SUMMER BRINGS LATINO THEATER INTO LIMELIGHT

Latino theater was much in the limelight this summer.

It was the focus of the Theatre Communications Group conference in Northampton (Mass.) in June, at South Coast Repertory’s Hispanic Playwrights Project in July and, on an international scale, at New York’s Public Theatre in August (where Los Angeles’ Bilingual Foundation of the Arts was invited to present Lorca’s “La Zapatera Prodigiosa,” seen locally last March).

The sequel to South Coast’s Hispanic Project is the staging of two of its three featured plays as part of the company’s regular season. (The third project playwright, Eduardo Machado, was commissioned to write a new play.)

Lisa Loomer’s “Birds” will be done on South Coast’s Second Stage beginning Nov. 7; Arthur Giron’s “Charley Bacon and His Family” will take over the Mainstage beginning April 7. South Coast artistic co-director Martin Benson will be staging both.

Meanwhile, South Coast is engaged in a $12-million fund-raising campaign, a goal to be achieved by 1990. The aim is to create an endowment of $3.5 million for Colab (a research and development project for new plays), raise $3 million for an Artists Center (an 11,000-square-foot addition, now under construction, to provide additional office and other work/rehearsal space) and something called Annual Funds totaling $5.5 million to bridge the gap between earned income and operating expenses for the seasons spanning 1985-1990.

BACK HOME AGAIN:Don’t look now, but Donald Freed’s political allegory, “Circe & Bravo,” which struck its first spark in Los Angeles at the tiny MET theater in 1984, then played Denver and London, may be returning home in style.

British producer Duncan Weldon is in Los Angeles this week to explore the possibility of bringing the London production to Los Angeles next summer--on its way to New York.

Playwright/director/actor Harold Pinter who staged the production in June at the Hampstead Theatre Club and later London’s West End, would again direct. Faye Dunaway, who starred in it, receiving rave reviews, would re-create her role.

The controversial two-character piece, which had critics divided and audiences rapt, provides Dunaway with a bravura role as an outspoken First Lady who knows too much and is held captive at Camp David by a Secret Service man.

Where in Los Angeles would it come? Nobody knows. “We’re just beginning to put it together,” Weldon said, but he’s ruled out the Ahmanson, where two of his other productions have played (“Beethoven’s Tenth,” “A Patriot for Me”).

“It’s too big for the play.”

Watch for the Los Angeles Theatre Center and the Mark Taper to top the list of possibilities.

PIECES AND BITS: Jenny Agutter will play Kate in a production of “Taming of the Shrew” “loosely based on Shakespeare” that Charles Marowitz will direct at the Ensemble Studio Theatre beginning Oct. 23.