Maple Valley playwright Ed Corrigan has dipped into his own personal life for his new play, “David.”

The one-act play is set to premiere at the Valley Stage in North Bend on May 17. Susan Bradford, the artistic director of theatre at The Black Dog, will direct.

With the first auditions held this week the play will also be staged at the Maple Valley Creative Arts Center in June.

Corrigan’s first play featured at the Arts Center last year, “The Ave.,” was based on a poem of the same name and inspired by conversations he had with homeless people on Seattle’s University Avenue.

This time, however, he decided to base it on his life experiences. Rather than materialism and compassion, “David” will focus on regret, denial and the power fear can have on people.

The play takes place in 2011 – but jumps back to 1970 – and concerns a man named Fred who has had difficulty moving past the death of his friend, David, who died 40 years before. As he is writing in his office, David’s ghost suddenly appears and takes him back to 1970 to explore the circumstances surrounding his death when they were attending an Illinois university.

The story is based on Corrigan’s own experience in college with his 19-year-old roommate, David. While Corrigan admits he had little, if any direction at that time in his life, David somehow knew precisely what he wanted to do.

“He was grounded,” Corrigan said. “He wanted to be an engineer, build bridges — any and all kinds — but every bridge would have a corner that would say ‘built by David.’”

One day, however, David suddenly disappeared. It was only a week later his body was found in the woods, where he had been apparently walking by himself. It was discovered he had died of an aneurism.

The abrupt manner in which David’s death occurred, Corrigan said, made it hard for him to accept it. For David to die, when he had so many plans in life, did not seem fair.

“I had no idea what to do,” he said. “I was just floating through life. (Yet) he’s the one who died and I lived.”

Corrigan eventually decided to write the play after his death kept coming back into the forefront of his mind.

“I was thinking about how I had regrets about David’s death,” he said. “It was turning over in my mind for a month before I decided to write this.”

Much like Fred in the play, Corrigan used the writing as a way to reexamine his decisions, and reflect on how it had affected him.

“What started my writing about it was when you get older, you start looking back at regrets,” he said. “I couldn’t get at what the issue was. I wrote to get at it.”

Much of the conflict in the play occurs between Fred, who is still in denial about David’s death, and Death’s ghost who is determined that he confront it.

“So he (David) shows him (Fred) things,” he said. “They’re upsetting, but also revealing.”

Although Corrigan said he added a few things for dramatic effect, the story is more or less based on facts, at least in the past.

“What I write is the truth,” he said. “I didn’t put anything in it that’s not true.”

For the section of the play set in the present, however, finding the right words to say was arduous and resulted in severe writer’s block at one point.

“I could not verbalize it,” he said. “I couldn’t get the words in my head. So to sit down and get that from my head to the paper was painful and sometimes excruciating.”

One of the more poignant scenes, where David dies while walking in the woods, is based only on Corrigan’s speculation, as no one was present when he died. Yet, he said he simply wrote what came to him, rather than sit down and think of it in length.

“I have no idea what happened but I had a very strong feeling to write it (that way),” he said.

Because of the autobiographical element in the play, Corrigan said, it will allow the audience to get a clearer understanding of him as a poet and writer.

“It’s sort of a more exposure of myself than ‘The Ave.,’” he said. “I talk about my strengths and weakness and why I was in denial about his death for 40 years.”

The play’s overall message, he said, is “to get out our fear as human beings and see things for what they are in the big picture.”

“David” will have a three-night run at the Valley Stage from May 17-19 followed by the Black Dog in Snoqualmie June 1-2 and at finally wrapping up close to home at the Maple Valley Creative Arts Center June 14-16.