Comedy With a Point : Two plays draw on real-life experiences of their authors. The writers slip in the message between the laughs.

STUDIO CITY — Playwrights often take moments out of real life and build their entertainments around them. This is particularly true in the case of playwrights Alan Gross and Sharon Burke, both of whom have plays opening tonight at the Lionstar Theatre.

Gross’ “La Brea Tarpits,” on Lionstar’s Stage 1, and Burke’s “Flipside,” on Stage 2, are both comedies, and both mined from situations the writers know well.

Gross, who once taught in the theater department at Northwestern University and has had plays produced in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, was a writer on an inventive national radio series a few years ago called “Airplay” (Arthur Kopit’s “Wings” was commissioned for “Airplay”). One of Gross’ scripts for that program was “La Brea Tarpits.”

The play was derived from tensions surrounding divorce.

“It’s sort of the grand old story,” Gross explains, “of boy gets girl back, boy meets girl, boy loses girl. I’ve never seen it done in that order before. When my first wife and I were divorced, we were enemies. Everyone said not to talk. Then later we became friends, and said, ‘Did we make a mistake?’ And we decided no. But there are a lot of unresolved issues.”

The male character in the play doesn’t want to resolve those issues, but his ex-wife does. She forces him to face them. “She drives him nuts,” Gross says. “But had she not done that, he would not have had the ability to go on. That’s the gift she brings him.”

The examination of those issues gave Gross his title. “In the La Brea Tar Pits, we often dig up the remnants of things past, and take them out and take a look at them. It’s full of muck, and it’s difficult. But it’s how we find the bones of things past. That’s the metaphor. And, they’re at the tar pits.”

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Burke is an actress who has had several plays produced, notably “Inside Out,” which was also at the Lionstar. She is also a stay-at-home mother. That balancing act, between a career and home life, spawned her new comedy, “Flipside.”

“It’s a look,” Burke says, “at a 1990s housewife, a look at her tedious and mundane drudgery. Then it goes off into her imagination. All her fantasy scenes are exciting, adventurous, where she is the hero, the most exciting person there. Of course, in her fantasy she blows it there, too. She’s irresponsible again, didn’t do it right. She gets sucked back into her life. It’s autobiographical in some respects, obviously, but in others, no.”

Like Gross, Burke is saying something darker underneath the laughs.

“In any age, what a wife and mother goes through is battling the stay-at-home thing, versus how can you make your life important. You lose your identity. There’s a tendency in our society that mothers are not very important, they don’t know what’s going on in the world. I’m generalizing. It’s such a touchy subject because of the whole social thing. It’s just realizing that your life is meaningful and worthwhile.”

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Why do both playwrights choose comedy to make their points?

Gross says: “I couldn’t not write a comedy. I couldn’t write a tragedy. If a tragedy is a play where a lot of people wind up dead on the stage, that just isn’t the type of writing I do. I don’t write about kings. I write about shepherds and shepherdesses, although they may be in another line of work these days. Kings become Mafia dons in Hollywood. I’m very into Everyman. Can the Delphic oracle be in the hot water heater? That’s not my quote, it’s Arthur Miller.”

Burke writes comedy because of the amazing things you can say in comedy that people don’t even realize you’re saying. “Messages,” she says with a firm nod. “You can really say a lot about the world, kind of coming around through the back door. People are off guard. That’s the best time to hit them with it. They’re having fun.”

Gross agrees, but adds: “The stuff has to be layered. One of the reasons for doing comedy is to relax the audience. Then, when the shock of recognition sets in, it is a shock. If it’s just for a laugh, then you’re going to have ‘Dumb and Dumber.’ But there has to be a reason to do the play that’s important. We’re the most over-entertained generation in the history of mankind. But to have an audience say, ‘Gee, I never looked at it that way before,’ that’s the reason to do it.”

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WHERE AND WHEN:

What: “La Brea Tarpits.”

Location: Lionstar Theatre Stage 1, 12655 Ventura Blvd. (above Jerry’s Famous Deli), Studio City.

Hours: 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays. 7 p.m. Sundays. Ends Feb. 26.

Price: $14 to $16.

Call: (213) 660-TKTS.

What: “Flipside.”

Location: Lionstar Theatre Stage 2, 12655 Ventura Blvd. (above Jerry’s Famous Deli), Studio City.

Hours: 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. Ends Feb. 25.

Price: $10.

Call: (310) 657-4556.