Groton native Donna Di Novelli's theater-based resume is impressively wide-ranging. She wrote the lyrics for the musical adaptation of the Laura Ingalls Wilder series "Little House on the Prairie," which broke box-office records when it premiered at the renowned Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis.

She was commissioned by the San Francisco Opera to write the libretto for Christopher Theofanidis' "Heart of a Soldier."

Her radio plays have been broadcast on the BBC and NPR.

And now she has written a screenplay that marks her film debut. "Stag" is a short movie, directed by Kevin Newbury, that was filmed in New London last August and will get its local premiere Saturday at the Garde Arts Center.

"It is my first film. It was such a joy. I'm so hooked," she says.

The 14-minute piece already has been screened — and greeted enthusiastically — at a variety of film festivals. It's won its share of awards, including best dramatic short at Houston's WorldFest International Film Festival, best director and best short at the New Hope Film Festival, and "Best of New York" at the NY ShortsFest. It will be shown next at the Montreal World Film Festival, Aug. 27 to Sept. 7.

Set in the early 1960s in New London, "Stag" follows a 15-year-old named Francesca who's quite curious about what's going on in father's basement and interrupts a stag party.

Di Novelli is a little wary of saying too much about her intentions or thoughts on the work because, she notes, "It's an open piece. I'm always curious to see and hear what people's reactions are to it. That's what's been fascinating."

But she will say, "It looks at sexuality as very fluid and a positive thing. In the end, it's about stag films, but it's her unique relationship to them and the idea of what people will do for desire and pleasure and does that a have a gender line?"

In writing this coming-of-age story, Di Novelli wanted to pay homage to films of that era. And the fact that she grew up with men who worked at Electric Boat worked into the development of the character of the father and his friends.

Playing Francesca is Sarah Steele, who played Eli Gold's daughter on several episodes of "The Good Wife." In the cast, too, are Peter Rini, whose credits including portraying Jason Figueroa — Natalie's politician husband — in "Orange is the New Black," and Rachel Jett, who is artistic director of the National Theater Institute at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Waterford. (Di Novelli has taught at NTI.)

The rest of the cast was local. Di Novelli planted herself at Muddy Waters on Bank Street in New London and told the owners, "I'm going to accost your customers. Every good-looking guy who came in, I said, 'Do you want to be in a film?'" That is how she cast the father's friends.

The film crew shot in several homes in New London and at the 321 Pequot Ave. house owned by the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center next door to the Monte Cristo Cottage. (The latter was where they filmed scenes set in Francesca's bedroom.)

New London resident Donna Vendetto, who knows the city and people, served as a location scout, finding kitchens and basements that the filmmakers could consider using. They settled on the kitchen of Kerry and Juan Roman and the basement of Olga Lupien.

It turned out that Lupien's late husband had done paintings of submarines, which she showed the filmmakers. They ended up using them in the movie.

"The way we were helped by people here, giving us their basements, giving us their kitchens for locations — we dislocated people for days," Di Novelli says. "It was just a lovefest, all of it, from beginning to end."

In keeping with the time period, the filmmakers used a number of vintage autos owned by residents of the area, including the 1955 Chevrolet 210 Wagon from Todd Cunnian of Stonington and the 1955 Ford Fairlane Victoria from Terry Davidson of Gales Ferry. The cars were assembled by Tom Schuch, with whom Di Novelli attended high school.

That high school was St. Bernard in Montville. As for considering her future then, she says, "All I knew is that I wanted to write, that I expressed myself best in writing."

She worked for the Hartford Courant for a while. She found her passion for writing plays when she attended the Wesleyan Writers Conference. She then studied playwriting at Brown University with Pultizer Prize-winning dramatist Paula Vogel, and that, she says, "was life-changing."

Di Novelli, who was raising a family in Hartford, had a difficult time after Brown figuring out how to negotiate the theater world. She sent out scripts, but it was a call that altered her career path yet again: someone phoned her to say that the New York University graduate musical theater writing program was looking for dramatists. Was she interested? She responded that she was but that she didn't know about music — she was a writer. The answer was, "That's exactly what we need. We need dramatists."

Di Novelli says she wrote musicals that ended up being operas, so she began getting jobs in the opera world. Through that, she met Newbury.

Since Di Novelli had worked with Newbury before, she broached the subject of working on a film together. He liked her story idea, and "Stag" was on its way.

As for deciding to film in New London, Di Novelli says, "I felt that New London had something ... We could fake it obviously — you could do a basement or a kitchen anywhere — but it had an authenticity that just permeated the set. It's not autobiographical, but it is of that time and it is of those people."

She can't say enough about the experience.

"We were all staying in New London. It was heaven. We would go for a swim and then we would be on set and then we would go for a swim," she says with a laugh. "I mean, what a treasure this city is for filmmakers."

"Stag," 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Garde Arts Center, 325 State St., New London; followed by "Me and Earl and the Dying Girl" and then a Q&A with screenwriter Donna Di Novelli, producer Matthew Principe, and actress Rachel Jett; $8; (860) 444-7373.