PERFORMANCE ART REVIEW / L.A. FESTIVAL : Gomez-Pena Trilogy May Have the Bugs Out by ‘1992’

In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

In “1992,” 500 years later, Guillermo Gomez-Pena regrets that journey and deconstructs its meaning.

“Columbus arrived in America without papers,” he points out. “Don’t we all secretly wish he had been deported right away?”

Gomez-Pena arrived at the Temporary Contemporary Wednesday night with plenty of papers. He performed “1990,” the first part of the “1992” trilogy, with his script in front of him, on a music stand. During most of the performance, he sat in a chair, flipping pages of his script as he read.

It was an intriguing but surprisingly static experience.

Gomez-Pena’s voice and microphone were his primary instruments. Make that his voices --he switched languages, accents and timbres throughout the evening. The languages included English, Spanish, “Spanglish” or “Inglenol,” Nahuatl, Donald Duckese and his own patois. All of this was accompanied by an eclectic musical soundtrack, controlled from a cassette player at his side.

“Time to change the cassette,” he repeatedly announced before doing so.

Much of “1990” could have been appreciated just as well by a radio listener--and in fact, a radio version is being broadcast.

Not that there wasn’t something for the eyes as well as the ears. In the first half, Gomez-Pena wore a shiny mariachi outfit, and during intermission he donned a post-modern Aztec warrior get-up, complete with giant headdress, long-haired wig--and sneakers. His chair was bounded by a semicircle of candles to roughly approximate an altar.

He moved beyond the microphone only at the beginning and end of acts, using props to mime a suicide in front of a TV set, a swig of blood from his own heart, and a snake-swallowing reminiscent of the image on the Mexican flag banner at his side (a U.S. flag banner was on the other side of the stage). Most notably, he ended the first act with a fierce round of rope jumping, wearing a death mask, bathed in red light.

Still, through most of the performance he remained seated like a disc jockey. And in this large and distancing space (compared with most of the 99-seat theaters in town), that’s a mistake.

But the problem wasn’t only Gomez-Pena’s self-imposed limits on physical mobility. It was also the disorganization of his often lyrical material.

The script switched gears often, apparently at random, sometimes cutting off thoughts before they bloomed. Slim shards of Gomez-Pena’s autobiography were dropped willy-nilly, not in chronological or any other order. Because nothing seemed organized along any lines--linear, circular, triangular, whatever--the presentation developed a sameness, despite the shifting gears.

When the show broke for intermission, many around me thought it was over, until an announcement informed us otherwise. And the second act was not particularly different from the first.

If Gomez-Pena’s point had been to make a commentary on randomness, his method might have served a purpose. But Gomez-Pena has nothing so abstract in mind. His point is much more pointed.

He is examining the appropriation of America by European culture. He salutes those first “brave illegal aliens” who crossed the Bering Strait 40,000 years ago and mourns the dislocation in their descendants’ lives, including that part of himself that is descended from them.

Though raised in Mexico City, he announces that he is now a Chicano, despite his continued identification with Tijuana as well as San Diego. And he clearly has mixed feelings about it--though, oddly, the reasons he ventured north in the first place go unmentioned.

His theme is a perfect match for that of the Los Angeles Festival, of which this program is a part. Considering Gomez-Pena’s obvious skills as a poet and a master of the microphone, his performance ought to be one of the festival’s watershed events. But right now “1990” sounds like an in-progress reading, a rough draft.

At 152 N. Central Ave., nightly through Sunday at 8 p.m., with a Sunday matinee at 2 p.m. $15; (213) 623-7400.