Mexican day laborers as comedy? Just ask Culture Clash

Latino comedy trio holds a mirror up to Orange County, and hopes it will laugh at itself.

March 17, 2008
By PAUL HODGINS

Ric Salinas aims his video camera at the slightly nervous-looking young woman, smiles, and launches into his first question: "So, tell us about being Jewish in Mexico!"

It must be Salinas' sunny, friendly disposition – or maybe the stoic, fatherly look of his colleague, Herbert Siguenza, sitting next to him – but pretty soon the woman, Tabatha Daly, is chattering all about her life. Her Russian grandparents' move to the U.S. The family's relocation to Mexico. Growing up an outsider in Mexico City, then feeling doubly misunderstood after moving to California, where Latinos find her even more exotic than non-Latinos do.

"I never felt like part of the regular world," Daly said of her childhood in Mexico City. "I felt segregated and I lived a different experience than people outside my circle. And I find myself different from other Latin people here."

Salinas and Siguenza exchange glances and nod. They don't say anything, but you know what they're thinking: Perfect. This is perfect.

The pair isn't a couple of journalists or cultural anthropologists. Together with Richard Montoya, they call themselves Culture Clash, a group of writer-actors, who, over the last 24 years, has been exploring exactly what its name implies. This interview is one of many the trio has conducted throughout Orange County with residents from all walks of life.

The result will be weaved into a new show, "Culture Clash in AmeriCCa," an exploration of the complexities, tensions, myths and realities of our fair county. It debuts Friday at Costa Mesa's South Coast Repertory.

"The show starts to form as we interview people and we piece these individual stories together," Salinas said. "Together, they become the story of the city. And every city has its own personality."

Culture Clash has been putting American burghs under the microscope for 15 years. They've created plays about San Diego, San Francisco, Boston, Houston, Miami and New York, subjecting each city to the same process – questioning people famous, infamous and obscure, visiting landmarks, rich 'burbs and blighted 'hoods, getting a feel for the hot-button topics, the dirty laundry, the interplay of fact and fiction that constitute every city's persona "It's like a stew and then it finally settles down," Siguenza said of the group's process. "We black out what we don't want and what we want we make some kind of dramatic form out of."

Sometimes their subjects come to them, Montoya explained. Daly happens to be a scene painter at South Coast Rep; she's working on the floor of the set for Culture Clash's upcoming show. "Tabatha approached me at a meet-and-greet yesterday. She said, 'I have a story and I'd like to tell you guys about it.' I thought, wow, the girl painting the floor has got a great story. That's just marvelous!'"

Those who are interviewed often become characters in the play (including, possibly, this journalist, who – in a disconcerting turn of the tables – was interviewed by Salinas and Siguenza intensively for about 10 minutes) although Culture Clash's writer-performers sometimes add what they think is implied but not spoken.

"Some of the day laborers I talked to, they can't quite say some things – there's a lot between the lines," Montoya said. "So we do take that liberty to say what's unsaid, if we have a strong hunch about what that person is trying to say."

The process of turning interviews, observations and suppositions into a workable script is messy and labor-intensive, the trio agreed.

"The best (analogy) I can think of is that it's like hip-hop," Siguenza said. "They extract a line or a beat from here, one from there – lyrics, poetry, music. And somehow they're able to produce something that's new and cohesive, right? It's like that for us."

"It's like we come in on day one of rehearsal with a piñata and bust that piñata up," Montoya added. "Everything I wrote at my writing table for eight hours went out the window (at the first rehearsal). But I'm glad for those hours because it allowed us to move things around and puzzle them out. We tend to think holistically; it's a chess game. 'Where's this character gonna be? Where's that one gonna go?' We're three guys trying to play a cast of 100."

Tweaking noses, winning hearts

It's been 10 years since Culture Clash last appeared at South Coast Rep, and the county has changed in many ways over the succeeding decade. The trio found a wealth of raw material to work with, Montoya said.

"There are a lot of Mexican laborers standing around in parking lots. There are sex clubs. The archdiocese is nearly broke. The sheriff's on his way to jail." Montoya thinks those things don't square with O.C.'s sunny, well-manicured image. "Is there a way of presenting this less-than-perfect picture in a way that's honest and entertaining?"

Midway through creating the play, the group found the story's core, Montoya said: those day laborers who were reluctant to say what was on their minds.

"They're the connective tissue to our story. There's need, there's supply, there's demand, there's tension: 'I need you/I don't want you here.' It's a national issue, but the crosshairs are right here in Orange County."

Culture Clash knows it's tackling a topic that's white-hot. But the trio hopes to do it in a way that concentrates on the people involved, not the rhetoric. "The tricky part is finding the human story," Montoya said. "There's been so much clamor and noise, and this is why we're looking for a different way into (the issues). We want to talk about what's on everybody's minds, look at things from many perspectives."

Montoya speculated that "Culture Clash in AmeriCCa" might cause a few audience members to walk out, but South Coast Rep cofounder David Emmes, who's directing the production, expressed more confidence in his audience.

The only person who could potentially get offended is "somebody who's entirely devoid of humor," Emmes said. "What (Culture Clash) is doing comes from an honest impulse. It's just a wonderful comic and satiric way of looking at things which … occasionally will sting. But rather than reacting to issues, they explore people. Their work is very honest, with a deep sense of compassion. And it's sometimes extremely funny."

The group isn't too worried about tweaking a few O.C. noses – they did it the last time they were here, in a 1998 adaptation of Aristophanes' "The Birds" at South Coast Rep that was larded with local references and personalities. The audience loved it, Siguenza recalled. "People understood what we're trying to do. They went with it."

"We had a better time with the audience here than in Berkeley," Montoya added. (They threw Northern California references into "The Birds" when it was presented at Berkeley Repertory Theatre.) "Those people were very P.C. Here, people are more comfortable laughing about themselves. They're just as bright – but a little more relaxed!"

Source: OC Register