New Paint Job for ‘Wagon’ : Theater: Mexican-born director puts new spin on Starlight offering by playing up the multicultural history of the California Gold Rush.

William Virchis remembers his shock when Don and Bonnie Ward asked him to direct “Paint Your Wagon” for Starlight Musical Theatre.

“But I don’t like this play,” he remembers telling Starlight’s co-artistic directors.

“Then change it so it works for you,” Bonnie Ward remembers responding.

Virchis has made a lot of changes in the 1951 Lerner and Loewe show about the California Gold Rush that will open tonight at the Starlight Bowl. For Starlight patrons, the most obvious change will be its multicultural cast, Starlight’s first real venture in that direction.

The basic story, a tale of the settling of the American West, still is told in vignette form: Ben Rumson, a prospector with a serious case of wanderlust, strikes it rich during the Gold Rush of 1853; Ben tries to break up a romance between his daughter, Jennifer, and Julio, a Mexican prospector; Ben marries a wife auctioned off by a Mormon who passes through town.

But for the Mexican-born Virchis, the most important change in this production is in the character of Julio.

Traditionally, the part, with its endless “Si Signors,” has been an embarrassment to Latino performers. Which is why, the Wards say, they hired Virchis--because they thought he could invest the character with a dignity lacking in the original script.

“Julio is so. . .” Don Ward began to say backstage at the Starlight Bowl. “. . .demeaning,” Bonnie Ward said, finishing his sentence.

“We wanted a Hispanic director,” Don Ward added. “Bill was our only choice.”

The 48-year-old Virchis has been a strong force for Latino theater in San Diego during the last 20 years, co-founding Teatro Meta at the Old Globe Theatre, where he has directed several off-season and touring shows, co-directing “Life’s A Dream,” a bilingual work-in-progress for the San Diego Repertory Theatre and co-founding his own multicultural company, “Teatro Mascara Magica” with his longtime friend and directing partner UC San Diego professor Jorge Huerta.

Virchis is currently a professor and artistic producing director at Southwestern College, which he attended before earning his B.A. and M.A. at San Diego State University. At San Diego State, he worked with classmates Bob Hayes, who went on to star in “Airplane,” as well as Julie Kavner and Cleavon Little.

He has never worked with the Wards before, although he did direct “Pirates of Penzance” for Starlight in 1981, before the Wards assumed directorship of the theater. He had seen “Paint Your Wagon” and been offended by the versions where Julio, wearing a sombrero, comes out of a red-pepper-clad house saying “I tink” instead of “I think.”

Virchis refers to the movie version as “Paint Your Other Wagon;” in it, the producers thought so little of Julio that they cut him out entirely, replacing the Julio/Jennifer subplot with a love triangle involving Clint Eastwood, Lee Marvin and the Mormon woman.

Evidently Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe meant well when they wrote this show, produced just two years after “South Pacific” garnered acclaim for blasting racial prejudice. Lerner wrote in an article for the New York Times that, in the show, he tried to point out how badly Mexicans have been treated in a land that used to be theirs.

“California was bought from Mexico by the United States a very short time before the Gold Rush,” Lerner wrote. “High tax laws were passed to prevent Mexicans from buying property. Within the first 10 years there was an alarming number of anti-Mexican riots.”

Still, Lerner’s ideas aren’t well realized: Julio’s lines are skimpy; the script never develops his character. In the breach, most directors expect the actor to do the usual stereotypical business.

“I couldn’t do this show without changing Julio,” Virchis said in the narrow backstage area. “The people in my community would hang me.”

So Virchis began his alterations on page 1 of the script. Instead of opening with the burial scene in which gold is found, he opens with Julio walking out of his home, singing a Mexican folk song. Gold is discovered in the distance and the miners descend--for Virchis, that sets up the story as seen through Julio’s eyes.

To enhance Julio’s authenticity, Virchis has loaned the actor his own black cape to wear in the show, a traditional Mexican cape he was given by his grandmother. His Julio, unlike the original, can read and write. Virchis has even written new lines for him, stressing his dignity and pride in his heritage. When Jennifer asks him why he lives so far away from the rest of the miners, he tells her why he doesn’t trust gringos:

“Once my ancestors ruled this land, from Alta California to the great temples of the Aztecs. This was to be my legacy. Then, suddenly a few years ago they start fighting over a dusty wasteland called Texas. (snaps fingers) Y, pronto, I’m the foreigner. Winners make the rules, Mexicans make do.”

The reference to Texas evokes a painful memory for Virchis. Virchis, dark-haired, thin and passionately proud of his Mexican roots, was born in Mexico City, but raised in Chula Vista--where he still lives--from the age of 8. As a teen-ager, he and his family took a trip to Corpus Christi, Tex., only to be thrown out of a diner that would not serve Mexicans. A huge fight ensued, with his father and brother in the middle of it.

“It was the first time I realized that there were people in this country who didn’t like other people because of the color of their skin or the God they prayed to,” Virchis said. “One of the things that attracted me to theater is that theater was a place for everyone.”

Not long afterwards, back in San Diego, the 17-year-old Virchis was cast in the tiny part of Pancho in “A Night of the Iguana,” directed by Craig Noel at the Old Globe Theatre. The part, though stereotypical in its own way, changed his life because Noel shared his keen interest in Latino theater.

Virchis ultimately evolved into a director at the Old Globe. He directed a Spanish-language production of “The Taming of the Shrew” for the company that toured to Spanish-speaking areas. That, he says, “was the start of what I would call my professional life.

“I realized that there was a hunger for theater in these little towns.”

It is a hunger he has been trying to satisfy ever since with such Globe productions as “Over Easy,” performed in Spanglish, “Fanlights,” performed in English and in Spanish, and “La Pastorela,” a multicultural Christmas show last December.

Early this week, three days before opening night of “Paint Your Wagon,” Virchis was still not completely satisfied with his work on the show. He praised the Starlight administration, the cast and the crew, down to the high-school prop boy who painstakingly paints “mud” on the backpacks and pans worn by the miners in the play.

But he was still trying to make his peace with the sets--which were rented to save money. He would have preferred a plain wooden stage with simple props. And he was concerned that the planes that fly overhead during performances will disrupt the dramatic flow of the story he is trying to tell.

He also expressed concern about how “Paint Your Wagon” would affect Starlight’s financial situation. The company experienced a 35% drop in single-ticket sales this year, according to the company’s executive director Bud Franks. But so far, Franks said, advance sales for “Paint Your Wagon” have already exceeded the total sales of “No, No, Nanette.” An interview with Virchis in a Tijuana newspaper and Virchis’ promotion of the show on a Tijuana television talk show have helped, Franks believes. Starlight tapped into the Mexican audience with last year’s “Evita” and “Man of La Mancha;” this year, the company translated its season brochure into Spanish in order to continue to tap into that potentially lucrative market.

Still, even before the curtain opens, the changes Virchis has made in “Paint Your Wagon” are successful in the eyes of at least one person: Raymond Saar, the Los Angeles-based “Les Miz” alum who plays Julio.

“My first reaction was ‘I don’t know if I really want to do this,’ ” recalled Saar, a soft-spoken young man of Puerto Rican heritage, of being offered the part. “There were all these stereotypical quotes. The other characters kept calling him lazy and dirty, and here he is working hard and bringing in his laundry to stay clean.”

But the rewrites have made all the difference to this actor.

“It’s very important to me that people see Hispanic men as they are--as people with a lot of pride who work hard. This Julio has got pride, he’s got heart, he’s a man. He’s not some kid running around writing graffiti on walls.”

* Performances of “Paint Your Wagon” are 8 p.m. Tuesdays-Sundays through Aug. 9. Tickets are $14-$25 with 25% discounts for students and children. At the Starlight Bowl, Balboa Park, 544-7827 or 278-TIXS.