South Coast Repertory Hosts a Culture Bash : Benefit: Ricardo Montalban will add touch of glitter to ‘Una Noche del Teatro,’ featuring music and comedy troupes.

They’re calling it the “party of the people” but it has nothing to do with Ross Perot, the Democratic Party, Bill Clinton’s visit to the county Sunday or the presidential election.

The event, officially titled “Una Noche del Teatro” and already sold out, is being held tonight at South Coast Repertory. It is expected to raise about $20,000 for two SCR programs: the Hispanic Playwrights Project and the Neighborhood Conservatory.

“We’re going to have a wonderful evening--about five hours’ worth of music, laughter, comedy theater and lots of food,” says Jose Cruz Gonzales, who has headed the playwrights project since its inception in 1986.

Entertainers will include the Latin jazz band Minimum 3 with fluegelhornist Tony Guerrero of Santa Ana, and three Latino comedy troupes: Culture Clash, Chicano Secret Service and Latins Anonymous.

Adding a touch of Hollywood glitter to the party will be Ricardo Montalban, who will serve as one of the three hosts of the evening, with Ada Maris and Tony Plana. Gonzales plays down the celebrity glamour that Montalban represents. But he readily notes that Montalban’s association with the fund-raising benefit--as well as that of the event’s honorary chairman, Raul Julia--can only help publicize programs that have been kept “a pretty good secret.” And, he emphasized in an interview this week, “we don’t want it to be kept a secret any more.”

The Neighborhood Conservatory is an outreach program offering free drama instruction to children of all cultural heritages throughout the county. Acting teachers are sent into communities where the need is deemed greatest to give weekly classes during the school year.

The Hispanic Playwrights Project brings emerging Latino writers to SCR every summer from all over the country to help them develop their scripts in private workshops and public readings. This summer’s gathering, budgeted at $25,000, will begin Tuesday and run through Aug. 8.

“Over the last seven years we’ve had close to 640 plays submitted,” said Gonzales, 35, a Huntington Beach resident with a master of fine arts degree in directing from UC Irvine. “Of those, 50 have been workshopped and, at last count, 17 have gotten productions around the country or here at South Coast. Some have had multiple productions.”

Julia, who will not be at tonight’s party because he is off working in Spain, could not be reached for his comments. But Montalban said the significance of the event is underscored for him chiefly because of the roles new Latino plays will generate for Latino actors.

“You realize that what is not on the page is not on the stage,” said Montalban, who was born in Mexico and began making movies in Hollywood during the late 1940s. “The one thing we Latinos simply neglected for a long time was to encourage our young men and women to turn to writing. And therefore our roles have reflected that.

“I don’t think others know our heartbeat as we do ourselves,” he added in an interview earlier this week. “That’s why I applaud this movement and stand behind it. Young Latino playwrights are vitally important to our culture.”

Montalban, who won an Emmy Award in 1978 for portraying an Indian on television in “How the West Was Won,” gained his widest exposure from 1978 to 1984 as the star of “Fantasy Island,” the TV series in which he played the island’s suave and mysterious owner.

He said that ever since coming to the United States in 1945--Montalban is a graduate of Los Angeles’ Fairfax High School--he was keenly aware of a lack of dignified roles for Latino actors.

“At the beginning, I noticed there were many of us, especially Mexicans, working as bandits and peons,” recalled Montalban, who was stereotyped as “the Latin lover” in his early films. “There were a lot of roles of that sort. I don’t think it was due to malice.

“At the time I asked a lot of questions and talked to many writers and producers. I found it was due to ignorance. They thought these kinds of characters were colorful. A bandit was colorful. A gigolo was colorful. But a doctor was not. A lawyer was not. Well, things have improved.”

Not, however, without a conscious effort. As recently as the mid-1980s, for example, SCR had trouble connecting with Latino artists, let alone inviting Latinos onto the board of directors.

“I remember when we were working in 1985 on ‘Before I Got My Eye Put Out,’ a play by Timothy Mason,” Gonzales said. “There was a call for two Latino characters. Our theater people went around wondering, ‘Where are we going to get the actors?’ We had to go out looking for them.

“Now we’ve become a resource center for Latino artists--not only for us but for other theaters. Because of the playwrights program, we know who the artists are, and they know who we are. That’s been a really big change.”

Gonzales pointed out, too, that the Hispanic Playwrights Program also has been a resource for SCR policy makers by helping to funnel members of its advisory committee onto the SCR board of directors in recent years.

But what excites him most, for the moment, is what he calls “the harvest.”

“We have a really good crop of plays this year,” Gonzales said.

“Una Noche del Teatro” is sold out. But the seventh annual Hispanic Playwrights Program at SCR, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa, will feature readings of “Cocks Have Claws and Wings to Fly” by Amparo Garcia (Aug. 7 at 7:30 p.m.), “Bitter Homes and Gardens” by Luis Alfaro (Aug. 8 at 2:30 p.m.) and “Kuba” by Roger Schirra (Aug. 8 at 7:30 p.m.). $2 to $6. (714) 957-4033.