Taking the Bard for an L.A. Spin

The debate over who has the right to interpret the great works of Western theater has been raging for several decades now. From the late Joseph Papp’s pioneering efforts in “nontraditional” casting to the multiethnic classics that have become fairly common in major cities today, progress has indeed been made. But some say the battle is far from won.

Here in famously diverse Los Angeles, for instance, the emphasis has shifted from actors to theatergoers. Today’s thespians may have more opportunities than they used to (if still not enough), but there are audiences that remain notoriously underserved.

Enter East L.A. Classic Theatre.

The 6-year-old company was launched to provide a forum in which classically trained Latino actors and others could display their talents. But it has transformed with the times.

Now, the Monterey Park-based group is involved primarily in education--not only of a new generation of actors, but also of young audiences. Opening Saturday, the company will present an adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre over the next two weekends.

“Part of the idea from the beginning was that we all felt that the classics are instrumental in developing your craft as an actor,” Tony Plana, East L.A. Classic Theatre’s executive director and co-founder, says during a break in rehearsals one recent morning. “If you can handle a Shakespearean monologue, you can handle almost anything.”

Yet the company was always intent on raising consciousness on the other side of the proscenium as well. “We didn’t want to be just another small theater company on the Westside, hoping to get producers and casting people to see the talent,” says Plana, whose has acted on Broadway and in such major theaters as the Mark Taper Forum and the La Jolla Playhouse but who is probably better known from his extensive work in film and TV.

“So we started looking on the Eastside, where there was very little theater, and certainly very little experience of classical theater. And that’s what started us defining our mission and aesthetic.”

The company’s current production of Shakespeare’s comedy has been transplanted to the glitzy realm of today’s show-bizzy L.A. in order to make it more accessible. “ ‘Twelfth Night,’ to a great extent, deals with vanity, self-deception, ambition, shallowness,” explains Plana, who is 46 and married to actress Ada Maris. “I felt that those themes were appropriate to Los Angeles, because of the industry that’s here, both the music and the movies.

“I saw in people like Orsino, Olivia and Malvolio archetypes of some of the people we see every day in Hollywood and in the music business,” he continues. “So we’ve set it in a pop music world and turned Orsino and Olivia into pop stars. We’ve changed Malvolio into a manager/agent. Maria is the personal assistant to Olivia.

“It’s really one of the more provocative comedies of Shakespeare. It’s all about ME. And that’s the music and the acting world. They really think the world revolves around them.”

Plana, of course, knows what he’s talking about--having worked in the entertainment industry for more than 20 years now.

The Cuban-born actor grew up in L.A. and attended Loyola Marymount University, where he first developed a taste for acting. He went on to graduate study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London in 1973.

“They spoke so beeeyooootifully,” recalls Plana. “And here I was, just a Cuban-American guy. When we were doing Shakespeare and Shaw and things like that, that was their territory. But it evened out when we got to American theater. It was a great experience culturally, to get out of here and see the world from that perspective.”

When Plana returned to California in the mid-1970s, he began forging a career as a classical actor, working in various summer festivals. It was at the California Shakespearean Festival in tiny Visalia, in fact, that he first worked with Robert Beltran, one of the colleagues with whom he would later found East L.A. Classic Theatre.

Both he and Beltran saw that something was amiss, even back then. “We were the only Latinos in the whole company, of about 40 people,” says Plana. “We were in the San Joaquin Valley, doing Shakespeare, and there’s only two Latinos! What’s going on? There were not enough Latinos.”

During the 1980s, Plana began working in film and television. Since then, he has amassed an impressive list of credits, with more than 30 films, including “JFK,” “Salvador,” “An Officer and a Gentleman,” “El Norte,” “Born in East L.A.” and “A Million to Juan,” which he also co-produced. On TV, he’s been seen in many movies (“Drug Wars: The Camarena Story,” “The Burning Season--The Life and Death of Chico Mendes”) and series, including, most recently, as a regular on the Fox show “Bakersfield P.D.”

Yet for all his screen work, Plana has never forsaken the stage. Indeed, he’s appeared in a range of major theater productions, including the Broadway stagings of “Zoot Suit” and “The Boys of Winter,” the Mark Taper outings of “Richard III” and “Widows” and “Figaro Gets a Divorce” at the La Jolla Playhouse.

It was while he was working on the 1992 Taper production of “Widows,” in fact, that the new theater venture was essentially launched. Together with fellow actors Beltran, Ruben Sierra and Julie Arenal, they formed a group and started working toward the goal of productions. “A lot of us were classically trained, and there wasn’t a lot of work for us in classic theater,” says Plana. “We all felt very capable of doing these roles, and yet there was no employment for us.”

Their debut outing was a 1992 staging of Eugene O’Neill’s “A Touch of the Poet” at Cal State Los Angeles. The adaptation, directed by Sierra and featured Beltran in the lead, transferred the players from 1827 Irish American to 1872 Mexican American. “That was a very defining point for us, because we started to say, ‘OK, we can do certain things with classics that are interesting,’ ” says Plana.

Over the next several years, the group staged several works at Cal State L.A., including Arthur Miller’s “The Price,” Henrik Ibsen’s “Hedda Gabler” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” But while the productions received good reviews, the company found it difficult to get an audience onto campus. “We had trouble getting paying audiences,” recalls Plana. “We started saying, ‘We’re not getting enough people to come see us, so we’ve got to go see the people.’ ”

The answer was to turn to the schools, beginning with a touring production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

“We thought ‘Midsummer’ was probably a good show to start with,” says Plana. “We set it in early America, at the time of the Spanish conquest, and we made the spirits Andean, with Andean music. We made the royalty in the play Spaniards. And the whole thing became an interesting exploration of the Andean spirits enacting this mild comedic revenge on the Spaniards.”

Similarly, the company’s version of “Romeo and Juliet” was retooled into a Zoot Suit version, set in the 1940s. “I started with ‘Zoot Suit’ here in L.A., and I was very influenced by that,” explains Plana. “I saw what an effect it had on Latino kids.”

The response to both productions was better than they’d hoped for. “There was a hunger that we found,” says Plana. “It encouraged us, so we started to study the exposure [outreach] programs in schools, and we didn’t like what we saw. A lot of it was just a hit-and-run approach. So we started looking at creating a more comprehensive exposure program.”

The result is East L.A. Classic Theatre’s Beyond Borders program, which brings entertainment industry professionals to the schools to perform and teach acting skills to students.

“The whole idea was to provide high-quality theater on site, in the schools--to hire the best actor that we could and put together productions that were top-notch in terms of costumes, music, acting and directing--so that the kids truly get a high-level theatrical experience.”

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“TWELFTH NIGHT,” John Anson Ford Amphitheatre, 2580 Cahuenga Blvd. East, Hollywood. Dates: Saturdays, Sundays, 10 a.m. Ends Aug. 30. Prices: $7. Phone: (213) 461-3673.