TV REVIEW : Ethnic Diversity Takes Center Stage

KPBS-TV (Channel 15) begins an open-ended, vaguely defined series on cultural diversity tonight with an hourlong talking heads program about the state of multicultural theater.

“Diversity: Center Stage,” airing at 10 p.m., is primarily a 45-minute panel discussion featuring representatives of San Diego’s theater community.

In other words, this program is not going to win any awards for imaginative television.

Beyond mentioning the series at the beginning and end of the program, it is unclear how “Diversity: Center Stage” reflects the ambitions of the title, “The Challenge of Diversity,” or the description of the series in promotional materials as a “comprehensive, long-term television and community out-reach project designed to promote intercultural understanding in San Diego.”

In addition to a series of occasional short spots highlighting different aspects of San Diego culture--from jazz guitarist Peter Sprague to scenes of immigrants taking the citizenship oath--KPBS hopes to present at least one program per month spotlighting cultural diversity. It will be an ongoing project, with no end date or set schedule.

“We need to educate people and that is not something that is going to be accomplished in one month or two months,” said KPBS Executive Producer for Public Affairs and Ethnic Issues Paul Espinosa, the producer and host for “Diversity: Center Stage.”

While the goals are impressive, thus far there is little that is compelling in the project’s schedule of activities. Next month’s entry will be an independently produced program, “In No One’s Shadow,” about the Filipino American community. It will be spiced with a locally produced panel discussion. In May, the station will simply roll out the two-year-old “Uneasy Neighbors” for a repeat showing.

At this point, the only other element in the project is a monthly flyer, which lists most of the KPBS schedule under “The Challenge of Diversity” banner.

“I don’t think (the series) is radically different from what we’ve always done,” said KPBS General Manager Paul Steen. “But now it is a little more centered.”

One could easily suggest that the project is simply KPBS counter-attacking recent charges that it is cutting back on ethnic-specific programming. Steen denied there is any correlation between the project and recent criticism.

“I think it is true that we have taken some heat of late,” Steen said. “Public broadcasting has never been good at promoting itself. If the title helps promote programs that are pertinent to various communities, then that’s terrific.”

But there is large gap between slapping a title on a project and making a real commitment to it, i.e. financially supporting it. If “Diversity: Center Stage” is a forerunner of things to come, KPBS is clearly trying to produce a result without spending much money. Talking head shows are the cheapest form of television programming.

Steen said the station’s commitment is in the form of people and production time, and setting Espinosa loose to focus on the project. Espinosa, who is notorious for attracting grant funds, said he hopes to attract financing from outside sources for future projects.

As panel discussion programs go, “Diversity: Center Stage” does raise some interesting and relevant points, including charges that the cultural roots of ethnic theater are being watered down and inserted by Anglos into Anglo concepts. Several speakers point out that nothing will change in the theater until more people of color are given positions of power and creative control.

The panel, sitting in director’s chairs on a barren stage, includes Doug Jacobs, artistic director of the San Diego Repertory Theater, Floyd Gaffney and Jorge Huerta of UC San Diego, Sylvia M’Lafi Thompson of the San Diego Commission for the Arts, and Phyllis S.K. Look of the Berkeley Repertory Theater.

To their credit, the panel manages to focus on reality, not on any grand theories about changing the viewing habits of American theatergoers. As they point out, the problem is in getting theaters to find the skill and entertainment value available in ethnic-specific productions, not in trying to artificially create an audience for them.

“You can’t put on one Asian play a year and say you’re going to appeal to Asian-Americans,” says Huerta, the co-director of the San Diego Repertory’s Teatro Sin Fronteras.

For ethnic theater to survive, groups must strike out on their own, Huerta said. Many theaters are making efforts to produce culturally diverse plays, but it is usually within the constraints and biases of the particular theater. In the process, the ethnic roots of the play often get pushed into forms more palpable to Anglos.

“I see us invited into their houses, but they never come into ours,” says Look. “I think we’re just being assimilated. We’re learning to do it their way.”

The discussion raises other timely questions, such as the issue of casting Anglos in ethnic roles, a debate which was revived recently over the Broadway casting of an English actor to play an Oriental role in “Miss Saigon,” and frequent complaints that Anglo critics are unqualified to review ethnic theater.

“We become very arrogant when we think that the only play we can feel comfortable in criticizing is a play done in English,” says Thompson, pointing out that few publications have bilingual critics.

Unfortunately, a talking heads program is only as interesting as what the person is saying at just that moment. Two boring monologues and the viewer glazes over. Some valid and interesting points can be lost in a sea of rhetoric.

If KPBS really wants to reach its lofty goals for “The Challenge of Diversity,” it will have to find a more engaging way to get its message across, and the station will have to make a real commitment to the project.