Making His Day

Santa Ana takes him seriously. On Friday, the mayor will issue a proclamation declaring it Rick Najera Day in the county’s largest city.

Happy to have his ego massaged, Najera still manages to make fun of the upcoming homage. “It basically means I can park anywhere I want,” he jokes. “It’s like diplomatic immunity.”

Which is not to say he doesn’t take himself seriously (“I’m an egomaniac, but I admit it”) or take an effusive pride in his achievements.

The other day at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa, where he will direct and star in his sketch comedy, “Latinologues” (opening Thursday), Najera ticked off some kudos. The trade journal Variety listed him last year among the “top 50 creatives to watch” in the entertainment industry.

“Hey,” said the native San Diegan, “I’m considered the best in America. I was the only Latino on the list.”

As Najera is the first to point out, he merits special attention because success in theater and television is so rare for a Mexican American playwright. Nor is success common for a satirist of ethnic and cultural mores who prizes, even revels in, the discomforts of his identity.

“In some ways,” the tall, husky writer-performer said, “I’m a bridge between the Latino and Anglo worlds. Not being fully at ease in both, I’m able to translate them to each other.”

Najera, who is in his late 30s, won’t specify his age. (“I’m as old as Jack Benny.”) But his dimpled cheeks and mischievous grin give him the youthful look of a large cherub.

“I’m second-generation American,” he continued. “I grew up on two sides of the [social] border, in the barrio and in an upper middle-class neighborhood. What was great about that was I grew up with a split personality. I think that made me a better writer. A writer should never be totally at ease. He should always be slightly uncomfortable.”

Najera’s comedy writing credits include Fox Television’s “In Living Color,” “The Robert Townsend Show” and “Culture Clash,” Showtime’s “Latino Laugh Festival,” ABC/Universal’s “Latins Anonymous” and TV pilots for “The American Family” (United Paramount Network) and “The Buford Gomez Show” (Showtime). At Viacom, he is developing a one-hour “dramedy” with Beth Sullivan, who created the CBS series “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.”

His plays, which have migrated to television in one form or other, have been done at theaters throughout the country. They’ve also been published. The University of Houston Press recently put out his latest collection, “ ‘The Pain of the Macho’ and Other Plays.”

(Najera will sign copies of the book Friday from 4 to 6 p.m. at Martinez Books and Art Gallery in Santa Ana, where Santa Ana Mayor Miguel A. Pulido Jr. will present the proclamation.)

“Latinologues,” which grew out of his one-man show “The Pain of the Macho,” has had various incarnations. A 1996 production in San Antonio, Texas, starred Geraldo Rivera, Edward James Olmos, Maria Conchita Alonzo, Liz Torres and Eric Estrada.

In the production on the SCR Second Stage, Najera will be joined by Maria Costa (of ABC’s “Dangerous Minds”), Yareli Arizmendi (of the movie “Like Water for Chocolate”) and Jacob Vargas (who has had roles in “Get Shorty,” “Crimson Tide, “American Me” and, most recently, “Selena”).

The show comprises comic monologues about the Latino experience. “I started off with ‘Mexican Moses,’ which is a role I created for myself,” Najera said. “Then I did ‘Cuba Libre,’ which is [about] a Cuban prostitute.” Another is ‘Maria on Men.’ She’s a Cuban talk-show host. There’s also the Latino mother from the barrio. Her son becomes a vampire, but she’s in denial. ‘It’s just a phase,’ she says, exactly like a Jewish mother.”

Then there’s the ‘Manic Hispanic,’ a character based on the executive types he meets in Hollywood. “You know the kind,” Najera said. “ ‘I love you. I see Cortez and Montezuma. It will be won-derful. We’ll downplay the massacres of all those Indians and up-play the fact that Cortez brought paella to the new world.’ That kind of guy.”

Najera writes strictly in English. His upbringing emphasized assimilation, he said. “My Spanish is OK, not great.” He was taught “never to lose my Mexican culture,” he added. “But I made English my language. That helped make me the writer I am today. I truly think it was better to have done it this way.”

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Describing himself as a loner, Najera says he was a latchkey kid whose four brothers and a sister all went their own ways in a family divided along ideological lines. “One side of my family is radical,” he said, “and the other side is very conservative.”

His grandmother was a union activist in San Diego’s old tuna canneries. A cousin “married Cesar Chavez’s daughter,” he said. Another is a top customs officer; another headed a SWAT team. A brother is a federal intelligence agent so secretive about his work, Najera said, “that I don’t know for certain what agency he works for.”

Najera started as an actor at San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre when he was 17. After attending San Diego State, he went to the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco for his main classical training.

On tour in the early 1980s with an ACT production of “Uncle Vanya” that came to Los Angeles, Najera recalled, he “jumped ship to work in Hollywood.” He landed his first TV role on his first audition. It was for “Hill Street Blues.” He played “a Latino lowlife” in one of the final episodes, he said. “I didn’t kill anybody. I stole an old woman’s sweater. I was the lowest of the low.”

His acting career prospered, though his roles stereotyped him as a Latino heavy. “I was always Juan or Paco, sometimes Fernando,” he said. He had a recurring role on “General Hospital.” “They made me Juan-from-the-Biscayne-Islands in that.” He has worked on “Falcon Crest” and played a leading role in the pilot for “China Beach.”

One time he had a part on “Columbo” with George Hamilton. “They had to put the darkest makeup on me so I would look like a Mexican next to him. Clown Brown No. 3. I looked like a Moor. If they’d have put white lipstick on me, I would have been Al Jolson.”

Najera went on to roles in independent movies, from “Red Surf” with George Clooney to Peter McCarthy’s “Flounder.” (“I raped James Legro. What a horrible role.”) Tired of playing bad guys, he told his agent: “No more.” It was then that Najera started writing.

Although he owns a condo in Los Angeles, he’s hardly ever home, he said. In May he starred at the San Diego Repertory Theatre in his new autobiographical play, “A Quiet Love.” He frequently goes on tour with “The Pain of the Macho.” Its next stop is the Mexican Heritage Foundation in San Jose, then the Touchstone Theatre in Bethlehem, Pa., followed by the Solo Mio Festival in San Francisco.

His next stop with it will be the Solo Mio Festival in San Francisco.

“Since I’m always on the road, I get a national view,” Najera said. “What I’ve started to realize is that we all live in these tiny universes. The differences have to do with geography, economics, all that stuff. But the funny thing is actual location doesn’t mean that much. Santa Ana and Laguna Beach are light-years apart. La Jolla is closer to Laguna than it is to San Diego. Manhattan has nothing to do with Queens.

“It’s also true in the Latino culture. The old joke is that a Cuban is a Mexican with a boat, which isn’t true, of course. But I do see an amazing amount of prejudice against Latinos all over the country. Partly because I pass, I get to be a fly on the wall. I see a lot of Anglo stuff I wouldn’t see otherwise.

“But in Hollywood,” he continued, “I’m pegged as a Latino writer. That hurts me economically. My pay compared to another writer who’s not Latino is drastically different. The perception of the Latino market is that it’s not very important--and it’s experimental. So let’s pay less. There’s a gentleman’s agreement about Latinos in the industry.”

He finds many theater critics misguided, uninformed and just plain ignorant about Latino culture. Najera cites one who panned a show of his several years ago “because it didn’t deal with the Los Angeles riots.”

“That wasn’t the point of the show in the first place,” Najera said. “It was like seeing ‘Long Day’s Journey Into Night’ and asking, ‘Why isn’t it talking about the Irish Republic Army? Eugene O’Neill, have you missed the boat?’

“When you’re a Latino artist, you’re expected to deal with every single Latino problem. They all get lumped on your shoulders. I don’t want to be the house Mexican. I respond to what I want--sometimes harshly, sometimes comically, sometimes dramatically. Don’t label me.”

* “Latinologues” opens Thursday, 8 p.m., as part of Festival Latino at South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. It continues Friday, 8 p.m.; Saturday, 5 and 9 p.m.; Sunday, 2:30 p.m. Ends July 20. $15-$25. The second festival event is Una Noche del Teatro ‘97, a benefit (July 26) at SCR. $40-$125. The third event is the previously announced Hispanic Playwrights Project readings series (Aug. 8-9). $2-$6. (714) 957-4033 (for all events).