On the Staging of Diversity : San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre has become a major force in promoting multicultural theater. With an in-house specialist doing translations and commissioning new works, it has moved beyond quota programming

Not long ago, most theaters were content to confine themselves to the work of well-known white males. Nowadays, multiculturalism is the stuff of subscription ticket sales.

Many theaters have so embraced the gospel of diversity that some have special staffers to keep an eye on progress. These people seek out scripts and artists to bring to the attention of artistic directors, as well as keep tabs on casting and serve as in-house consciences on cultural matters.

These specialists’ efforts are often stymied by understaffing or entrenched theaters’ trepidation about what an aging core of ticket buyers will come to see. But equally often, these point people have been able to instigate change.

A case in particular is the upcoming Old Globe Theatre production of Uruguayan playwrights Mercedes Rein and Jorge Curi’s “Ballad of the Blacksmith,” directed by Rene Buch, which begins previews in San Diego on Friday.

The Old Globe’s multicultural associate and literary manager, Raul Moncada, translated the play, which has a half-Latino, half-Anglo cast featuring noted Puerto Rican actress Miriam Colon. Director Buch hails from New York’s acclaimed Repertorio Espanol.

For years, the Globe was thought of as stodgy and conservative. But, in fact, it has often led the pack when it comes to mixing things up, quietly taking steps that Southern California’s three other major (full-time League of Regional Theatre) producing stages--the Mark Taper Forum, South Coast Repertory Theatre and the La Jolla Playhouse--have, in some ways, been slower to follow (more on the other three later).

Beyond the Globe’s longstanding relationships with such artists as Velina Hasu Houston, and Moncada’s increasingly pivotal role at the theater, Old Globe Artistic Director Jack O’Brien has also broken with common practice by hiring nonwhite artists such as African-American directors Benny Sato Ambush and Sheldon Epps to direct what have traditionally been regarded as “white” plays--works that are not rooted in the multicultural movement.

The Globe also differs from most other houses with diversity programs, because Moncada’s mandate isn’t limited by his expertise in Latino work.

“At one point, the Globe was referred to as ‘lily white,’ ” Moncada acknowledges. “But they had the focus in the right place from the beginning (of their multicultural efforts), which was integration of the system, not the favoring of one ethnic group over another. It’s multicultural as opposed to bicultural. Everybody has an equal chance.”

Yet Moncada is still ambivalent about the success of institutional diversity in general, a field that is currently dominated by Latino males. “It’s succeeded in that people have opened up to seeing that there is great talent out there,” he says. However, he notes, “It partially has failed in the forcefulness of the political correctness doctrine, where people were being painted into a corner to bring actors or playwrights of one color or another into a role, whether they can be the best actor for that part or not. Doing the right thing doesn’t necessarily have to be doing the PC thing.”

Sometimes plays are rushed into production: “I don’t think they’re doing that actor or that playwright a favor, if they’re not ready to play the role or if that piece is not ready to be presented. One of the double-edged swords of what’s happened is the solicitation of writers. It’s wonderful that a lot of plays have been commissioned of writers of color, but often they get pushed to the stage so fast that they’re not ready. You end up with a lot of 6 1/2-month babies, and there’s no incubator.”

The efforts made by the Globe, South Coast Repertory, the La Jolla Playhouse, the Mark Taper Forum and key smaller theaters are indicative of changes being made throughout the arts world, as organizations attempt to reflect the country’s changing demographics. Theater, though, is among the mediums that have been moving most quickly to accommodate these changes. And Southern California theaters especially are breaking ground.

You’ve got to nab Moncada on the fly. It’s a typically crazy Wednesday, and he’s careening from “Ballad of the Blacksmith” rehearsals on the outdoor festival stage, to a literary committee meeting, to San Diego’s Lindbergh Field airport, to a dinner interview and back to the airport again to pick up a directing intern.

The flurry of activity comes with the hat--or hats--that Moncada wears at the Globe. Although only in official possession of two institutional job titles, he nonetheless floats within the organization as a kind of all-purpose multicultural maven: finding and translating scripts, giving feedback wherever needed, suggesting culturally diverse appointments to this or that committee, helping with casting and participating in the production process.

Moncada, a native Cuban, left the island just before the missile crisis in 1962 and was naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 1986. He studied acting at the University of Illinois and the Chicago Drama Workshop. After his schooling, he did a stint in New York, where he hooked up with Repertorio Espanol and its director, Rene Buch. That eventually led Moncada to a job with the Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre, founded and directed by Colon.

So the production process of the Globe’s “Ballad of the Blacksmith” is both a happy reunion for Moncada and an example of how he has been able to bring talent into the fold. “For me to have them both here is a perfect circle,” he says. “I was hoping to bring Rene here for the last seven years, and it took finally having Jack (O’Brien) meet him and see a production of his in New York. Jack came back raving about it.”

Moncada stage-managed and directed in Chicago for 20 years. After a move to California, he began stage-managing Globe productions in the mid-’80s, and he has directed the bicultural outreach program Teatro Meta since 1986. Supported by a Ford Foundation grant to the Globe, Moncada’s initial mandate, in keeping with the terms of the grant, was to “try to incorporate Latino playwrights and artists into the Globe and educate the staff as to multicultural sensibilities,” Moncada says. “That was the era when political correctness as a movement was beginning to peak.”

One of the things Moncada has done since joining the Globe is to go on a script hunt to Latin America, backed by financing from the private international foundation known as Partners for the Americas.

It was there that he found many of the works he has since translated, including Robert M. Cossa’s “The Granny” (“La Nona”), perhaps Moncada’s best-known translation, which has been staged at the Globe and in other cities throughout the United States. Rein and Curi’s “Ballad of the Blacksmith” is another play Moncada unearthed in Latin America. The story is based on an old folk tale about a man who is granted three wishes.

One offshoot of the multiculturalism trend has been an upsurge in interest in the kind of translating that Moncada has been doing. When Moncada first set out to introduce Latin American work into the Globe repertory, though, he was looking to find extant translations, not to do them himself.

Jorge Huerta, one of the creators of the Teatro Meta program and a well-known scholar and director, was advising the Globe program in the mid-1980s when Moncada first began to look for translations. When Moncada asked for his help, Huerta suggested that Moncada try his hand at the craft. “The translations that there were were so bad, he said, ‘You do one,’ ” Moncada recalls. “Then we got into the battle of academia.

“I would take liberties with the phrases, and he’d say, ‘If you publish, they’ll laugh you out of the universities.’ But I was translating for actors, not for universities. And that’s the theory of my approach.”

Moncada believes that the predominance of translations by university professors is one reason Latin American drama has never really gotten a foothold in the United States.

“Professors are either so involved in the political polemic or the language precision that when they translate it ends up sounding Martian,” he says. “The theater is a living art. I don’t believe in crucifying it that way.”

Moncada’s goal in translations is to expand upon what he is accomplishing at the Globe. “One of the things that Rene has been telling people in marketing is this is not a quaint little folksy tale,” he says of director Buch. “It happens to have been written by Uruguayan playwrights, but you’re not selling the Ibsen play as a foreign piece and you’re not selling Shakespeare as an English piece. The objective from the start has been to help Latin American playwrights find their spot in world theater in English on this side of the border.”

Moncada’s colleagues at other major theaters have similar goals. While they too are interested in bringing the work of Latin American writers to mainstreams stages, they are often equally devoted to developing plays by American Latinos.

Jose Cruz Gonzalez is literary associate and director of the Hispanic Playwrights Project at Costa Mesa’s South Coast Repertory. Gonzalez, a director and playwright who is also on the faculty at Cal State L.A., is the California-born son of Calexico migrant workers.

Gonzalez first came to South Coast in 1984, when he was completing his graduate studies at UC Irvine. In 1985, he began working full time at the theater as a directing intern, in a position funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

He created his own niche: “My interest was Latino work--especially bringing the development of new work and Latino work together--and in 1986 (that became) the HPP,” he says. “The whole purpose is to develop projects by Latinos, with the idea of bringing those works to the next step of (having the playwrights hear) the plays out loud with actors, directors and dramaturges.”

The project, generally regarded as one of the most successful of its kind, had 109 manuscripts submitted during its first year, of which eight were selected to be developed (all of the plays are produced in English). Now in its eighth year, the HPP, which caters to U.S. playwrights, has attracted about 800 submissions from writers nationwide. The process, which culminates in staged readings every August, has led, at last count, to 18 full productions of HPP plays, including four South Coast stagings.

Beyond readings and productions, South Coast’s HPP has helped open up inter- and intra-theater communications.

“The project has helped open doors (to writing and acting talent) that I don’t know if the theater knew how to open,” Gonzalez says. “Over the years, we’ve become a resource for other theaters in terms of Latino talent.”

South Coast Repertory also has educational, outreach and touring programs that target low-income and minority students. Latino writers in particular have been commissioned to write scripts for these touring companies. The theater also has commissioned playwright Octavio Solis to write a Christmas show, for what the theater hopes will be an annual Latino production, on the second stage, probably beginning in the 1994 season.

The La Jolla Playhouse also has an education and outreach department, directed by Leslie Brauman, that serves a number of low-income and minority communities. One branch of the program, for instance, is based in the predominantly African-American neighborhood of Southeast San Diego.

La Jolla, which unlike the three other major stages only presents main-stage shows from fall to spring, has no program director for multiculturalism, or labs to develop plays from specific ethnic groups. The theater has, however, produced a number of works, such as last season’s “Marisol” by Jose Rivera, by or about African-American and Latino artists and has also pursued non-traditional casting.

In Los Angeles, the city that author David Rieff has called “the capital of the Third World,” the late Los Angeles Theatre Center was known, in part, for its collection of labs devoted to Latino, African-American, Asian-American and women artists.

The Latino Theatre Lab, formerly of LATC, is one group whose projects will be supported by a recent $1.47-million grant from the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund to the Mark Taper Forum. (The Taper is the Latino Lab’s fiscal receiver, although the group is not a Taper lab.) The money is earmarked for the theater’s cultivation of Latino audiences.

The Taper also has an Asian Pacific Reading Series, backed by the Asian-Pacific American Friends of the Center Theatre Group, a committee comprising artists and community leaders, and it has ethnically diverse participants in its Mentor Program for playwrights and typically includes a spectrum of artists in its New Works Festival. The Improvisational Theater Project and the Young Audiences Project, both guided by the Taper’s Josephine Ramirez, also work toward similar goals.

Major non-League of Regional Theater houses such as the San Diego Repertory Theatre, which has been extremely active in multicultural programming, or the Pasadena Playhouse, which has just dabbled in the field, have also had varying degrees of success in the field.

The different strategies pursued by the Old Globe, South Coast Rep, the La Jolla Playhouse and the Taper reflect continuing discussions within the arts world over how best to open things up to new participants.

That La Jolla, for instance, has no special labs or point people on the beat is not necessarily an indication of a lesser commitment. Such labs can have the effect of ghettoizing nonwhite artists, rather than facilitating integration. They can also pigeonhole artists who would prefer not to be defined first and foremost by their ethnicity. LATC’s labs, for example, were often accused by artists and concerned others of colonialism, especially because all of the lab leaders were ultimately answerable to former Artistic Director Bill Bushnell.

Those involved also differ over whether the mainstream approach to multiculturalism is the best one. For many established institutions, multiculturalism often means the integration and expansion of audiences, adding people of color to the masthead and tossing a couple of nonwhite plays into the season.

Theaters have been getting major grants to pursue these goals for several years now--the Taper’s Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest grant being just one instance. But some, such as the American Conservatory Theatre’s Benny Sato Ambush, have argued that an equal amount of funding ought to go to culturally specific organizations, the places that have for years been developing the very audiences the mainstreams are now so hot to attract. (As part of the same Wallace-Reader’s Digest grant cycle as the Taper’s bequest, the Bilingual Foundation of the Arts will receive $150,000.)

Then too there is the problem of how truly “multi” the multiculturalism is. Most of the people in positions of institutional power in this arena in California theaters are Latino males. African-American work--albeit predominantly period musicals--was the first to make inroads in the regional and commercial theater repertory, and Latinos are seeing similar advances.

But Asian-Americans and American Indians have been left relatively in the lurch at these larger theaters. And with the increased attention to the politics of race, both class and gender have taken a back seat lately, as women writers and directors continue to be markedly underrepresented on the nation’s stages.

Still, artists like Moncada see their presence and accomplishments as a big step in the right direction.

“In Southern California, we’re way ahead of the rest of the country in terms of multiculturalism in theater, especially for Latinos,” he says. “I’m seeing the walls fall left and right in the West. It’s great as long as we don’t get trapped into quotas that work against the artists themselves.”