Grandma’s got a secret. But Nita, a 78-year-old Louisianan straddling a shaky truce with her daughter Louise and granddaughter Ellie, has kept it locked up tight. A creative writing professor, Ellie is trying to come to terms with her sexuality while her mother, who had a brief relationship with a woman 20 years prior, wrestles with her own ingrained beliefs about homosexuality. But all the secrets burst out of the closet when a same-sex relationship in Nita’s past is revealed. And once the truth telling starts, there’s no turning back.

So begins Wrinkles, Rebecca Basham’s latest comedy, premiering at Diversionary Theatre Sunday, Jan. 16.

The playwright, author of Lot’s Daughters, an award-winning tale of lesbians in 1942 Appalachia that appeared at Diversionary in 2001 to critical acclaim, took some time to talk to the Gay & Lesbian Times from New Jersey, where she works as a creative writing professor at Rider University, prior to her arrival in San Diego for Wrinkles’ premier.

“[Y]ou convince a lot more people than you do in a classroom, I think,” Basham said about her dual professions as instructor and playwright. “It can be very painful, but it’s also very exciting when you can create something and see it come to life like that. … If you’re in a theater, it’s so instant. And it’s very gratifying to see audience reaction. I think it’s a living art and that’s why I like it so much.”

What began as a three-page monologue she wrote after Diversionary’s former executive director, Chuck Zito, asked her (after the success of Lot’s Daughters) when she was going to write a piece about older lesbians, turned into an intergenerational exploration of sexual exploration and the stigma associated with it. Written last year when Basham attended the prestigious playwriting intensive at Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival, the monologue – about a Southern, sassy, non-traditional grandmother’s sexual orientation – developed into a three-act play as Basham began to consider the ramifications coming out had for women who grew up prior to and during the women’s liberation movement of the ’70s and ’80s.

“In 2004, it wouldn’t be as shocking, I guess, for someone’s grandmother to come out,” Basham said. “It still could be, but not as much as it would have been 20 years ago. I looked at women’s studies and how they used to make fun of it in the ’80s, and there was a lot of prejudice, so that’s how I kind of formed the granddaughter’s character. … It kind of drew from my own life and what was going on in the world.”

Set in the ’80s, Wrinkles stars Lisel Gorel-Getz, Sally Stockton and Terri Parks, and is directed by Rosina Reynolds.

Audiences can expect a considerable amount of fussing and fighting, but Wrinkles is ultimately as warm-hearted as it is emotionally intense.

“Also, to think about the cultural differences of the last 20 years and the cultural perceptions about perceptions of homosexuality, and how relatively easy it is today to make some of these decisions,” she added. “But it wasn’t very long ago that it would have been much more difficult.”

Openly gay and raised in a strongly matriarchal family, Basham mined her own Southern upbringing while writing the play, but let the characters develop on their own.

Both her grandmother and her mother have been supportive of the play.

“I always write about strong women characters, and a lot of times sexuality comes into play,” said the ex-theater major. “But really what I’m interested in is making strong female characters for the theater… because there’s always so much for men to do on the stage. And as far as lesbianism goes, there is much more gay men’s work than there is good feminine work.”

Wrinkles, which is a contender for the Kennedy Center’s David Mark Cohen Award, was performed as part of a workshop at the University of New Orleans in October, and has a staged reading slated in Philadelphia at the Philadelphia Theater Workshop next month. Basham has also just finished Sons of Italy, a screenplay for New Jersey-based Sunstar Productions, set to film in Italy in June.

The playwright is pleased Wrinkles premiers at Diversionary, because they’ve always been supportive of her work. “I really like working with them because they are a strong theater that’s looking at gay issues,” she said. “And I think that’s really important, especially from 2005 to 2008.”

Wrinkles runs Jan. 16-Feb. 19 at Diversionary Theatre, located at 4545 Park Blvd., Suite 101. Tickets are $15-$30. Call the box office at (619) 220-0097 for showtimes and to purchase tickets, or visit www.gaylesbiantimes.com for a link to Diversionary’s website.