From left, Autumn Gillette of Manchester, Mass., and Benjamin Grills and Jolie Lippincott, both of Westerly, star in Small Tragedy, which opens tonight at URI’s Fine Arts Center.

Randy Osga

Ever since she saw Craig Lucas’ Small Tragedy four years ago in New York, URI theater director Bryna Wortman has been itching to stage the play on the Kingston campus. But the play, about relationships that develop between a troupe of actors putting on an adaptation of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, didn’t “mesh” with the rest of the shows the theater department had planned.

This year, though, “everyone has jumped on the bandwagon,” said Wortman, who is directing a production of Small Tragedy that opens today in the school’s Fine Arts complex.

“It made a tremendous impact on me when I saw it,” Wortman said of the play. “I was amazed at the interweaving of political and theatrical themes.”

As far as Wortman can tell, this will be the local premiere of Small Tragedy, which won an Obie Award in 2004.

The show, which runs this weekend and next, calls for a cast of six — three men and three women — all of whom are URI theater students. They play actors in their 20s and 30s.

As they begin to rehearse, the company meets over lunch and in bars and talks about “responsibility, denial and justice,” said Wortman. The show is set in Cambridge, Mass., and New York City.

“It’s not pontifical at all,” she said. “And there is a lot of comedy in it. It’s very amusing, which sort of twists you around, because there are some serious things too. And that’s why I like it. You’re watching and laughing and suddenly you see something that sort of makes you say, ‘Oh, that’s what this play is about.’ ”

One of the characters is a Bosnian student who is studying economics in Boston. The play is set at the time of the Bosnian war.

“Without giving anything away,” said Wortman, “these themes about Greek tragedy merge with some truths about the Bosnian war, its impact on our lives and psyches.”

In a way, said Wortman, Lucas’ play has to do with the “political innocence of America against the European experience. It’s before 9/11,” she said, “when we haven’t been touched.”

Lucas is also saying how human we all are, said Wortman, and how hard it is to stick to one’s principles.

“When people are put under tremendous duress and forced to do horrific things, how many of us are martyrs? I think Lucas is saying he’d much rather live a happy life than confront all the terrible things in the world. He understands why people choose to be happy if they can.”

Although Wortman could find no evidence that Small Tragedy has been done here, Lucas is no stranger to the local stage. Trinity Rep has put on at least three of his plays, including Reckless with Lindsay Crouse in 1991. That’s about a woman who finds on Christmas Eve that her husband has hired a hit man to kill her. The theater also staged Lucas’ Prelude to a Kiss, the tale of an old man and young woman exchanging souls, and God’s Heart, which took place in 1995.

As an infant, Lucas, who was born in 1951 in Atlanta, was found in the back of a car. He was taken to a hospital where he remained for eight months before being adopted by an FBI agent and his wife.

He graduated from Boston University in 1973 and headed to New York to act. In 1995, his longtime partner, Timothy Melester, a surgeon, died of AIDS.

The specter of AIDS also plays a part in Small Tragedy. One of the female characters has HIV, although it is under control, said Wortman. Other characters include a woman who supported her husband through school and was then dumped by him.

Lucas uses the time-tested device of a play within a play for Small Tragedy. We get to see chunks of the Sophocles, which is tied into the lives of the six actors. In Oedipus Rex, Oedipus the king unwittingly fulfills a prophecy that he would kill his father and marry his mother.

“It has to do with whether one is blind or one sees,” said Wortman. “Some things are eventually revealed to some people, and others don’t want to confront them.”

Craig Lucas’ Small Tragedy opens today in J Studio in URI’s Fine Arts Center and runs through Oct. 19. Shows are Thursday through Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 3 p.m. Tickets are $14, $10 for seniors and URI faculty and staff, and $8 for students. Call (401) 874-5843.

cgray@projo.com