Women in Love

In “Luminarias,” a funny but conscientious comedy about searching for love, the sometimes thorny and complicated issues of dating and sex are presented with an honest wit.

Written by Evelina Fernandez and directed by her husband, UCLA theater professor Jose Luis Valenzuela, the play explores the lives of four Latina professional women in their 40s who have been friends since college. The four stylish women, Andrea (Juana Maria Valdivia), Irene (Miriam Peniche Lazo), Lilly (Marina Elizabeth Gonzalez) and Sofia (Raquel Sanchez Duarte), drink tequila at their old college gathering place, a fictional bar called Luminarias, and ruminate over their failed love lives.

“Luminarias” is an insider’s look at the realities some Latino families face when a person they love brings home someone of another race. Backed by the feel-good ‘70s Motown R&B; music of their generation, the women explore real-life obstacles such as overprotective siblings and lingering stereotypes held by older family members.

Fernandez and her husband, two of the co-founders of the Latino Theatre Company, brought “Luminarias” to CSUN at the behest of professors from the Chicano studies department. The group saw it last year at the Los Angeles Theatre Center and wanted it performed by young actors at their campus.

The play’s central character is Andrea, a divorced mother and lawyer, who not only must sort through her own prejudices but has to endure family members, including her teenage son, dissing her new Jewish boyfriend.

“A big issue in this play is how can you find love in a multiracial city and whether you stay in your own community or not,” Valenzuela said during a break from rehearsals at CSUN. “In this work my wife is trying to find out how racist we all are.”

Fernandez cleverly blends smart moments of humor with heavy racial truths. When Andrea’s big brother teases her Jewish boyfriend, Joseph, for having the same name as Jesus’ father in the Bible the boyfriend is shocked.

Instances like this, when idealized love clashes with cultural realities, are at the root of “Luminarias.” In her own family, Fernandez said two of her nieces are married to white men and one is engaged to another. Though the men have been embraced wholeheartedly now, Fernandez admits that her family initially was not totally receptive to the idea of interracial dating.

Not all of the dilemmas highlighted in “Luminarias” deal specifically with race. The play also smartly sheds light on the caste systems within the same race. Sofia, a psychologist, becomes involved with a Mexican but then faces another hurdle.

“She falls in love with an undocumented person,” Valenzuela said flatly. “Which is totally against what she wanted. She wanted to marry a successful white businessman. And she finally finds a real Mexican and she doesn’t know what to do.”

“For so long Sofia turned her back on her culture,” Fernandez said. “Being with him makes her remember who she really is and where she comes from.”

Fernandez wrote “Luminarias” because she said she was sick of seeing Latinas portrayed only as “suffering mothers crying over our dead gang sons or praying next to our Lady of Guadalupe.”

“My friends are lawyers and therapists,” she said. “And I think it’s important to show that we go through all the same problems with our lives as everybody else.”

Both Fernandez and her husband agree that the process of sorting through our internal and external prejudices is difficult, especially in a city as racially polarized as Los Angeles, but it is something that must happen before attitudes about relationships can ever change.

“We have to start the dialogue and recognize that we are all racist in some way,” he said. “The main problem is that we stay in our corners and say ‘We are not racists . . . it’s your fault.’ The truth is that most of us have preconceived ideas about all relationships.”

Fernandez is writing a screenplay adaptation of “Luminarias,” and this summer plans, along with some of the original members from last year’s performance, to shoot a low-budget film version of the play.

Bringing the play to a university has created some unusual challenges for the director, since the young actors must try to capture mature roles.

“They are 19 and 20 and they are playing 35- and 40-year-olds,” he said. “It’s been a very interesting process. I had to allow them to go and observe other actors and older people from the community who behaved the way these characters behave. I told them ‘Go to family gatherings and watch your aunts or your uncles, see their mannerisms.’ I do a lot of coaching in my directing here, explaining the subtext behind the story and the historical context. You don’t usually do that with older actors.”

BE THERE

“Luminarias,” Cal State Northridge Little Theatre, 18111 Nordhoff, Northridge. Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Wed., 7 p.m.; Sun., 5 p.m. Fri.-Sun. and April 9-13. $5-$9. (818) 677-3093.