Family That Stays Together Plays Together

Playwright Louie Olivos Jr. paces behind the seated audience, sits down, then stands up again. He nervously watches his play unfold on a makeshift stage in a converted restaurant inside the Amtrak station.

It’s not only the first time in nearly 20 years that he has produced “El Corrido de Juan Charrasqueado” (The Ballad of Scarface Juan), but it’s the first time he’s ever staged it with bilingual text.

In a dramatic scene where the dashing Juan, portrayed by 22-year-old actor Victor de la Torre, takes off the bandages from his once-handsome face to reveal a hideous scar on his cheek, things teeter on the edge of disaster.

“Mirame la cara!” Juan screams into a mirror, “Look at my face!”

Enraged, Juan rips a plant to shreds, then bolts off the set through the venue’s exit; instead of merely slamming the door behind him, he tears it off its hinges. The accident causes the audience to break out laughing and Olivos grabs his forehead.

At the end of the play, he tells the audience its support is crucial to keep the 30-member company going--”and to buy a new door.”

Olivos adapted the play from a famous 1940s Mexican corrido--a narrative song--that is based on a true story. He wrote the Casanova-like tragedy for his theater company, Actores de Santa Ana, the oldest Latino troupe in Orange County--with his brother Aaron in the lead. In 1979, the mariachi music-laced play premiered at the now-defunct Yost Theatre in Santa Ana, where it ran successfully for three months.

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At last Sunday’s performance, after mariachi group Los Amigos de Gabriel Zavala finished its final number and cast members took a bow before a scant 50 people, Olivos personalized the production by addressing the audience.

“Amigos, sometimes we do things from el puro corazon--straight from the heart,” Olivos, a youthful 57-year-old third-generation Mexican American said, his voice beginning to crack. “This play, I’d like to dedicate to the memory of my brother, who played the original Juan Charrasqueado, and to my son, both of whom passed away.”

Olivos’ grass-roots company is a family affair. Among its members are his brother’s son and daughter--Aaron Jr. and Karla Olivos--as well as Beatrice Olivos, his son’s widow.

“El Corrido de Juan Charrasqueado,” billed as a “Romeo and Juliet” bilingual play done “macho style, very macho,” continues for the next two Sundays at the Amtrak Station in celebration of national Latino Heritage Month.

The train station’s Casa Santa Fe restaurant has been converted for this show into a rough 1940s cantina and ranch house. The play tells the story of Juan, a handsome Latin-lover type, who falls in love with a woman of high social standing named Maria (played by Terry Badillo). In a desperate attempt to protect the family name, Maria’s brothers and their henchmen ambush Juan in the cantina, scarring his beautiful face and leaving him for dead. Juan vows to avenge the attack, hunting each man down from town to town, until he finally meets his match in the town where Maria’s brothers had sequestered her.

The corrido was made into a Mexican film of the ‘50s starring actor-singer Pedro Armendariz, but Olivos believes his play stays truer to the original song.

“Every hombre machista thinks he is Juan Charrasqueado,” Olivos said of the corrido. “He orders a drink. He looks at the girl and thinks, ‘She’s mine.’ But he forgets that the 10 guys around him are thinking the same thing.”

Mariachi Los Amigos de Gabriel Zavala play carefully chosen tear-jerker mariachi songs, including “Mi Preferida,” which, along with “Juan Charrasqueado,” serves as the play’s theme song. Zavala, who also worked with Olivos on the original production, helped choose the songs.

Olivos was inspired to take the plunge into theater as a result of being surrounded by some of the giants of Mexican cinema. The Olivos family in 1950 bought the Yost Theatre in downtown Santa Ana and then the West Coast Theatre at Third and Main streets 12 years later. The Yost premiered some of the great films of the golden age of Mexican cinema, often with appearances by stars of that time.

“That magic infected me,” the Santa Ana native said.

Actores de Santa Ana has been around since 1973. In its heyday, the company would rehearse and perform at the Yost, said Jorge Rodriguez, an original cast member who played Trece in both stagings of “Juan Charrasqueado.”

Olivos has staged plays under the same spotlight and acoustic setting that Laurel & Hardy and the Three Stooges once used before it was turned into a movie house. But the age of home video prompted the Olivos family to relinquish their movie houses in 1985, and with that began what Olivos calls his “gypsy producer” days. Since losing the Yost, his Santa Ana home near Bowers Museum of Cultural Art has become the Actores’ rehearsal studio.

“This group is like a family,” said Jannet Ramirez, 25, of Garden Grove, who for six years has been part of the new generation of Actores de Santa Ana. The current batch of actors range in age from 14 to 25. “We support each other off and on stage.”

Olivos also uses his company to inspire young Latinos to use acting to raise their self-esteem and improve their future. His productions receive city support through community block grants because the troupe typically includes youths considered at-risk.

Olivos has written 19 bilingual plays and has produced a handful of them on shoestring budgets, including “El Pachuco 1943,” “The Story of Pancho Villa” and “Proposition 187.” He will produce his play “Cantinflas y el Dia de los Muertos” at Chapman University in Orange on Oct. 30 and at Cal State Fullerton the following day.

“How do I produce plays? It’s a miracle,” he said, noting that his productions cost an average of $2,000. His 30-member cast and crew work gratis. His own family’s primary means of support is Macaria Olivos, his wife of 37 years, who works for the Department of Motor Vehicles.

“I put on a play wherever I’m welcome,” he said. “But can you imagine if someone would bankroll my productions? I’d have venues busting at the seams.”

In a good-natured plea for a benefactor in the production notes of his “Mecha Mural” play last year, he wrote: “Introduce me to your rich uncle.”

“I don’t know how to market and raise funds,” Olivos said. “I’m an artist.”

* “El Corrido de Juan Charrasqueado” runs Sunday and Oct. 12 at Casa Santa Fe at the Amtrak Station, 1000 E. Santa Ana Blvd., Santa Ana. 2:30 p.m. $15. (714) 568-0256.