Hispanic Playwright Works Forged in Academe, Not the Inner City

Anyone who believes that the nation’s ethnic dramatists are being forged in the streets of the inner cities these days might well have his mind changed by the fourth annual Hispanic Playwrights Project, a series of workshops now under way at South Coast Repertory.

The three Mexican-American writers whose plays-in-progress will receive public readings at the Costa Mesa theater this weekend are all products of academe, including the most elite graduate writing programs in the country. And all three teach at the university level.

“I think there is more and more training going on,� says Len Berkman, a dramaturge for the project and a professor of theater at Smith College in Massachusetts. “I find that I’m meeting people who’ve been trained at the same schools and in the same workshops with the same teachers. Some of them are even classmates of former students of mine.�

This is not to say these writers come from a hermetically sealed world. Berkman emphasizes the opposite. He notes, too, that each of the trio--Edit Villarreal, Cherrie Moraga and Octavio Solis--is so different from the others that it is virtually impossible “to generalize about their commonality.� Yet you can’t help being struck by certain similarities.

Villarreal, author of “My Visits With MGM (My Grandmother Marta),� went to UC Berkeley and Columbia University and graduated from the Yale School of Drama. She has taught at Yale, had her plays workshopped at the INTAR Theatre in New York under the guiding hand of Maria Irene Fornes and currently teaches writing and Chicano theater at UCLA.

Solis, author of “Man of the Flesh,� comes from Texas (like Villarreal), has a graduate degree in drama from Trinity University in San Antonio and also has had his work staged by Fornes in a workshop production at INTAR.

Moraga, author of “A Shadow of a Man,� is an alumna of the prestigious MacDowell Arts Colony, was playwright-in-residence at INTAR under Fornes and now teaches writing and Chicano studies at UC Berkeley.

If each of their plays treats different subjects--family dynamics for Villarreal, male machismo for Solis and feminism for Moraga--all are pervaded by “the significance of Hispanic roots,� Berkman says.

“A number of the people here come from mixed racial parentages,� he adds, referring also to three other playwrights whose scripts are receiving workshop productions closed to the public. “By name some could even pass as non-Hispanic. But they are choosing to recognize their Hispanic heritage as a strength rather than a liability.�

What you won’t find are plays directly focusing on current social and political issues, such as abortion, which is affecting all segments of society but particularly ethnic minorities. Instead, Berkman says, “the plays are highly personal� and comment more or less indirectly on inequalities and distinctions between the white culture and the Hispanic culture.

Thus, in Edwin Sanchez’s “Trafficking in Broken Hearts� (a closed reading), the Caucasian partner in a male homosexual relationship has “a sense of privilege,� Berkman notes. “He is more secure financially than his Latino partner, though not more secure sexually. And when an issue arises between the two men, one abrasive element is that the Latino partner feels excluded from the white partner’s world.�

As for Villarreal’s trans-generational “My Visits With MGM� and Moraga’s “A Shadow of a Man,� which touches on lesbian eroticism, the issue of women’s rights has some bearing but not in terms of a schematic philosophy. “There is a considerable sense of the possibility of a greater community of women,� Berkman says, “without being doctrinaire or programmatic.�

Although each of the writers takes different risks and makes use of different theatrical styles, he notes, they are all working in English and in “a mode of dominant realism,� which clearly separates them as a group from Latin American playwrights. “If you are writing for audiences in Latin American, where the world is so much more overtly extreme, the fantasy element is a given,� Berkman says. “People there are used to departures from realism--governmental oppression is one example--because it happens all the time in their lives. Here, we tend to identify the fantastic as metaphor and not as reality.�

Hence Hispanic playwrights eager to communicate with a North American audience are apt to offer more straightforward fare than their Latin American counterparts, he says.

Oliver Mayer’s “Young Valiant� and Roberto Athayde’s “The Lady Architect and the King of Tile� are also receiving closed workshop readings.

The 1989 project is being financed principally by a two-year, $100,000 grant from the Ford Foundation.

The Hispanic Playwrights Project is at South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. “My Visit With MGM� by Edit Villarreal will be read Friday on the Mainstage at 7:30 p.m. “A Shadow of a Man� by Cherrie Moraga will be read Saturday on the Second Stage at 2:30 p.m., and “Man of the Flesh� Saturday on the Mainstage at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $5 at the door or in advance through the box office. Guitarist-singer Lalo Guerrero will give a benefit performance Thursday on the Mainstage at 7:30 p.m., with a reception at 6:30 p.m. Tickets to the benefit are $25. Information: (714) 957-4033.