Todd Kreidler, 34, is back in Pittsburgh today on a circuitous journey that started in college.

He was just here Oct. 6 to participate in a panel at Pittsburgh Public Theater about August Wilson and "Radio Golf," subjects he knows better than anyone, having served the last six years of Wilson's life as his assistant, close friend, dramaturg and, eventually, youthful alter ego.

Two days later, he got a call from the new Public dramaturg, Heather Helinsky. As part of producing artistic director Ted Pappas' plan to step up the Public's "commitment to new plays and special events," they offered Kreidler a professional reading of his own new play, "Stayers and Goers."

This sent him back to the manuscript with purposeful energy. "You have no idea what a resource a reading is," he said a few days ago from his home in Chicago. "August always talked about 'how to turn fear into fuel.' I already have a better play than a few months ago."

He arrived this weekend to work with Helinsky and director Larry John Meyers, and today they sit down to work with the cast -- Joel Ripka, Autumn Ayers, Jason McCune, Stephen Coleman and Meggie Booth. The reading is at 7 tonight in the Helen Wayne Rauh Rehearsal Hall on the third floor of the O'Reilly Theater.

"In 'Stayers and Goers,' " the Public press release says, "John Small, a UPS employee, returns to dig up his father's inheritance buried in his hometown in Western Pennsylvania. ... Small's journey back home is a classically spiritual one, involving annunciations, denials, resurrections and redemption."

Small's journey could be a parable for Kreidler's, for whom his native Western Pennsylvania has been a source of inspiration as it was for his mentor, Wilson.

Kreidler graduated from Duquesne University in 1996. While working as Sam Hazo's assistant at the International Poetry Forum, he was seeing five plays a week. When Hazo heard him ranting about a newspaper review, he suggested he might like reviewing himself.

This led him to freelance reviewing for the Post-Gazette, starting in late 1996, then a month in the National Critics Institute at Connecticut's O'Neill Theater Center in 1997. He went from that to the Public Theater as assistant to artistic director Eddie Gilbert and director of "Macbeth" and "Twelfth Night" for the summertime Young Company.

Then in fall 1999, the Public assigned Kriedler to assist Wilson in his work on the world premiere of "King Hedley II," co-produced by Seattle Rep. They hit it off, and he went with Wilson to Seattle, then signed on to assist on the play as it progressed through six more cities on the way to Broadway.

Along the way, he began writing. Kriedler says "Stayers and Goers" began on a 10-hour train ride to Pittsburgh "when I had the idea for the opening image -- a ruined farmhouse, where some guy shows up in uniform and begins clearing the foundation, digging for something."

In Boston in late 2004, "I picked it up again and started to write pieces, some of the kernels of dialogue, adapting August's 'pot method' " -- throwing things into the pot and discovering what sort of stew develops.

Then it was 2005, with the tumult of the Broadway run of "Gem of the Ocean" immediately followed by the spring premiere of "Radio Golf" at Yale Rep. When Wilson was diagnosed with inoperable cancer, Kreidler moved to Seattle to help with his on-going projects.

After Wilson's death on Oct. 2, 2005, Kriedler stayed on in Seattle for several months to help Wilson's widow, Constanza Romero, sort through his voluminous papers. Gradually he returned to his own writing, having benefited from some pretty good mentors, including Gilbert, Wilson and Wilson's last Broadway director, Kenny Leon.

It was Leon who invited him to become associate artistic director of his new Atlanta company, True Colors, which did a reading of an earlier version of "Stayers and Goers" called "Jumbo Small." Then Leon's producers hired Kreidler to write the stage version of "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," which is aiming toward Broadway in 2009. His other recent work includes the book for a new musical and a film project, neither ready yet for public announcement.

"The main criterion for truth is character truth," Kreidler says. Wilson would be proud.

Admission to the reading is free, but reservations are recommended at 412-316-1600.