THEATER AND FILM : Latino Culture Figures Get SCR’s Grand Tour

An important contingent of foreign visitors dropped by South Coast Repertory Theatre in Costa Mesa last week.

No, it wasn’t Sweden’s King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia. The royal couple spent their entire afternoon Wednesday in a glittering, much-hyped tour of the Orange County Performing Center, bypassing SCR just a stone’s throw away.

But Friday afternoon, SCR had its foreign delegation:A low-keyed, little-publicized 2 1/2-hour visit by American-based cultural counselors from 15 Latin American countries, including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Honduras, Nicaragua and Venezuela.

SCR gave the visitors--who are all based in embassies in Washington--the standard tour:A backstage peek at the Mainstage and Second Stage playhouses and the company’s newly expanded technical/administrative wing.

However, the star attraction for these Latin American officials was, not surprisingly, SCR’s Hispanic Playwrights Project.

“This is what they wanted most to hear about, and it’s the chief reason we included South Coast Repertory on tour,” said Barbara Clarke Mossberg, U.S. Information Agency coordinator of a 10-day, nine-city cultural arts trip that included stops in Nashville, New Orleans, Portland, Ore., Los Angeles and Pasadena.

Billed as one of the few such programs in the United States to develop new Latino plays, South Coast Repertory’s Hispanic Playwrights Project holds an annual summer session of workshops and readings.

Now in its third year, this year’s session is being held at SCR Aug. 2-14, twice as long as the two previous ones. The six authors to be showcased are being picked from 75 manuscripts submitted. The announcement is expected by May 20.

“We consider (the Hispanic)project an exciting, stimulating program--one aimed at reaching writers long in isolation from our mainstream theater,” David Emmes, SCR’s producing artistic director, told the foreign counselors.

Like other ethnic immigrant groups, younger Latino writers in the United States have had to struggle with their own sense of ethnic identity, said Jose Cruz Gonzalez, SCR’s project coordinator.

“They don’t quite fit in,” he said. “They do not quite belong to their grandparents’ generation or the Anglo culture. This struggle is painful, but it is also the source of much of the creative energy that goes into the new writings.”

This search for “roots identity” has marked the writings of most young Latino playwrights of the 1980s, contrasted with societal advocacy that most characterized the writings of the 1960s, Gonzalez said.

Despite the success of mainstream theater programs such as SCR’s, Emmes and Gonzalez pointed out that such programs still have much to overcome.

One factor that affects all new play development, regardless of ethnic origins, is the dominance of TV, Emmes said.

Recruiting new young playwrights is an enormous problem because of the greater financial and “quick fame” lure of TV, Emmes said. “It’s a shame because (the theater)in effect is losing many of its fine young authors, many of whom may not have the chance to truly mature as writers.”

As a bid to counter this trend, Emmes cited not only SCR’s project but also an overall SCR program that has commissioned works from 10 well-known younger playwrights.

Another factor is the continued isolation of Latino artists, Gonzalez said, despite an encouraging increase in major Hollywood Latino-oriented films--such as “La Bamba” and “Stand and Deliver”--in addition to long-established, still creatively active Latino theater groups.

Some of the foreign counselors asked Emmes and Gonzalez how they could help. Very simply, they replied:by more contacts.

Ignacio Duran Lorera, minister of cultural affairs at Mexico’s embassy in Washington, agreed--”but we should seek more such exchanges with artists as well as with information,” he said.

On that hopeful--if rather generalized--note, the discussion at SCR ended, and the counselors took off for a quick tour down the street at Segerstrom Hall.

Money, money, money:

Gonzalez announced more grants for the Hispanic Playwrights Project, which is budgeted this year at $100,000. The new grants are $12,500 from Pacific Telesis and $10,000 from the Ruth Mott Fund. (The biggest one, $50,000 from the Ford Foundation, was announced last January.)

To raise more funds, SCR will stage “Una Noche del Teatro,” a benefit evening with “Hispanic comedy and music stars” on June 20, Gonzalez added. Performers are to be announced. Tickets will be $25.