Culture Clash Goes for the Funny Bone

Culture Clash, the Latino comedy troupe starting a 11-week run at the Los Angeles Theatre Center on June 22, rarely misses an opportunity to acknowledge its roots and credit its predecessors.

The San Francisco troupe’s show, “The Mission,” is a satiric look at Father Junipero Serra and the campaign to make him a saint. The show is dedicated to Mexican-American folk singer Lalo Guerrero for his “preservation of Chicano history. His music will always inspire us, as it has our fathers and mothers, and their fathers and mothers.” Twice during “The Mission,” Guerrero’s recorded voice can be heard singing “No Chicanos on TV.”

Culture Clash’s young members--Ricardo Salinas, Richard Montoya and Herbert Siguenza--also consider themselves part of the political tradition of El Teatro Campesino. Under the watchful eyes of El Teatro’s Luis Valdez, director of “La Bamba,” the group shaped the initial production of “The Mission” in workshop productions at teatro’s base in San Juan Bautista.

“I don’t think we could exist without all having the training and background of the Teatro,” said Salinas, like Siguenza, the son of Salvadoran immigrants. “Our style is very Teatro Campesino.” Montoya’s father, the poet and artist Jose Montoya, once worked as an organizer for the United Farm Workers in Delano.

While much of Culture Clash’s material is hard-edged and contemporary, the group is rarely preachy, feeling free to make fun of friends and allies as well as adversaries. As Montoya ruefully observes of the 1980s, “How were we supposed to know that the Decade of the Hispanic would turn out to be a weekend sponsored by Coors?”

The premise of “The Mission” is that one of Father Serra’s mistreated Indian acolytes is transported from the 18th Century to the present, landing in the body of one of three struggling comedians living together in San Francisco’s Mission District. The narrative gets a bit complicated after that--involving a plot to kidnap singer Julio Iglesias, masterfully parodied by Siguenza--but that doesn’t matter much. More than anything, “The Mission” is a vehicle to showcase the many talents of the three actors.

They sing, they dance, they do impressions. In an instant, they can shift from the most physical and juvenile slapstick to the most subtle wordplays. In a Latin twist to the famous United Negro College Fund appeal, Siguenza complains that “a Mayan is a terrible thing to waste.”

This is not the first time Culture Clash has been scheduled to appear at LATC’s Latino Theatre Lab. But last September the Los Angeles appearance was postponed, when Salinas was hit by a shotgun blast at close range in front of his San Francisco apartment when he tried to stop a fight. For days, he hovered near death.

The group, says Montoya, “has been anchored by this tragedy.” The experience, he says, has given more resonance to the gang material in “The Mission,” which satirizes the deadly phenomenon without approving of its effects or denigrating the individuals who are caught up in it.

“The Mission” by Culture Clash. Set design by Gronk. Performances Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 8 p.m., Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m., June 22-Sept. 2. At LATC, 514 South Spring St. Tickets: $15-$18. (213) 627-6500. Ext. 256.