By Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 29, 2008

Buying a cellphone at Circuit City is not usually a life-changing experience. Certainly, a retail outlet doesn't seem like the type of place where an award-winning writer would find inspiration for his first play in a decade.

But there was something about the way Alan Ball felt manhandled at a Circuit City in Los Angeles a few years ago. It was during the waning days of the HBO series "Six Feet Under," which he created and produced, so maybe he was just ready for a change.

Mostly, it was the salesman. "It was the way he was working to sell the phone. I couldn't get him out of my mind, the character," Ball says.

"He was such a hustler," he says with a laugh. "He was such an interesting character that I started making up things about him." Later, he realized he was writing a play in his head.

Ball turned that small encounter into "All That I Will Ever Be," which runs through March 9 at Studio Theatre's 2ndStage. The main character, Omar (played by Carlos Candelario), sells cellphones by day and by night is a bisexual prostitute who spins fantasies about himself for clients. The play revisits the repression theme familiar to fans of "Six Feet Under" and the movie "American Beauty," for which Ball won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.

"I think I am mostly interested in complicated characters trying to live an authentic life in an increasing inauthentic world," says Ball, who was in Washington last weekend to see his play.

In "All That I Will Ever Be," Omar, who is of Middle Eastern descent, is afraid to reveal his true self. "He is afraid of being disliked, reviled, just because of his ethnicity," Ball says.

Ball, who started his career in New York theater as a comedic playwright, says it was "fun to go back to that rhythm that a play has. The sort of musicality of the language." But this time, he says, the "play has short scenes, more episodic. That's the TV influence."

Fans of Ball will be pleased to hear he is working on several projects, including several partially finished plays. An HBO series, "True Blood," based on novels about vampires in Louisiana, will begin airing in August, and Ball's feature directorial debut, "Towelhead," about a 13-year-old Arab American girl growing up in Houston, is scheduled to be released this year.

"I do a lot of things at the same time," he says. "That seems to be my process."

All That I Will Ever Be Studio Theatre 2ndStage, 1501 14th St. NW 202-332-3300.http://www.studiotheatre.org. Through March 9. $29. The play features nudity. All That I Will Ever Be Studio Theatre 2ndStage, 1501 14th St. NW 202-332-3300.http://www.studiotheatre.org. Through March 9. $29. The play features nudity.