THEATER : SCR Nurtures Ethnic Arts Movement

When Jose Cruz Gonzalez was a UC Irvine graduate student joining the growing Latino arts movement in California, he set out for the obvious bastions of activism.

There was L.A., of course, and Gonzalez not only joined several Latino-American experimental stage groups there but helped form a new one, Teatro sin Nombre (Theater Without a Name), a multi-ethnic troupe of fellow UC Irvine students.

And there was Northern California. Gonzalez spent one summer in San Juan Bautista as an intern with El Teatro Campesino, the celebrated company led by Luis Valdez, whose works include the milestone play “Zoot Suit” and the current film “La Bamba.”

And there was . . . Orange County?

The old-line Anglo cultural stronghold? A major, possibly maverick, ethnic minority arts program here?

Apparently, reputations do change.

Gonzalez, the son of Mexican-American migrant workers, is now 30, alive and well in Costa Mesa, coordinating the South Coast Repertory Theatre’s thriving Hispanic Playwrights Project. He also conducts workshops in multi-ethnic theater at Rancho Santiago College and Cal State Fullerton.

The Hispanic Playwrights Project’s latest accolade arrived just last week. A piece developed through the project--Jose Rivera’s “The Promise”--is scheduled to be performed in February at the Los Angeles Theatre Center. It’s the fifth play to come out of the SCR project that has been picked up for full-scale production.

“We can’t be more delighted by this latest announcement,” said Gonzalez, who directed the public-reading debut of “The Promise” last July on SCR’s Mainstage.

In establishing the project, the chief aim of SCR artistic directors David Emmes and Martin Benson has been development of Latino-American plays, not “ultimate production,” Gonzalez stressed.

Still, a little icing on the cake is more than welcome. “If we also get these plays into production by major companies, that, of course, is a special excitement, a real bonus for all of us.”

Actually, the notion of an ethnic-minority project making it in Orange County isn’t quite so surprising if recent trends are kept in mind.

For one thing, there’s been pressure from leading public grant givers--such as the National Endowment for the Arts and the California Arts Council--to pay more attention to the Latino, Asian, black, Native American and other minority communities.

And for another thing, South Coast Repertory has professed its own goal of involving the ethnic minorities as part of what Emmes called SCR’s “expanding community responsibilities.”

Backed by the California Council for the Humanities and local corporations, SCR started a research program in 1982 on the newest immigrants in Orange County. This led to two SCR touring productions in 1984--”Finding Home,” a children’s musical on immigrants’ cultural shock, and “Second Lives,” stage readings from the experiences of immigrants.

The most ambitious result came two years later with the launching of the Hispanic Playwrights Project, “a workshop process,” as Gonzales describes it, “that gives authors both immediate feedback and peer-group networking.” It gives authors the chance to polish plays-in-progress and subjects them to wide-ranging critiques.

Gonzalez, who was on the SCR staff as a National Endowment fellowship recipient and who had been involved in “Second Lives” as a cast member and assistant director, was named to coordinate the project.

“The first year was strictly a trial one. No one knew exactly what to expect, what the response would be, or what the level of work would be,” Gonzalez recalled.

But such doubts apparently were wiped away by that first session in July, 1986. The number of nationwide applicants--109--was larger than expected. Nine were picked, and four of them wrote plays that have been or will soon be produced by major companies.

Arthur Giron’s “Charley Bacon and His Family” and Lisa Loomer’s “Birds” have been done by SCR; Eduardo Machado’s “Once Removed” has been done at the New Mexico Repertory Theatre, and Ruben Gonzalez’s “The Boiler Room” is being done at San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre.

This year there were 92 applicants, of whom six were chosen (the number was reduced to allow for an expanded number of workshops and readings). So far, Rivera’s “The Promise” is the only work from the group to be picked for full-scale staging.

The plays vary widely in style and theme, but Hispanic Playwrights Project authors have in common this artistic agenda--to examine Latino communities as the battleground of monumental cultural conflicts, and as the sanctuary of great heritages.

“At one time, I didn’t think a project like this would be possible, that we had to do it mostly from the outside,” Gonzalez said. “What’s been so gratifying about the project is that our voices are being heard--and nurtured--in the mainstream of American theater.”