From the Heart

This is opening night for “Abuelito’s Mexican Christmas Carol,” a low-budget, grass-roots production if there ever was one. It’s Wednesday, two hours before show time. The director is barely beginning to build the tall box used as a prop for a key character, the grandfather clock that talks.

Not yet 5 p.m and already it’s getting dark and cold out behind Koo’s Cafe in Santa Ana, a Main Street venue for off-beat performances of poetry and music. Pablo Eduardo Rivera, creator of this evening’s backyard happening, is getting ready to cut a hole in a thin plank of wood where the actor’s head will go.

The show’s unflappable producer, writer and director already has had a hectic day. He worked a half shift at his regular job, took the 16-page program to the printer and stopped to shop for beards and wigs. Now he has to make this clock himself because his expected prop man canceled at the last minute.

He draws the outline for the opening free-hand. Then he punches out the oval for the human clock-face with a power drill he bought earlier in this day.

He’s in a low-key hurry, but he has more time than he thinks. Tonight, the show won’t start on time because two actors will be delayed on their commute from Hollywood.

One is the narrator who opens the play. The other is guess who?

Yes, the clock is running late.

Such are the tribulations of community theater created out of one man’s love for the art. This outdoor performance--complete with an Aztec god of death and a modern, wise-cracking angel--has come together through sheer willpower. Profit and glamour certainly are not incentives.

The show is free; the night is freezing.

This is meant to be people’s theater, culture for those who can’t afford it. Tonight is the debut of Teatro Indigena, Pablo’s brainchild, a budding Latino troupe with a mission:

“The goal is to bring you closer together,” he writes in the pink program. “With all the crazy stuff on TV and the news, it’s nice to get out with the kids or a loved one and watch a play.”

Behind the ramshackle coffeehouse, a few rows of folding chairs await the anticipated audience. The hard, metal seats are arranged at the end of the driveway facing an old shack of a garage, a spot known for its graffiti art.

But the masses never materialize.

By show time, the chairs remain empty except for friends and relatives of the 14 actors miraculously assembled for this event. Forty minutes behind schedule, Pablo finally steps to the stage. He’s a bear of a man with a long mane of black hair and a goatee with a touch of gray. He’s wearing a black T-shirt emblazoned on the front with a golden image of the Virgin of Guadalupe. His voice is rich and resonant, reflecting his Shakespearean experience.

“As you can see, it’s standing room only,” he jokes with a twinge of disappointment. “But that’s OK. Obviously we have humble beginnings, but it’s from the heart.”

Pablo was standing on an unsteady wooden stage laid down in front of the garage door. As a backdrop, helpers had hung tall tapestries picturing ancient Aztec rulers, who had nothing to do with his bilingual adaptation of the Dickens classic.

The stern lords of the Mexica were painted by David Vazquez, a man who teaches local classes in the Aztec language, Nahuatl. Dressed in a black robe with dazzling gold accents, Vazquez blesses the new stage with a bowl of intoxicating incense and a Nahua prayer.

His altar is a bale of hay, later used as a prop in the play.

Next up: a portly comedian who does a warmup routine, way too saucy for the occasion.

All the actors aren’t here yet. But a silver-haired woman in a heavy coat arrives, and Pablo calls her over to meet me. That’s his mother, he says: “She’s the one who put up with me all these years.”

Ramona Sanchez Rivera has always supported Pablo’s passion for theater, though it sure seemed quixotic at times. Her only son started acting about 15 years ago when he was barely 20. She went to all of his casting calls and sat in the car during his auditions. Sometimes she waited all day, but she would never go in to watch.

“I did get bored, but I suffered it for his sake,” says Ramona, who works in a school cafeteria. “I would pray for him, because I knew this is what he wanted.”

Pablo’s now 35, unmarried and lives with his mom, a sister, her husband and their two kids in the family’s Santa Ana home. He drives an ’89 Camaro, often overflowing with props and costumes and planks of wood.

During the day, he works in technical support at PageNet of Orange County. At night, he burns the midnight oil. He says he writes best in the wee hours of the morning.

His mother worries he’s not getting enough sleep. His sister thinks he’s loco.

Pablo is still hoping for his big break.

Three years ago, he wrote a screenplay called “Six Shots of Tequila.” It’s a coming-of-age story about a boy named Oscar in Rosarito, and his relationship with his grandfather.

He lined up experienced Latino actors and schlepped the script around Hollywood. He figures he must have sat through “darn near 100 meetings” but nobody would bankroll the project. The money men liked the script, he says, but the cast had to go. They wanted big names; Hispanic ones don’t sell.

Pablo says he now has lined up an interested, credible producer. But he feels guilty about being forced to jettison his Latino actors to shoot for bigger stars.

“Todo lo que el se propone, lo hace,” his mother says. “Whatever he makes up his mind to do, he does.”

Mrs. Rivera points to a framed, black-and-white photo on the stage, set on a table with candles, like a little altar. That’s her son’s father as a young man, she says. In Mexico, he worked occasionally as a movie extra. After they moved to the United States in 1961, the elder Pablo Rivera worked as a gardener and eventually had his own landscaping business.

He died when little Pablo was just 7 years old; he was hit by a car while standing on a Mexicali street corner. Mrs. Rivera never remarried. She finished raising her son and his three sisters on her own, cleaning houses and catering Mexican food. (A proud aside: Her clients included John Wayne and his wife, Pilar.)

Mrs. Rivera pulls out a small wallet and shows me a more recent photo of her husband, taken before he was killed at age 55. She thinks this later portrait should have been used for the play because father and son look more alike.

And it’s true. Pablo is a spitting image of his viejo, his old man.

The straggling actors have finally arrived. The play begins with Martina, the narrator, introducing her fellow characters, members of her extended family on stage. The actors include the playwright’s real relatives: two nieces and two nephews, including Adrian Rivera, 6, who plays Scrooge as a young boy.

Martina points to the picture of Pablo’s late father on the altar with candles, just like the real one he keeps burning at home. And she says words that ring biographical: “I don’t have a Dad. He went to heaven when I was 10. But I think about him all the time.”

The last scene I remember was not on stage. It was Pablo seated at a folding table behind the audience, controlling the stage lights with a small console and frequently jotting notes for the actors in a spiral notebook. He wants them to improve for the repeat performances, which wrap up today at 1 and 7 p.m.

Little Adrian has finished his part and has come back to sit on his uncle’s lap. The boy, who shares the family home with Pablo, already has played St. Joseph in a school play. He puts his thin arm lovingly around the burly neck of the busy director, who reaches gently around the boy to jot down more production notes.

I left Pablo, surrounded by family, doing what he loves. He may not have fame and fortune yet, but his life is rich.

For, in the final words of his character, Ebenifacio L. Scrooge: “What good is it to have so much money when you’re so miserable inside?”