Writing Is Finally Paying Off for Teamster : Stage: Robert Herrera’s latest play will be performed at a Chicano festival in Monterey Park later this month.

The muse arrived, Robert Herrera says, while he was watching a football game and drinking a beer.

“Some long-suppressed gene kicked in and said, ‘Hey you, write a play!’ ” the 51-year-old Covina resident recalls of that fateful Sunday six years ago. “Just like that, I was transformed from a middle-aged, middle-class, very settled taxpaying working stiff into a struggling Chicano playwright.”

The struggle is paying off. His latest work will be featured this month at East Los Angeles College in Monterey Park as part of the Chicano Poets and Playwrights Festival. The festival, which starts June 22, will feature readings by several poets and playwrights, plus full productions of two one-act plays, including Herrera’s newest comedy, “Pinche Louie.”

Still a collection manager for a trucking company by day, and longtime member of the Teamsters Union, Herrera saw his first play when he was 32.

“It was so amazing to me,” Herrera says, “the idea of creating a whole world from my imagination.”

But Herrera has created more than a world of make-believe. He has created a new world for himself.

Herrera’s wife of 27 years was sick with cancer and his two children were grown and out of the house when he first immersed himself in the theater. His wife, Gloria, died about two years ago; but now, the gray-haired, mustached playwright has an extended family--a motley crew of Latino playwrights, actors, directors and artists.

“I liked Bob as soon as we met because he sought out a woman to direct his play,” said Rosemary Ramos as she, Herrera and actress Leonora Uribe sat around Ramos’ dining room table last week, drinking champagne and reading through “Pinche Louie” for the first time.

“That told me a lot about him,” said Ramos, whose directing reputation in Latino theater circles led Herrera to offer her the job. “I felt like he was a brother, and I didn’t even know him.”

At least once a year, Herrera assembles a cast and crew and finances at least one of the handful of plays he writes--all of which are comedies.

“I know how to make Chicanos laugh because I understand our culture,” Herrera says. “I amplify the customs until they seem ridiculous. I let people laugh at themselves.”

Herrera says he has no trouble finding a troupe of volunteers to help him make his Latino audiences laugh. “There is a lot of energy in the Chicano community right now,” he says. “It’s bubbling up and looking for expression.”

His newest play is about a street-wise barrio girl who grows up and becomes a lawyer, turning into a Chicana yuppie, or “Chuppie.” When one of her “homeboys” is murdered, she returns to the barrio to find his killer.

Herrera’s first play, “Factotum,” was produced by Nosotros, a nonprofit organization that supports Latino art.

His other works include “Tonight in the City,” a musical comedy written with songwriter Ron Catono and produced for the Los Angeles Fringe Festival. “The Supreme Bean” and “the Taco of Death” were performed at the Haunted Studio Theater in Hollywood. The latter play was a finalist in the 1989 Chicano TheaterWorks play-writing competition at Plaza De La Raza Cultural Center for Arts and Education.

Herrera also wrote “The Midgets of East L.A.,” a situation comedy about two Latino men on the bottom rung of the entertainment industry, which appeared on Buenavision Cable television.

Although his work has been received favorably by the Latin media, including La Opinion, a review last year of “The Taco of Death” by T. H. McCulloh in The Times berated the playwright’s “raunchy humor” and said the work had a “sophomorically comic plot.”

Herrera, angry because the mostly Chicano audience roared throughout the play, wrote back: “Why The Times would send a Connecticut Yankee to review a Chicano play is beyond me.”

Still, Herrera says he doesn’t write for the reviews or because he wants to express himself culturally. “I do it for fun,” he says.

Indeed, Herrera won’t send his scripts to movie studios, which he says often seek minority writers. “I’m afraid I would get the job,” Herrera says. “It would cease to be fun.”

Chicano Poets and Playwrights Festival The festival will be held at East Los Angeles College’s Little Theater, 1301 Brooklyn Ave., Monterey Park.

Poetry and play readings will take place June 22, 23, 29 and 30. There will be full productions of two one-act plays, Robert Herrera’s “Pinche Louie” and David Nava Monreal’s “Narcissism.” The plays will staged each Friday and Saturday in July.

Tickets for all events are $5 at the door. Call Naomi Quinones at (818) 284-4929 for more information.