Natalie Symons' new play Lark Eden is now playing at St. Pete's New American Theater, and there are a few reasons why Bay area theater-lovers should take note. For one, there's the personnel: Best of the Bay winner Dahlia Legault (who's about to move to South Carolina, alas) has a role, as does Best of the Suncoast actress Roxanne Fay, with the third part played by author Symons herself. The director is Karla Hartley, easily one of the area's most talented.

The play's structure is unconventional: it's composed of a series of letters to and from three best friends from the 1930s to the late 2000s, during which time there are triumphs and tragedies, unions and disunions, World War II and Vietnam. One of the characters, Mary, is loosely based on Symons herself, another is based on her little sister, and a third on her "ex-fiancee's grandmother." In fact, the play was inspired by the "heartbreak" Symons felt when a five-year-relationship broke up unexpectedly. And it was an earlier break-up — of her marriage to a Seattle actor — that led to her decision to leave that city and come to Tampa.

I sat down with Symons, 41, at the Barnes and Noble cafe in South Tampa, and was immediately charmed by her enthusiasm and easy laughter. She told me that she's originally from Buffalo, New York, and loved acting from childhood.

"I produced more plays in my backyard — friends would come over and want to play, and I would make them put on a show." She studied acting at Boston University — where Hartley also matriculated — and then moved to Seattle upon graduation.

"I just went on a whim. I knew that it was a great, vibrant theater town… And I drove out there with a friend and fell in love with it." She almost immediately started "a small fringe theater company" called the Semo Theatre, married one of its actors, and then, when her theater folded, devoted herself to acting. She made some money as a performer, but never a living — and she supported herself with day jobs that she "didn't love."

She also interrupted her Seattle stay to make an effort, with her husband, to succeed in New York. She was in the Apple for three years — and was only cast in one show, in a theater so tiny, she can't even remember its name.

What did she learn in Brooklyn and Manhattan? "That I don't have the skin for it… It's a constant race. Trying to get the job, trying to get the audition, trying to get someone to notice you. It doesn't suit me at all. And I went back to Seattle so happily."

But when her marriage ended, she didn't feel comfortable sharing a chilly city with her ex, so she moved to Tampa, where her sister resides and her parents visit in the winter.

That was in 2004. She went to work as an aesthetician for a plastic surgeon, got another degree from Empire State College, and didn't act anywhere. Didn't she want to?

"I didn't, and I don't know why. I stopped, and now… I would like to be entwined in the theater community here, make it part of my life again. Not to the extent that it was, because I want to spend time writing. I'm writing a novel… It's a coming-of-age story set in a town in Pennsylvania near Buffalo where I grew up… I want to tell stories."

In fact, Lark Eden began as a novel. "I got about two chapters in, and the voices became very strong, and they took over. So I wanted to make it a piece about the cadence of the language and the texture of the language. And weave the three voices together to tell the story — almost to reinstate the Victorian practice of family reading."

The play has already had one brief production — at Theater Shmeater, a fringe company in Seattle — but the N.A.T. version will be its East Coast premiere. Expect the three actresses to be perched in front of music stands, with their scripts in front of them – a little bit like the characters in A.R. Gurney's Love Letters. Expect a play about women and their destinies – with hope, to an extent, and also with "heartbreak." And get to know Natalie Symons — the one playing Thelma. When the theater bug hits, it never entirely goes away. Symons may not, herself, know it; but I have a feeling we'll be seeing a lot of her in coming years.

This article appears in Jul 28 – Aug 3, 2011.