By Jim Berg

A slice of Los Angeles life that is rarely seen in mainstream media is being brought to the Valley by the Aztlan Playwrights Collective, under the umbrella of Actor’s Alley (which is best known as the company that is restoring the El Portal Theater). Led by Danny De La Paz, the Collective promises to portray the breadth and depth of the Chicano/Latino experience. “There’s a lot of theaters here, but none of them cater to that community — none of them offer anything that that community can identify with,” says De La Paz.

De La Paz is probably best known for his portrayal of Chuco in the 1979 film Boulevard Nights, a film that is often cited as one the first realistic portrayals of youth in the barrios of East L.A. His portrayal of a troubled teenager resonates today in much the same way that James Dean’s performance in Rebel Without a Cause resonated with teens of the fifties. While Boulevard Nights’ seventies style dates the film, De La Paz’s Chuco seems to transcend time, and speaks very clearly to the youth of today. Young cholos throw house parties featuring Boulevard Nights on the VCR, and identify with Chuco’s meticulous attention to detail as he sharpens the creases on his baggy khakis and T-shirt for a night of cruising. Chuco’s tragedy is their tragedy.

The Aztlan Playwrights Collective’s first outing this summer, however, speaks to a different generation. The Last Brown Hat is a play that assembles four men on the occasion of a friend’s funeral. They are men whose friendship was forged in the heady atmosphere of Chicano activism and militancy of the sixties and seventies. Today, with one exception, they are middle-aged and middle class, and their reunion causes them to examine what they’ve become since the idealistic days of their youth. The play is a drama that uses humor to expose the irony of what they were and what they’ve become.

While the primary purpose of the Collective is to reach an audience that is underrepresented in theater and media, the Collective also seeks to bridge cultural gaps. “It is important to us that people who are outside of our culture be at the play, because they are going to get an education, too,” says De La Paz. “They’re going to see a different side to our culture, a side that they can’t see in the movies, that they can’t see on TV, that they don’t read about in the papers — a side that’s not filtered through the media.”

When asked about the Collective’s partnership with Actor’s Alley, De La Paz says, “They’re trying to adapt to their new situation and we’re trying to adapt to working with them, so, right now, it’s like we’re these two people that have just met and it’s kind of awkward. We’re learning how to be with each other, and we don’t have anything to say — you know — it’s like, ‘you wanna dance?’ ‘Aw, I don’t know,’ ‘Where do you wanna go now?’ — that kind of thing.”

“Jeremiah Morris and Bob Caine [Actor’s Alley artistic and managing directors] are really good people. I feel respect from them, and now that we’re integrating into Actor’s Alley, we’re all having to sit and think about how we are going to live with each other. Even if we weren’t there, Actor’s Alley is asking themselves how they’re going to live with themselves. This transition in getting the theater repaired and into this bigger situation—a professional, bigger house and constant, round-the-clock theater, all year long. It’s a big responsibility to keep that machine going. What’s the system going to be? How is it going to work? And are things that worked in the past gonna work now? So they’re asking themselves a lot of questions, and we’re like the new kids on the block.”

When asked about his vision for the whole endeavor, De La Paz says, “I’m trying not to be rigid about it. I like to make plans, but I don’t want to be the asshole who says, ‘Oh, but we’re supposed to be doing this.’ Sometimes you can plan yourself right out of the experience. You can be so rigid and so planned that you’re not open to where it’s really going to go.”

The Aztlan Playwrights Collective promises to make an invaluable contribution to the Valley’s cultural landscape by giving expression to the Chicano/Latino community. That community is often overlooked, which only contributes to the myth of white homogeneity associated with the San Fernando Valley.