Project Puts Gay Latinos’ Issues on Stage

In a cramped Sunday school classroom at the Metropolitan Community Church, little chairs and children’s toys have been tossed aside to form a tiny stage.

Ten actors--all gay Latino men--run through their lines, rehearsing “La Novia” (“The Bride”), one of four short theater pieces dealing with HIV, homophobia and gay men yearning for acceptance from their Latino families.

“This is about how to reconcile our homosexuality with our parents,” said Colombian playwright Fernando Castro, who wrote “La Novia.” “It’s about the extent to which we can educate our parents, and to what extent we have to create our own families.”

The short plays, which will be performed this week at the church, are meant to provoke discussion about homosexuality among Latinos, many of whom are influenced by the Catholic Church, which preaches that homosexuality is a sin. It is also designed to help Latinos deal with family conflicts, Castro said.

The project is sponsored by the Ta’yer Multicultural Performance Collective and Bienestar, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that aims to help HIV-infected Latinos through education and social services. The plays, and several other Ta’yer programs, receive funding through a $2,800 grant from the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department and a $4,000 grant from the California Arts Council. If the performances go well, Castro hopes the community theater troupe will perform at other venues in Los Angeles.

Piece Satirizes Soap Operas

“La Novia” satirizes the maudlin melodrama of Mexican telenovelas, or soap operas, and their sappy glorification of a wedding as the highlight of a woman’s life. It is based on an actual gay wedding, in which one of the men dressed up as a bride in full wedding regalia but became so nervous, he almost could not go through with it.

“He’s marrying a man. That’s what he has been dreaming his whole life, just like in the Mexican soap operas,” said director Hector Aristizabal, as the male bridesmaid--dressed in a green satin gown and boots--broke into a falsetto rendition of Schubert’s “Ave Maria.”

“Mario,” the male bridesmaid said while applying makeup to the male bride, “this is the point you have dreamed about all your life. Think of the times we have cried together as we watched the weddings on the telenovelas. Do you remember the finale of ‘Miramar’? Wow. What a wedding.”

The actors--many of whom are performing for the first time--are drawn mostly from Bienestar support groups. Some are infected with the AIDS virus.

The number of AIDS cases has risen so dramatically in Los Angeles County in recent years that the Board of Supervisors unanimously declared an emergency last week and called on the state and federal governments to pay for expanded medical care and social services for HIV and AIDS sufferers in minority communities.

In 1988, male Latinos in Los Angeles County were diagnosed with AIDS at a rate of 38 per 100,000 cases of the disease, according to the county Department of Health Services. Latinas represented five cases out of 100,000.

In 1991, 26% of AIDS cases diagnosed in Los Angeles County were among Latinos. By 1998, the figure had risen to 43%, officials said.

Jane Rollins of the department’s epidemiology program cautioned that the figures may be skewed low, because HIV that has not progressed to AIDS does not have to be reported to the health department under state law.

Need for AIDS Education Seen

There is clearly a need for AIDS education aimed at Latinos, said Shawn Griffin, project coordinator for the Gay Men of Color Consortium in Los Angeles. Although most AIDS outreach programs have a Latino component, she said, cultural barriers are significant.

Bienestar is unusual, Griffin said, because it is “indigenous to the community.”

The stories in the troupe’s plays explore situations that many of the actors have experienced, such as coming to the United States after being rejected by their families in Mexico and Central American, Aristizabal said.

“And when they are here, they work, sending money to their families, trying to buy the love they never got,” Aristizabal said.

Actor Julio Velasquez, 30, was an actor in Mexico before he came to the U.S.

His parents are still in Mexico, and he lives with his sisters in Hollywood.

“They know I am gay. They accept me,” he said of his sisters. “But my parents don’t know. Not yet. I need to get ready.”

Lack of familial acceptance is addressed briefly in “La Novia” and also in the one-act “La Mama de Todos” (“Everybody’s Mother”), which tells the story of Maruja, who lost her son to AIDS and became a mother figure to other young gay men and influenced other women to accept their gay sons.

“The way people are educated, they think being gay is the worst thing you could be,” said actor Xavier Lino, 38, a member of the wedding party in “La Novia.” “They would rather people go to prostitutes than be gay.”

Lino has come out to his family, he said. But his brother has detected effeminate characteristics in his own child and ordered Gonzales to sever all contact with his 10-year-old nephew.

“He started to play with dolls, to be more stereotypically like a girl, and he blamed it on me,” Lino said. “He thought I was pretty, delicate and effeminate.”

‘A Different Way to Educate’

Lino, who will also perform a monologue, praises the theater program.

“This is important because it’s our reality,” he said. “It’s a different way to educate--with some comedy. We are expressing what hurt us.”

Lino’s monologue, “Fantasmas en el Closet” (“Ghosts in the Closet”) focuses on early childhood memories of rejection.

In “Loro Viejo,” Castro pays homage to his deceased father by using dialogue from a fictional conversation he would have liked to have had with his dad.

“If someone is gay, we just don’t discuss it,” said Elizabeth Escobedo, communications director for Bienestar. “People don’t come out, they just stay in hiding. We have lots of people who never told their families they were gay until they were very sick [with the AIDS virus], and by then the families accepted them. If they had known before that their families would accept them, it might have been easier.”

The actors will perform the four pieces, titled “En Familia,” Friday and Saturday at the Metropolitan Community Church, 5730 Cahuenga Blvd., in North Hollywood. Admission is free.

For more information, call (818) 762-2889.