Sushi Hopes to Land Latino Comedy Group for Neofest

Never let it be said that Sushi Performance Gallery doesn’t have a sense of humor.

Sushi is negotiating with Culture Clash, a San Francisco-based Latino comedy troupe to either cap off its eighth annual Neofest in June or to play in its second to last slot in late May, said Vicki Wolf, Sushi’s managing director. And the main thrust of what will be a world premiere presentation in San Diego will be a piece poking fun at performance art galleries like Sushi, said Richard Montoya, one of the three members of the 6-year-old troupe, speaking from his home in San Francisco.

But that’s Culture Clash’s style. They read the local papers and they address the local issues. When in Berkeley, the group makes fun of the “politically correct” crowds it plays to. In Chicago, where local presenters begged the group not to do any pieces on gangs, it did just that.

The next stop for Culture Clash is the Los Angeles Theatre Center, where it will present “The Mission,” a work poking fun of the Hollywood industry, from June 22 to Sept. 2.

Preceding the Sushi run will be a May 5 performance at UC San Diego, where the troupe will do what Montoya describes as “a Latino Saturday Night Live” and a May 6 performance in Tijuana, sponsored by the Mexican government, where the comedy is likely to be more physical to overcome the language barrier. And yes, there will probably be some digs at the Mexican economy.

Montoya said he is looking forward to crossing paths in San Diego with Latins Anonymous, the Latino comedy troupe that played in San Diego as an Old Globe Teatro Meta presentation last fall and will return here to kick of the San Diego Repertory Theatre season in June.

Latins Anonymous is now playing at the Los Angeles Theatre Center through April 1.

Montoya and Diane Rodriguez, one of the four-person ensemble that makes up Latins Anonymous, go back many years, he said.

“We started south of Market in San Francisco, as a two-man comedy team,” Montoya recalled. “And Diane--she’s still a treasure.

“It was really strange seeing them there at the Los Angeles Theatre Center not long ago. They were very good, very funny. but we couldn’t help but feel how different we are. Both groups deal with stereotypes and the industry. But I think Latins Anonymous is making fun of the industry, but they’re smiling and winking too. They want to be in it and make no bones about it. We’re just dumb enough about the industry that we will indict everything. We will slaughter so many sacred cows in our show that ours is more of a devilish grin than an 8-by-10 smile.”

Judging from the whimsical titles scattered through the rest of the Neofest offerings, Culture Clash won’t provide the only comedy in Sushi’s six-week tribute to contemporary arts on the cutting edge.

Neofest will kick off with a double bill of Terry Galloway, a deaf theater artist from Florida, doing a series of monologues called “Out All Night and Lost My Shoes” and New York dancer and choreographer Ishmael Houston-Jones April 26-28.

New York performance artist Richard Elovich will present a series of monologues titled “If Men Could Talk, the Stories They Would Tell,” May 3-5.

Seattle-based Llory Wilson & Dancers will present a full-length piece called “This Cordate Carcass.” The work is based on the paintings of Mexican artist Frieda Kahlo, whose works have been on exhibit at the San Diego Museum of Art.

Dan Kwong of Los Angeles will check in with “Secrets of a Samurai Centerfielder,” a multimedia piece May 17-19 and Culture Clash will either fill the May 24-26 or June 1-2 slot with the remaining show to be announced.

All shows will be at Sushi except Llory Wilson & Dancers, which will play at the Lyceum Stage and the final show, which will be presented at the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art.

Staged readings are finding stages all over San Diego: a good sign of a healthy theatrical climate in which theaters try out new works in the simplest of forms, giving companies a chance to develop and showcase new talent in an affordable manner.

Coming up:

- The Old Globe Theatre’s Play Discovery Series continues with “The White Rose,” based on the true story of an anti-Nazi group of students in Hitler’s Germany, March 12 at 7:30 p.m. in the Cassius Cartre Centre Stage. The author is Lillian Garrett-Groag, director of “The Granny,” which just completed a successful run at the Cassius Carter.

- The Gaslamp Quarter Theatre Company’s second annual presentation of the Streisand Center’s “A Festival of New Jewish Plays,” a series of staged readings, continues on Mondays, through March 19. Adaptations of two Bernard Malamud stories, “The Magic Barrel,” a story of a shy rabbinical student’s search for love and “The Jew Bird,” a surrealistic story about self-hatred, play March 5. Next up is “Naim,” adapted by Nola Chilton from “The Lover,” A.B. Yehoshua’s story of a troubled marriage, a troubled country and a troubled search for a lover after the Mideast’s Yom Kippur war of 1973 on March 12 and “Born Guilty: Interviews with the Children of Nazis,” adapted from the book by Peter Sichrovsky, March 19. All shows are at 8 p.m. at the Hahn Cosmopolitan Theatre.

- San Diego Repertory Theatre’s WordWorks moves to the Lyceum Space with staged readings of two short Samuel Beckett plays, “Play” and “Come and Go” March 15 and “The Pink Toilet,” by UCSD graduate Karen Ulrich, a story of a young woman whose rich fantasy life contrasts with her job of cleaning toilets March 22. Both shows begin at 10:30 p.m. and admission is free.

Just completed:

“Kiss Me Quick Before the Lava Reaches the Village,” the first of three readings for invited audiences by Starlight Musical Theatre. Kudos to performers Bob Howard, Pat White, Gail Beall, Fred Inkley, Jennifer Fulton and James Saba who delivered spirited and thoroughly professional performances free for Starlight.

Not to mention the fact that Saba found time to play a lead here, despite being kept just a wee bit busy as the lead in the Gaslamp’s “Broadway Bound” at the Hahn Cosmopolitan.

“Kiss Me Quick” will be followed by “Abyssinia” March 12 and “Alias Jimmy Valentine” April 9 in the three-play series Starlight is mounting in the hopes of developing its first fully produced original musical for 1991. Whether or not “Kiss Me Quick” proves to be a winner, the format of a staged reading is worthy on its own merits of the paying audience it will seek when these shows continue in a more advanced stage of development at San Diego City College this summer.

PROGRAM NOTES: Grammy and Academy-award winning pop singer Donna “She Works Hard for Her Money” Summers seems to be working hard for her money in a second career as a visual artist that nets her from $1,000-$35,000 for her paintings, drawings and lithographs. She will be displaying artwork in her first solo show at the Circle Gallery in Old Town March 15-April 9 and has named the San Diego Repertory Theatre and Sledgehammer Theatre as beneficiaries for any sales resulting from the first weekend of sales. . . . Roberta McClellan, Starlight Musical Theatre’s director of marketing, is wondering if she is going to make it to the opening night of Starlight’s “Singing in the Rain” June 27. She’s expecting her first baby June 29. The expectant husband is Bill Brigham, a sociologist at National University.