Portland State University. The success of "Monograms" helped her land a scholarship to a Boston University playwriting program, where she studied with Nobel Prize winner Derek Walcott and earned a master's degree.

After that promising career start, though, "there was a big lag," Mach says.

She wrote other plays -- "Angle of View," "The Shadow Testament," "The Difficult Season" -- and got them into readings and workshops at Artists Rep, Portland Center Stage, A Contemporary Theatre in Seattle, Boston Playwrights' Theatre and New York Theatre Workshop. But none made it to a fully staged production.

"What every writer wants"

Meanwhile, in 1997, Mach began

, with classes in composition, creative writing and screenwriting.

"My playwriting class, ironically, just got cut," she says.

Writing poetry fit more easily into her busy schedule, but theater wouldn't loosen its hold on her.

"You can take the time to luxuriate in the language," she says, describing why the structure of a play appeals to her. "But there's always the action of it that's the main thing -- thinking about how to keep the story active and moving forward."

Mach wrote the first draft of "The Lost Boy" about nine years ago but shelved it, unsure if her approach to the story worked. Several years later, she applied for a grant from Literary Arts and rewrote the play for a reading at Hipbone Studio. Then Portland Center Stage chose it for its play-development festival,

, in 2009, and a theater on the East Coast held a reading.

The script won a 2009

("A Noble Failure" recently was named a finalist for the award this year). Soon, Artists Rep's Nause -- who has known Mach since she stage managed his Drammy-winning 1990 production of "Long Day's Journey Into Night" -- took an interest.

During a sabbatical from the college in 2010, Mach wrote "A Noble Failure," based on the current push toward standardized testing, charter schools and other educational reforms.

The play won

' 2011 New by Northwest Playwriting Competition, earning a reading in last January's

festival. Third Rail company members Bruce Burkhartsmeier (Mach's husband) and Jacklyn Maddux starred in that reading, and Yarbrough was in the audience.

"It was probably the first time that a director came up to me after a reading and just said, 'Call me,'" Mach recalls. "What every writer wants."

For both Portland theater companies, January slots for Mach's work made sense; a new, locally written play offers a ready way to participate in the Fertile Ground festival, coming up later this month.

Third Rail also was constrained by the availability of dates in the Winningstad. And though Artists Rep had other premieres on its season slate, they didn't work within the Fertile Ground time frame.

And so it is that Jan. 11, 2013, became Sue Mach Day, bringing you two plays from the woman who's always going to write just one more.

"They're so different in so many ways -- their stories, their settings, their styles and structures -- and that's a credit to Sue's versatility," Yarbrough says. "She's a wonderful writer. We're pushing to get that story out, not just to Portland but nationally."

For her own part, Mach doesn't like to think about what comes next -- getting an agent, pushing for subsequent productions at other theaters or to have her plays published.

"I have a hard time with that other kind of thing," she says. "When I have an idea, I'm comfortable with that: With the writing itself."

-- Marty Hughley