Every Show Is a Road Show for Oxnard Actors

It’s a tough time to plunge into Ventura County’s red-hot real estate market, but the area’s only Spanish-language theater troupe is getting ready to do just that.

Oxnard-based Teatro de las Americas, whose productions range from Shakespeare to more recent works by Latin American playwrights, announced last week its goal of finding a permanent home after a dozen years of playing in different venues.

Troupe members say the move will allow them to expand the number of productions staged each year by the amateur company. Moreover, they say it will allow them to establish a year-round cultural center for Spanish-language theater enthusiasts who show up in droves each time a new play is staged.

Group leaders have set out to identify a site and determine the costs before launching a capital campaign.

“Oxnard needs this desperately,” said Rosa Gascoigne, chairwoman of the troupe’s board of directors. “This has been the only chance for many people to see a play in their own language. They like it and they are asking for it.”

The theater group was founded to break down language barriers.

After staging a Spanish-language version of “A Doll’s House” at the Santa Paula Theatre Center, a group of actors from that play decided there was a growing need to stage more such productions.

Teatro de las Americas was incorporated in 1992 and has since staged more than two dozen plays, including productions by Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde and Tennessee Williams, with English supertitles. But they’ve leaned most heavily on a rich supply of works by Latin American playwrights, staging productions weighted with social and political commentary.

All of the plays have been put on at venues belonging to other groups, from a tiny theater at the Camarillo Airport to Oxnard’s Petit Playhouse, a 50-seat theater tucked into the basement of a historic Victorian home in Heritage Square.

“We absolutely need a bigger venue,” said Margaret Cortese, the group’s executive and artistic director. “I think there is strong community support to put that together. As soon as one play is over, people ask us about the next one.”

But the Teatro hasn’t always been so popular. Cortese remembers a time when the group was just getting started that the company played to an audience of four -- and that was after she cajoled some of her neighbors to attend.

These days, with a $15,000 annual budget and working twice a year out of the Petit Playhouse, the house is mostly full for each production and many nights there is a standing-room-only audience.

“It has taken us years to build an audience, but I think people are now hungry for stuff like this,” said Ventura resident Armando Rey, who launched a professional acting career after appearing in the group’s inaugural production a dozen years ago.

The 32-year-old teachers aide had no acting experience when he started. Since then, he has performed on stage in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York and has appeared in numerous television commercials, independent films and a Spanish-language soap opera.

But he makes time to return to his roots.

“I’ve always come back and done shows with Teatro de las Americas because it’s like my home,” Rey said. “And I think it’s time now to get our own place. It would be a big hit.”

No one is paid for this work. Still, the productions have brought together a broad and diverse collection of actors over the years.

There have been college students and professors, construction workers and CPAs. There are teachers who turn into actors after class and farmworkers who rush to rehearsals from the fields.

The theater group has a list of more than 120 people who have taken part in productions over the years.

“There is such a large network of people that have been through the Teatro, people from all walks of life,” said Cesar Hernandez, outreach coordinator for a nonprofit policy research center.

Like so many others, Hernandez learned of the group through word of mouth and went from building sets to acting in productions.

“I never thought I would do Shakespeare, and in Spanish on top of that,” Hernandez said. “It’s a good way to give people confidence, and I think that extends to so many other things.”

The confidence extends to the theater troupe as a whole.

No longer content to play in the shadow of another company, the group is ready to strike out on its own.

Leaders estimate they’ll need to set a fundraising goal of at least $150,000 to buy and refurbish a building for their use, a place that can host up to seven productions a year and serve as a cultural arts center for the community.

They would like to remain in downtown Oxnard, where they believe a cultural center could take root and flourish.

“If we have our own space, we will be able to have an ongoing theater presence,” Cortese said. “These are our dreams and we feel challenged now to achieve them.”