THEATER : A Little Touch of ‘Nostalgia’ Adds to Her Second Life : Yareli Arizmendi’s return to Mexico for ‘Like Water for Chocolate’ inspires a solo stage work.

Yareli Arizmendi could be a feminist version of Xipetotec, the Aztec god of rejuve nation who sheds his own skin and slips into that of another.

Born in Mexico and schooled in the United States, she’s at home in both cultures. But Arizmendi also has another dual life: She is both a solo performer, working in small venues for little or no money, and a film and television actress.

Best known for her portrayal of the frumpy older sister Rosaura in Alfonso Arau’s critically acclaimed film “Like Water for Chocolate,” Arizmendi is also recognized on the avant-garde circuit for her satiric, politically engaged performance art.

The bifurcation comes naturally to one who’s long been accustomed to moving back and forth between worlds. “I always feel like I have to be in two or more places or in two or more realities,” says the vivacious and loquacious Arizmendi, 29, seated in the front room of the Melrose area home she shares with her husband, noted rock en Espan~ol musician Sergio Arau (son of filmmaker Arau).

“I don’t feel comfortable committing to one thing,” continues the actress, who’s noticeably slimmer and more alluring than the wallflower she played in the film. “I want to do my own work because I have control of it, and then there’s this whole other Hollywood thing of gaining access to a wider audience.”

While the 1992 Arau film (released in the U.S. in 1993) established her as a screen actress, Arizmendi has never performed her own material in Los Angeles --until now. The L.A. premiere of her “Nostalgia Maldita: 1-900 Mexico (A StairMaster Piece)” opens Friday as the final event in the Loco Motion series at the Los Angeles Theatre Center, along with actress Rose Portillo’s “Know Your Place,” directed by Sylvia Morales. The double bill is presented by About Productions.

Arizmendi’s two careers aren’t as separate as they might first appear: Her comedic solo, directed by Luis Torner, grew out of the actress’s experience making the Arau film on location in Mexico.

In a sense, the show is an exploration of the adage that you can’t go home again. “That’s where the show comes out of, that whole experience of going back to a mythic place that you had in your brain,” says Arizmendi. “I had this whole myth-fantasy of returning to my place of origin.”

But the actress learned that such dreams seldom hold up in the light of day. “That was a very painful moment in 1992, understanding that I really could no longer belong to Mexico City,” she says. “All those years I had been outside of Mexico City [living] with the memory of Mexico.”

When the solo was performed as a work-in-progress in 1993 at downtown San Diego’s Cafe Cinema, the San Diego Union-Tribune’s Michael Phillips said: “. . . At its best, ‘Nostalgia Maldita’ hits two or more notes at once, getting at issues of nostalgia and loss and cultural illusions. . . .”

The sentiment seems natural, since, in many ways, Arizmendi has had a life full of leaving.

Born in Mexico City, her parents divorced when she was young. She attended the American School as a child and was sent, at 15, to the Benedictine-run Moorhill Prep School in Atchison, Kan.

From there, Arizmendi went on to study both theater and the social sciences at the University of California, San Diego, where she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in political science in 1986.

Prompted in part by theater professor Jorge Huerta, Arizmendi also discovered Chicano theater during those years. “I had no idea who [Teatro Campesino founder, playwright and film director] Luis Valdez was and I didn’t know anything about the whole idea of political theater,” she says.

That world gave her a new way to understand her own hybrid background. “Through the Chicanos’ eyes, I was able to see another Mexico,” she says. “The first time I learned a corrido [Mexican folk ballad] was because of Chicano theater. I only knew American pop songs.”

After Arizmendi graduated, she entered the UCSD theater department’s MFA program to study acting. Soon, she also became involved with the politically charged Border Arts Workshop and performance artist Guillermo Gomez Pen~a.

She created her own first solo, “From Dickocracy to Matriarchy: A Natural Development,” in 1989. But her performance career was temporarily put on hold in 1990 when “Like Water for Chocolate” came along.

Arizmendi’s involvement with “Like Water for Chocolate” began when author Laura Esquivel, whom Arizmendi knew through Arizmendi’s Mexico City-based professor/book critic mother, asked her to translate the screenplay of the best-selling book into English. Esquivel, who at the time was married to Alfonso Arau, was hoping to secure financing for the film her then-husband would direct. (Esquivel and Alfonso Arau have since divorced, with Esquivel suing Arau for proceeds from the film.)

Arizmendi completed the translation in three days. Later on, Esquivel suggested that Arizmendi audition for a role in the film, which she did, winning the part of Rosaura.

‘L ike Water for Chocolate,” set in Mexico in 1910, centers on the youngest of three sisters, Tita, whom tradition requires to forgo marriage. Her boyfriend marries Tita’s older sister, Rosaura (Arizmendi), in order to stay near Tita--and strange things begin to happen.

The film didn’t just provide Arizmendi with a screen husband and a professional breakthrough, it also led her to her real-life mate. She and Sergio--the filmmaker’s son from a marriage prior to Esquivel--met and married while Arizmendi was in Mexico working on the movie.

At first, the couple stayed in Mexico, though Arizmendi wasn’t happy there. “I became exasperated,” she says. “It’s difficult to understand the cultural codes--when ‘yes’ means ‘yes’ and when ‘yes’ means ‘no.’ I would come home crying from the bank and Sergio couldn’t understand why.”

They knew they had to leave. “I no longer belonged cleanly and neatly in Mexico City, unless I was willing to totally change my expectations,” says Arizmendi. “The things that I want to do with my life--have a career as an actress and be an intellectual--I cannot get Mexico to let me do.”

She couldn’t get her career going in Mexico, partly because she lacked the kind of affiliations that lead to work. “Everything is connections,” she says. “I needed a job and I couldn’t find it because I had not spent those formative years in Mexico, making those connections in my generation.”

Arizmendi was offered a teaching post at Cal State San Marcos and the couple moved to San Diego in 1992. But they soon found they were spending too much time commuting to Los Angeles, so they moved again last August.

Paradoxically, because she appeared in a popular Mexican film, people in L.A. have often taken Arizmendi for a stranger to the U.S. “It’s ironic: Because of ‘Like Water for Chocolate,’ I’m sort of recognized in the United States as a Mexican actor. Very seldom do people know that I’ve been here,” says the actress, who also appeared in the 1994 made-for-TV movie “The Cisco Kid.”

Yet as difficult and aggravating as the process of cultural relocation may be at times, Arizmendi has also found it rewarding. To reinforce that point, she offers a characteristically comic metaphor: “When you wax your legs, it’s so violent, you rip the hairs out,” she says. “Once, somebody was saying ‘It’s so painful, I can’t believe you women do that.’ But you know, the roots get weaker. And so the more you do it, the less it hurts. I thought, ‘Is that not a metaphor for your life, Yareli?’ The more you uproot yourself, the less painful it is.”

“NOSTALGIA MALDITA” and “KNOW YOUR PLACE,”Los Angeles Theatre Center, 514 S. Spring St., downtown. Dates: Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. Ends July 15. Price: $13. Phone: (213) 485-1681.