Culture Clash

Relevance gives comedy group its power
By JOEY GUERRA
For The Chronicle

CULTURE CLASH IN AMERICCA
• When: 7:30 p.m. today; 8 p.m. Friday; 2:30 and 8 p.m. Saturday
• Where: Alley Theatre, Hubbard Stage, 615 Texas
• Tickets: $15-$25; call 713-228-8421
Puerto Rican poets, lively Baptist ministers and troubled Vietnam vets are all part of Culture Clash's repertoire of memorable onstage characters.

On a late Monday morning in Houston, however, the Los Angeles-based comedy trio ?- Ric Salinas, Richard Montoya and Herbert Sigüenza (who thrilled audiences as writer, director and star of last season's Cantinflas!) ?- seem content to simply be themselves.

They're here presenting the Houston premiere of Culture Clash in AmeriCCa, part of the Alley Theatre's Fall Festival celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month. The show, a satirical treatment of contemporary American life, opened Tuesday and runs through Saturday.


AmeriCCa is a distillation of Culture Clash's 20 years together. It's based on their interviews with a diverse sampling of people in Miami, New York, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and sites on the San Diego-Tijuana border ?- plus excerpts from their earlier works.

"I think the best part of seeing a Culture Clash show is that the three of us ?- three Latinos ?- we get to portray all these different ethnicities, genders. We each play seven or eight characters. It's explosive," Salinas says.

"We don't let the audience rest. These voices are voices that you don't hear, generally, in mainstream media. These are the voices of the underdogs of America."

AmeriCCa is a seamless blend of humor, monologues and real-life interviews that veers from sharp satirical commentary to unexpectedly sensitive musings on life.

It's been touring the country for two years, enjoying enthusiastic runs in Los Angeles and at Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven, Conn.

The L.A. show was filmed by actor Emilio Estevez for release on DVD ?- and, possibly, as a feature concert film like Eddie Murphy's Raw.

It's a constantly evolving project.

AmeriCCa twists and turns in response to current events, including the war in Iraq and the impending presidential election.

"There's a religious question now in the show that wasn't there before," says Montoya, the group's liveliest member. "There's stuff we must look at ?- same-sex marriage, gender, transgender. We're bringing it all on, from the bedroom to the pulpit."

"It's really like, well, which character has something more important to say? Even if we don't have a (new) monologue 100 percent memorized, it's got to be told. I think that's what's kept the group together for 20 years. If we were doing golden-oldie hits, we'd be in a lounge in a Holiday Inn."

Culture Clash's topicality undoubtedly provokes some serious after-theater discussions, but there's plenty of humor, too. In fact, the group's work relies on it as a way to make hot-button topics more accessible to the average person.

Once they've loosened up, the guys unleash quips on everything from the challenges of maintaining a personal life with just two weeks off a year ("I just buy her a Gucci bag and she shuts up," deadpans Sigüenza) to the possibility of a Culture Clash franchise.

"We could be like Blue Man Group. We're going to start in Vegas. We'll be the Brown Man Group," Salinas says.

"We haven't flipped a burger or folded a burrito in about 15 years there, young man," Montoya cracks before switching to serious mode.

"We're just a few years away from (forming) a kind of a national ensemble of actors that can get together and do theater or film or innovative television. It's kind of what (director) Pedro Almodovar has been doing. It's kind of what Woody Allen has been doing. It's kind of what David Mamet has been doing. We have to follow that model.

"We can't just (perform to) 99 seats at a time. It's good enough, and there's an appetite out there big enough."

Indeed, the trio's plate is full for the next several months. They're working on a screenplay about a quinceañera (an Hispanic girl's 15th birthday celebration) and on several commissioned plays, including Zorro for Berkeley Repertory Theatre and La Jolla Playhouse.

The guys also hope to get back on television. They got a taste in the early '90s via a syndicated sketch-comedy series that ran for 30 weeks.