Welcome to the Playhouse

At first glance, the new “Emma and Max” is not much of a departure for Todd Solondz. The story starts off with the fraught, to say the least, relationship between a Barbadian nanny, Britney, and her former white employers, Brooke and Jay. There are laughs, which become increasingly uncomfortable as …

Let’s just say that the turn of events won’t surprise anyone familiar with this filmmaker, who, since his breakthrough in 1995 with “Welcome to the Dollhouse,” has become an unflinching chronicler of suburban America, warts and all — but really, mostly warts. As The New York Times critic A.O. Scott noted in his review of “Wiener-Dog” (2016), “We don’t turn to Solondz for warm affirmations of human decency.”

Yet there is something different about “Emma and Max.” This time, he is bringing his nonjudgmental eye, matter-of-fact dark humor and unerring knack to get under an audience’s skin to the stage, where he’s making his playwriting debut.

“I had an idea of something I thought could work as a play and not a movie — I don’t even know if I can explain how and why, it just felt like a play,” Solondz, 58, said. “And I thought it would be a kind of adventure, see what kinds of doors it would open, what kind of experiences it might provide.”

He reached out to the playwright Thomas Bradshaw, whose own provocative shows, including “Burning” and “Intimacy,” have elicited both praise and outrage. The two have been friends since 2011, when they participated in a public conversation fittingly titled “Talking Taboos.”

Bradshaw, a member of the Flea Theater’s artistic advisory group, passed the play along to the theater’s artistic director, Niegel Smith, and its producing director, Carol Ostrow. They responded positively and set up a couple of table readings.

At one, “some actors pointed out that he’s somehow zeroed in on this black experience of loving whiteness, and that’s something the culture hasn’t talked about in any major ways,” Smith said. “I just thought, ‘Wow, this is incendiary.'”

And now, about a year and a half after the script went out, “Emma and Max” is having its first preview, on Monday, with Solondz also at the helm.

“I realized I should just do it myself,” he said. “After all, I write and direct my own movies, so why shouldn’t I write and direct my own play?” (Intriguingly, Solondz portrayed a struggling downtown playwright in his 1989 debut feature, “Fear, Anxiety & Depression”; the film tanked, after which its author waited six years for a follow-up.)

He threw himself into the new project, from the audition process to the creation of the video projections and even the selection of Barbadian artist Sheena Rose for the show’s poster.

Throughout, Solondz was in the peculiar position of being a beginner with considerable experience. It helped that he gradually found helpful equivalencies between his old and new worlds.

“Just as in filmmaking, the camera person is the first hire, the most critical initial hire in theater for me was the set designer,” Solondz said, referring to Julia Noulin-Mérat. “I quickly figured out during the prep period that I needed someone who could help me figure out how to contain this.”

Working with the actors came naturally. Zonya Love, who plays Britney, recalled that during rehearsal Solondz would get scenes started by saying, “Action,” and end them with “Cut.”

Love, 37, bears much of the show’s emotional burden, which at times feels like a literal one. “One of the things I have to do after we rehearse is stretch my back because the weight of who she is pulled me down,” she said.

Like much of Solondz’s work, “Emma and Max” (named after Brooke and Jay’s children, who appear in the show only as projections) tiptoes between pathos and satire, between tragedy and the banality of urban life — sprinkled with his acidic humor. During casting, he was particularly receptive to actors who were naturally funny, but when working with them later, he ensured that they did not actively set out to draw laughs.

“Most of my career, I’ve been asked to do comedy, and it’s wonderful, but Todd doesn’t want my bag of tricks,” said Ilana Becker, who plays Brooke. “He said, ‘I don’t want Neil Simon, I want Fassbinder.'”

Understatement, even a certain detachment, have always been key to Solondz, and they may be the best ways to make the hot-button material he often deals with palatable. “There is a directness and economy of storytelling that’s always present in his work,” Bradshaw said. “He’s also quite interested in juxtaposing the public faces of his characters and the turmoil of their inner lives.”

That difference is what is fascinating about the enigmatic Britney, a worthy addition to Solondz’s gallery of complicated misfits, outsiders and so-called losers — characters who challenge expectations of who, and what, deserves sympathy.

“Smugness is lethal,” said the affable Solondz (who, in the show, makes the entitled parents the targets of his most pointed satire). “When I go to a movie, I do want to be provoked. Not in a sensationalistic way, but in the sense that you become more connected to the world. The movies and plays that touch me the most remind me and reassure me of perhaps the illusion that I am not alone.”

“I’m not looking for people to argue about my stuff,” he added. “Frankly, some people are of the mind that it’s important to have people hate you, that it means you’ve done something important.” He laughed. “But I prefer people don’t hate me, OK?”