Yee says the play benefited from the development program, including public readings in October and January: “The first draft was something that I wrote very quickly without knowing how the scenes would stick together. King, who manages the XX Playlab and is house manager for the BCA’s Plaza Theatres. “It was just a really smart play that had a fun mix of this kind of pop-culture element with some really smart and deep stuff going on that wasn’t fully realized in the draft, but you could see it was there,’’ says the BCA’s John J. “What we don’t know as an audience member necessarily as we join up with the play is what the real truth is.’’ “It’s about Lexi’s experience, this horrible thing that happens to her, and her inability to process that,’’ says Brownstein, who from 2002 to 2008 was literary manager at the Huntington Theatre Company, where she directed the Huntington Playwriting Fellows program. But Hookman, a shadowy slasher-movie figure, keeps turning up in the corner of Lexi’s vision. The lives of the characters are grounded in mundane realities of Facebook and texting. And, hey, what’s that funny scraping sound? In “Hookman,’’ University of Connecticut freshman Lexi (played by Erin Butcher) is home in California for Thanksgiving when she and her friend Jess go for an In-N-Out Burger one night. This play also puts female actors in the forefront.’’ “My hope is that female playwrights can be taken as seriously as male playwrights. “I’ve been lucky enough to have work that is embraced regardless of ethnicity or gender,’’ she says. Her work has earned her a list of fellowships and awards along with a few productions. San Francisco native Yee, 26, is a student in the master of fine arts program at the University of California-San Diego. In the last 20 years I think we’ve done a lot better in this country, but we’ve become more aware of where the gaps are.’’ “For eons and eons, the people who got to decide what was good drama were primarily white men, so what happens is you get a homogenization of what you’re going to see. “I think it’s a serious issue nationwide, a very serious issue, and it’s not just about women playwrights,’’ says Ilana Brownstein, who joined Company One this season as director of new play development and worked with Yee as dramaturg. A 2010 speech by playwright Theresa Rebeck assailing that “abysmal’’ statistic and hurdles faced by women in the business was also widely discussed in the theater community. Creation of the program was fueled by studies showing that plays written by women make up fewer than 20 percent of plays produced.