Setting the Stage for Minorities in Theater : Culture: Professor sees a need for diversity. He hopes a conference will lead to networking by minority groups.

Floyd Gaffney’s idea for the UC San Diego conference on cultural diversity in theater, which begins today, was born, like so many of his ideas, out of frustration.

Last year, for instance, the school sponsored a conference called “The Classics in Contemporary Theatre.” Gaffney, one of two black theater professors at the university, was infuriated by the dearth of minority participation.

“People asked, ‘How could you talk about contemporary theater without talking about non-traditional and cross-cultural casting?’ I was very frustrated. And so was (Jorge) Huerta. So, we decided to do this,” Gaffney said. (Huerta is head of the bilingual graduate program in Latino theater at UC San Diego.)

This turned out to be “Cultural Diversity in American Theatre: Moving Toward the 21st Century.” It will be in session today through Sunday at the La Jolla campus.

Gaffney said that he hopes the conference will lead to networking among the four groups involved in the conference: African-Americans, Latinos, American Indians and Asians. The event will also feature four solo performances by artists Marga Gomez, James A. Luna, Anna Deavere Smith and Lane Nishikawa to offer examples of the diversity he hopes the conference will promote.

But, in many ways, Gaffney’s own life and work embrace the values of the conference.

“I’ve been planning to do this for a couple of years because it is important for minorities to get together,” he said. “I made the commitment (to the conference) without any support. But it became very clear from networking that everyone thought it was overdue. And now, it’s a who’s who (judging from the participants) in American theater from the four major groups.”

The event boasts two keynote addresses.

Today, Luis Valdez, producing artistic director of El Teatro Campesino in San Juan Bautista, Calif., will deliver the first. He will be followed by Tony Award-winning director Lloyd Richards on Saturday. Richards is famed for his direction of plays by August Wilson and Athol Fugard.

The frustration that galvanized the conference is a familiar feeling for Gaffney, whose struggle embodies many of the issues the conference will address.

During the 20 years he has taught in San Diego, Gaffney, 60, has labored, often in vain, to find a foothold for African-American theater in what boosters call “America’s Finest City.”

“My frustration is that as large and wealthy as (some of San Diego’s) black community is, they do not have the social or political vision to have their own theater as part of the cultural fabric,” he said.

This lack of black theater is not for lack of trying.

Gaffney has proposed a theater degree with an emphasis in black theater at the university (rejected for lack of funds), been the guiding spirit behind the Southern California Black Repertory Theatre (which collapsed after two actors left for Hollywood) and played the part of resident director at San Diego’s Southeast Community Theatre (the city’s one black theater, which is struggling to find a home after 25 years).

“I would retire, but I’m not going to until I see an African-American emphasis in (the university’s) department. It’s immoral and unethical that there isn’t one now.”

Of the 73 students in the prestigious graduate drama department, Gaffney says there are only three blacks in the acting program and one in the stage managing program. There is one Latino in the acting program, one in the playwright program and one in the dramaturgy program. There are 10 more Latinos in the new bilingual Latino theater program.

Adele Shank, chairwoman of the theater department, defends the school: “We are very proud of our percentages.”

But Gaffney said the low percentages mean that the choice of plays at the university inevitably leaves out the African-American experience.

One of the black acting students, Shanga K. Parker, agrees. Gaffney cast him in a lead role as one of the sons in the Southeast Community Theatre’s production of “Fences” at the Lyceum Space, and Parker said the experience was invaluable.

“ ‘Fences’ is the only thing I did that might be related to how I will be cast in the real world. It was great,” Parker said. “(At UC San Diego) I never play somebody’s son or brother. I was the king’s officer in ‘Tartuffe.’ Tracey (Leigh, a black graduate student actress) was the maid.”

Shank said she was “horrified” that a student would say that.

“That is absolutely not true. The department has a color-blind casting policy. If someone is not getting certain parts, it has nothing whatever to do with race.”

She also said she has “a great deal of respect” for Gaffney, thinks the diversity conference “is of great importance” and that Gaffney’s proposal for an emphasis on black theater would be implemented if the money were available.

But until that money is available, Gaffney will keep agitating (by organizing conferences), will keep knocking on the doors of potential donors who may want to support a black theater company and will keep ringing the phones of local directors who might be persuaded to put a black theater piece on their season schedules.

One thing he said he does not intend to do is give up.

“That’s my slave upbringing. Someone once asked Lena Horne how in the world she looks that good. And she said it was that good slave stock,” he said with a laugh. “I don’t give up on anything. . . . This is my life.”