Couple’s ‘Luminarias’ sheds light on culture

Thursday, May 16, 1996

Husband/wife team creates Latino theater productionBy Rodney
Tanaka

Daily Bruin Senior Staff

UCLA professor Jose Luis Valenzuela struggled with ideas
regarding "Luminarias," the new play he is directing. Many nights
were given to pondering decisions about the production rather than
to peaceful slumber. He received important guidance from the
playwright, the driving force behind the work:

"Stop thinking and let me go to sleep."

"Luminarias," open at the Los Angeles Theater Center through May
26, was written by Evelina Fernandez, who also performs in the play
and is married to Valenzuela. The husband and wife team have
combined their artistic efforts for 15 years as actor and director.
Fernandez’s first full-length play chronicles the lives and loves
of four Latinas and represents their first collaboration as
director and writer.

"I started writing because I wanted to explore Latina characters
and I wanted to be able to play something other than a gang member
or a hooker," Fernandez says. "I wanted to explore our prejudices
as Latinos towards other people."

Fernandez’ character, an attorney named Andrea, believes her
bias against white people is justified because of her childhood
experiences with racism. She must confront her prejudice when she
falls in love with a Jewish colleague.

"Because of it she has to drop a case where she’s defending a
young Chicana who is in an abusive relationship," Fernandez says.
"It’s that conflict that we of color feel about selling out, or
about sticking by your people."

The play deals with the rage felt by the characters towards the
closed doors that prevent them from accomplishing their goals.
Valenzuela says that students have reacted positively to the
message of the play.

"The idea is don’t let the rage get in the way of love,"
Valenzuela says. "The world is changing and we have to change it
without losing who we really are."

The play’s name comes from two sources, the name of a restaurant
near Cal State Los Angeles where Chicanos used to gather, and also
the literal translation from Spanish: light or enlightenment.

"(In the play) I say that every woman has a flame in her heart
like a luminaria that burns with the hope of finding love and
happiness and peace of mind," Fernandez says.

Valenzuela took control as the keeper of the flame and invested
his theater knowledge in the direction of the play. He explains
that this experience gave him a better understanding of women.

"I brought an objective eye from the outside to try to realize
these full-blown human beings with contradictions but with beauty,"
Valenzuela says, "beauty in the sense of poetry, self-esteem and
self-respect."

The play’s fully realized characters give Latinos an opportunity
to see their own reflections onstage.

"Young Chicanos get a sense of being able to relate to the
characters onstage or understanding where they’re coming from,"
Fernandez says. "If they’re looking into themselves and seeing
something that they hadn’t acknowledged before, that’s good
too."

"Every time I do a play I attempt to inspire the audience to
open a window into the bedrooms of our life to be able to see
through," Valenzuela adds. "When you let people see through to
what’s going on you really know who we are and you will find
something out about me that you never imagined."

Valenzuela and Fernandez actively open new doors for themselves
and their companions. "Luminarias" represents the first equity
production in the first full season of the Latino Theater Company,
a group that formed 10 years ago as a theater workshop within the
Los Angeles Theater Center. Their independence allows for more
freedom and demands a measure of hard work.

"The Latino Theater Company is where we live out our dreams
because many times in Hollywood you feel powerless," Fernandez
says. "We have the power to create what we want to."

The resulting play allows wife and husband to collaborate for
the first time as writer and director. Despite arguments and
occasional late-night tossing and turning, the couple appreciates
the finished product.

"It wasn’t bad. It could have been worse," Fernandez says with a
laugh. "If I write another play I might let him direct again."

STAGE: "Luminarias," at the Los Angeles Theater Center through
May 26. Wed.-Sat. 8 p.m.; Sat. and Sun. 2 p.m. For more info, call
(213) 223-6403.