THEATER : Taking on the ‘Bad Guys’ : ‘Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood’ inspires satire on a Latino TV personality who battles the network’s producers.

The story of San Francisco-based El Teatro de la Esperanza (Theatre of Hope) is one of survival--and sometimes of turning near-failure into the stuff of a play.

On the surface, “Rosario’s Barrio,” the satire by El Teatro artistic director Rodrigo Duarte Clark, playing Saturday at Cal State Northridge’s Campus Theatre, spoofs the venerable “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.” Actually, something more immediate to Clark and his company inspired the play’s battle between children’s TV show host Mister Rosario (played by David Terminal) and his bossy producers.

“It was August of last year when Ric Salinas of Culture Clash gave one of our actors a tape of the pilot Culture Clash was doing for the Fox TV network,” Clark said by phone after a performance at El Camino College in Torrance. The acclaimed comedy trio’s members often worked with El Teatro and come out of the same Mission District neighborhood where the theater has been based since 1987. They seemed on the verge of getting a Latino-oriented show on the air after many years with hardly any Latino representation on the commercial networks. But disputes with Fox producers, plus hints that Culture Clash was being asked to surrender script control, had led to postponing the show, perhaps permanently.

“We saw the pilot tape,” Clark said, “and sort of borrowed elements from the situation they were going through. A lot of Latino eyes were looking at what was going on, and it didn’t look good.”

So Clark found the catalyst for his comedy about how a concerned Latino TV personality does battle with the bad guys running the TV network. And eventually, “Culture Clash” is on the air--unadulterated, and with excellent ratings in the bargain.

San Francisco Chronicle critic Steven Winn has noted about “Rosario’s Barrio” that “folded into this playful send-up of a TV icon is an indictment of corporate American cynicism that’s as tough on PBS as it is on the Nestle chocolate and baby formula empire.”

It seems that Culture Clash’s success hasn’t mollified El Teatro’s political aim, pointed at the same targets the company was aiming for when it was founded on the UC Santa Barbara campus in 1970.

Typical of “Rosario’s” satirical bite are sequences on the American Indian view of Christopher Columbus and a cocaine dealer taking refuge in a Mission District living room.

“I kind of admire Mister Rogers, and my kids watch him all the time,” the 44-year-old writer-director said. “We’re not bashing him at all, but want to refer to a reality of urban life that isn’t like Mister Rogers’ softer approach.”

Surprisingly, given the traditionally strong Latino involvement in CSUN cultural life, this marks El Teatro’s first visit to the campus.

“I’m not sure why that is,” Clark said. “But we’ve been just about everywhere else in the Valley--Pierce, Valley College. Touring has provided us with important revenue, and we’re touring more now--12 weeks a year--than ever before,” with stops in Santa Ana and Boulder, Colo., after Northridge.

Indeed, for this company that has turned survival into an art form, prospering while many other Bay Area companies such as the Eureka Theatre have folded--and while L. A. Latino artists struggle for more of the theatrical pie--is something to cherish.

“It would be nice to have more money or a nicer theater,” Clark said. “But we can pick and choose the work we want to do. I wouldn’t trade that kind of independence for anything.”

WHERE AND WHEN

What: “Rosario’s Barrio” at Cal State Northridge’s Campus Theatre, 18111 Nordhoff St.

Hours: 8 p.m. Saturday.

Price: $3 to $10.

Call: (818) 885-2488.