THEATER / JAN HERMAN : Director Discusses the Political Web of ‘Spider Woman’ : As he sees it, David Chambers says, the drama involves ‘the fundamental root of leftism,’ a fusion of spiritual passion and humanistic politics.

David Chambers, who describes himself as “a straight white middle-class male,” was seated the other day in a white middle-class restaurant here explaining why he had just staged a prison play by a Latino author about a Marxist revolutionary and his homosexual cellmate.

The play, Manuel Puig’s “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” opened over the weekend on the Second Stage at South Coast Repertory, a theater company that caters almost exclusively to a straight white middle-class audience and is run by straight white middle-class leadership. The 45-year-old director was talking, moreover, to a straight white middle-class reporter.

“I’m very aware of the contradictions,” Chambers said. “While my politics have leftist leanings, I’m very mainstream. I’m not a radical gay man. I fall in a very acceptable category. Staying at the Beverly Heritage Hotel and working at South Coast are not particularly radical activities. But I suppose I see myself on some level as a warrior within the mainstream for the protection of people and issues very far to the left of me.”

Besides, he added, “I generally don’t do plays with tablecloths in them, as it were, in which a bunch of people sit around debating the proverbial truths of their lives disconnected from a larger social framework.”

Theatergoers who have seen Chambers’ previous work at SCR--”Going for Gold” and “Search and Destroy”--probably would agree. Like them or not, both avoided the sort of kitchen-sink family drama that characterizes much traditional American theater.

Moreover, the framework to which Chambers refers--as embodied by “Kiss of the Spider Woman”--is not the usual one for suburban audiences. It involves what he calls “the fundamental root of leftism”--which he sees as a fusion of spiritual passion and humanistic politics too easily forgotten by those on the left who are lost in abstract dogma, and certainly ignored by those on the right who perceive it as a threat.

“I think we are all reveling in a misconception that the collapse of Eastern European Communism is the collapse of Marxism,” Chambers said. “It’s not over. And that’s a point we should all be aware of, no matter what political stripe we are. Marx and Lenin both predicted there would be many generations of reformation of the communist ideal. I cannot for a moment believe that capitalism has triumphed. That’s a self-congratulatory bath.”

As for the homoerotic component of “Spider Woman,” Chambers asserts that Puig’s intention is not to titillate either straight or gay theatergoers. The eventual act of sex between the straight Marxist revolutionary Valentin (John Snyder) and the gay window dresser Molina (Richard Frank) is meant, he says, as an emblem of grace. In their mutual affection, both characters transcend their own limitations as well as the repressions of a brutal regime and discover the dignity of love.

“What our society believes is that homosexuality is a disease and that leftist politics is a substitution for anger at your mother and father,” said Chambers, who teaches at the Yale School of Drama and chairs a theater committee of the National Endowment for the Arts. “We revel in those myths. Puig is saying, ‘No.’ It is very possible to be both gay and leftist from a humanistic stance. These are credible positions to take.

“When politicians on the floor of the Congress are freely allowed to use words that are the homophobic equivalent of nigger , as happened last year during the NEA blowup,” he continued, “then we are living in an openly homophobic society. There is an attempt to cleanse the body politic, to cauterize and sanitize it, to slice out of society something these politicians consider a disease.

“And that is not so far away from what has happened to Molina, who has been expelled and incarcerated because he is gay. We are no more humane and compassionate in our right-wing argument than Peronist Argentina.”

Now that he has resurrected the stage version of “Kiss of the Spider Woman” (the first time he did it was at the Yale Repertory Theatre in 1988), Chambers is looking toward late February and his next SCR project. He will direct a private workshop reading of a musical he is writing with composer Mel Marvin. They are adapting Henry Fielding’s 1730 comedy “The Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great,” with the hope of one day producing it at SCR.

The aim of the workshop, says Chambers, is “to catch the high points” and find the proper style for the musical, which they’ve titled “Tom Thumb: The Tragedy of Tragedies.” He believes that the style should fall somewhere between Brecht and Monty Python “with a stronger leaning toward Monty Python.” At the same time, he added, “it can’t be too silly, because in its day ‘Tom Thumb’ was rather vicious. It took some pretty heavy swipes. We’re trying to find out how we can take some swipes with it now.”

Given Fielding’s theme and Chambers’ outlook--he counts himself among the small minority opposed to the Persian Gulf War--that should not be hard to do. “Tom Thumb” turns, after all, on the recognition that we live in a corrupt, cynical world undermined by weakness and corroded by self-deception.

“Enter midget, who is treated like a giant,” Chambers said. “We are not immune to this. We treat our bankrupt financiers like giants. We have a moral midget for vice president and another for president. Brecht’s maxim is what our musical is more or less about: ‘Pity the nation that needs a leader.’ ”

“Kiss of the Spider Woman” continues through Feb. 24 on the Second Stage at South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Curtain: Tuesdays to Saturdays at 8:30 p.m.; Sundays at 8 p.m., with Saturday and Sunday matinees at 3. Tickets: $22 to $29. Information: (714) 957-4033.