Oceanside Theatre Company serves up 3,000 years of overlooked history in John Leguizamo's "Latin History for Morons," which opens tomorrow night at the Sunshine Brooks Theater.
"Latin History for Morons" has some history with San Diego. In 2016, the play was part of La Jolla Playhouse’s Page to Stage Productions, a new play development program in which audiences experience the “birth” of a play. Leguizamo appeared on KPBS Evening Edition at that time to discuss the research he did for the play and some of the history he uncovered.
The play debuted during Donald Trump's first term as president and during the political turmoil of that time.
"Knowing that you have these heroes and putting them in their proper place in history would make a big difference," Leguizamo said in 2016. "If all kids and all Americans were learning about all these heroes that contributed in World War I, the Vietnam War, and you realize how many Latin people have sacrificed their lives to keep democracy and keep this country free. You would feel different when Trump says something and calls people names like that. I mean, I think you would be much more outraged. And not just Latin people."
Nearly a decade later and Trump is into his second term as president, so Oceanside Theatre Company decided it was the perfect time to bring the play back.
"The play is more relevant now," Herbert Sigüenza said. He is directing OTC’s production.
"We got permission from John Leguizamo to update it, you know, because we had to update it because things have changed considerably. The attacks are just more vicious, more direct," Sigüenza added. "I think we, as artists, have to respond to that. And Rick Najera, my performer, is not John Leguizamo. And so we said, 'hey, let us tweak it a little to fit our physicality, our vicinity to the Mexican border and all these things.' So we have tweaked it here and there to just make it a lot more relevant and a lot more localized, too."
Sigüenza is well-suited to direct and update the play. As one of the founding members of Culture Clash, he has decades of experience using comedy for social commentary and to try to effect political change.
"John Leguizamo's career and Culture Clash's career parallel each other a lot," Sigüenza said. "We both came out in the late '80s, '90s. And he was doing comedy as a political way of getting a message across, just like Culture Clash. So when I saw this play, I was like, 'oh, this is right up my alley. This is in my wheelhouse.'"
The play was also turned into a Netflix special in 2018, with Leguizamo reprising his stage performance. The OTC production marks the first professional staging of the show in San Diego outside of Leguizamo’s original touring production and without Leguizamo as the solo performer.
In the play, Leguizamo makes clear that the "morons" of the title are the audience and through humor and information, he hopes to educate them and spark curiosity to learn more on their own.
Sigüenza noted that it is not just about facts and history — it is also about empathy.
"I think theater is about empathy, right? And it's not just education," Sigüenza said. "But it's like, now I know why there's so many Mexicans. Now I know why there's Salvadorans in California. It's because of this history, right? History really informs the present, and I think we really have to look back in order to see where we're going. If you go through our U.S. history books, you find very little about Latino contributions. You hear about the Mexican-American War, but you really don't know the motivation. There's two sides of history, and our history is just not recorded in our textbooks. And so I think this play tries to right a wrong, and so I'm really excited about it. And I think we have to remind people that we are American. We have four or five generations now, since the Treaty of Guadalupe defined the border. We have to repeat that, because I think the mainstream sees us as foreigners, but in many instances, we're not foreigners. We are American as enchilada pie."
OTC's production of "Latin History for Morons" has a preview performance tonight at the historic Sunshine Brooks Theater. There's an opening night reception on Saturday, and then the play runs through June 8.
