Críticas Magazine

Adriana V. Lopez

Culture Clash, More Theatrical Friction
March 25, 2008

I heart the revolutionary theater troupe, Culture Clash. They’re the funniest and smartest Latino comedy trio around. Think: The Marx Brothers meets Cantinflas meets Eric Bogosian. If you haven’t seen them perform live in the last 24 years and you’re in California, check out their latest doc-style show, "Culture Clash in AmeriCCa” at the South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa until April 6^th. This time their geographic focus is Orange County. But it looks nothing like Fox television’s The O.C.---way too many Vietnamese car gangs, day laborers, and ‘Ask a Mexican’ jokes.

SoundBits of the show sound like this:

“If they want to build a wall to keep the Mexicans out of Orange County, guess who’s going to build the wall? Los Mexicanos. But we’re going to remember where all the holes are so we can get back in.”

 Dialog goes like this:

“Does your Rigoberta still go to Cesar Chavez Martin King Luther King Elementary?”

“No. I just moved her to the Barack Hussein Obama Free School, it’s very progressive. The Third Graders are planning a field trip to Baghdad”.

Influenced by Luis Valdez’s El Teatro Campesino, Culture Clash debuted in 1984 at the René Yáñez's Galeria de la Raza in San Francisco, California. The original members of the group were Richard Montoya, Ric Salinas, Herbert Sigüenza, José Antonio Burciaga, Marga Gómez, and Monica Palacios who originally went by the name "Comedy Fiesta." The troupe was reduced to four members in 1986 when Gómez and Palacios (two highly sassy comedians you should also see at least once in your lives) departed and then eventually the group was three. Culture Clash's break through play "The Mission," premiered in 1988 at the Intersection for the Arts in San Francisco. Burciaga passed away in 1996.

What makes Culture Clash one of the most exciting and viable acts around is there site-specific theater. For each new show, they interview everyday people and weave their personal narratives into zeitgeist theater pieces. Then it’s written and performed for the people and communities on which it is based. This is how their website puts it: “Culture Clash uses ‘performance collage’ to bring history, geography, "urban excavation," "forensic poetry" and storytelling together in a contemporary, movable theater narrative through a Chicano point of view.”

If you’re already a fan or want more information about the history of this legendary socio-political comedy group that Guillermo Gomez Peña called “reverse anthropology” you can visit Culture Clash's entire ouevre archived at the digital library at California State University, Northridge. Their plays have been collected in two volumes, Culture Clash: Life, Death and Revolutionary Comedy and Culture Clash in AmeriCCa: Four Plays.

 
{Above: This second collection of plays by Culture Clash includes "Bordertown, "Mission Magic Mystery Tour," "Anthems," and "Nuyorican Stories."}

Posted by Adriana V. Lopez on March 25, 2008 | Comments (1)