Bilingual Foundation on the Move

Without much fanfare, the Bilingual Foundation of the Arts is gradually leaving behind L.A.’s crowded sub-100-seat theater scene and joining the city’s burgeoning mid-size theater arena.

This year, for the first time since 1993, two of the four productions that make up BFA’s season will take place on the mid-size level. Both “Rosalba and the Llaveros Family” (Feb. 10-March 5) and “Don Quijote, the Last Adventure” (Sept. 21-Oct. 29) will be staged in the 320-seat Theatre 3 at Los Angeles Theatre Center.

The other two entries in the season, Calderon’s “The Phantom Lady” (“La Dama Duende”) and the annual holiday presentation of “Too Many Tamales,” will occupy the group’s 99-seat home in Lincoln Heights.

Productions in mid-size theaters that use Actors’ Equity contracts cost considerably more than those in sub-100-seat theaters that operate on Equity’s 99-Seat Theater Plan. BFA pays each Equity member $25 per performance (usually for five performances a week) for its 99-seat shows--and this is even more than what the 99-Seat Plan requires. But the minimum salary for each Equity member at the mid-size LATC is $335 per week, plus payments to the union’s pension and health plan, resulting in total payments of at least $450 per actor per week, estimated the group’s president and producing director, Carmen Zapata.

So the company’s move up the Equity ladder isn’t taken lightly. Beginning in 1992, BFA has produced at least one show at LATC each season, and in 1993 the company did two there. One of them, “B/C,” drew much larger audiences than the other, “Contrabando.” So in succeeding years the group has restricted itself to only one show on the mid-size level. But last year’s “Blood Wedding” was a big hit in the largest of the LATC theaters, the Tom Bradley Theatre, emboldening the group to try again with two shows.

Eventually, BFA hopes to move to its own mid-size home. It received $250,000 in federal seed money five years ago to explore the possibilities. After three years of angling for a spot in the city-owned structures on Olvera Street, the company shifted its attention to the county-owned buildings across Main Street from the Olvera Street plaza. Adjacent to Our Lady Queen of Angels Church, these historic structures from L.A.’s Mexican past are being considered for possible cultural and artistic uses in a study spearheaded by County Supervisor Gloria Molina.

BFA--the area’s most enduring Latino theater company (although Zapata prefers the word “Hispanic”)--would appear to be a logical candidate for using these structures, but Zapata cautioned that any such deal is far from done. However, architects on the group’s board have drawn up tentative plans for a 300-seat theater, with a thrust stage.

If LATC is serving so well for the company, why not declare it the group’s permanent mid-size home and thereby avoid construction costs? Zapata replied that LATC has too many stairs backstage--between dressing rooms and the stage--and some of the LATC aisles are too steeply raked for the audiences as well, she added. She also cited lingering concerns about the perceptions of safety in the neighborhood.

Nonetheless, it’s at LATC that BFA will bring back “Rosalba”--which was the group’s first production, at East L.A. College in 1973, and was revived at the BFA’s home base in 1983. Mexican playwright Emilio Carballido’s comedy about big-city folk who journey to the sticks to visit their relatives was adapted for the 1983 and 2000 productions so that the urbanites come from L.A. instead of Mexico City. Danza Floricanto USA, the folk dance group, will participate, as it did in 1973. Back then, live music was provided by not-yet-bigtime Los Lobos, but the 2000 version will use taped music.

This year’s other show at LATC, “Don Quijote, the Last Adventure,” is an adaptation of Cervantes by BFA artistic director Margarita Galban and Lina Montalvo.

Zapata is recovering from two hip replacement operations. The surgery required her to withdraw from last summer’s “Blood Wedding,” but she hopes to return to the BFA stage “as soon as I can walk. I don’t want to waddle.”