Richard Montoya

The most inspired thing about Culture Clash, which is resurfacing at the Los Angeles Theatre Center, is its name. It defines our California society in the full tilt of its tumultuous transitions. It also tells us who its three protagonists are, not by name alone--they happen to be Richard Montoya, Ric Salinas and Herbert Siguenza--but by cultural aggregation.

How long does it take to revitalize a moribund section of Los Angeles that was zoned and built according to development and land-use patterns that prevailed in the 1940s? How long does it take to recognize civic assets like the Los Angeles River and incorporate them into vibrant communities with modern transit and modern patterns of living, working and playing? How long does it take to get local residents, environmentalists, affordable housing advocates, developers and transportation planners on the same page?

Rodolfo "Rudy" Acuña is an amiable, white-haired professor from Los Angeles who's having his named dragged through the mud by certain Arizona politicians. He grew up in South L.A. and East Hollywood in the 1940s and '50s, and has fond memories of learning Latin at Loyola High School. He went on to make a career of teaching generations of young people from the Southwest some of the salient episodes of their history. His most famous work is a Mexican American history textbook on which hundreds of future politicos, writers and PhDs cut their intellectual teeth.

Culture Clash, the Latino comedy troupe starting a 11-week run at the Los Angeles Theatre Center on June 22, rarely misses an opportunity to acknowledge its roots and credit its predecessors. The San Francisco troupe's show, "The Mission," is a satiric look at Father Junipero Serra and the campaign to make him a saint. The show is dedicated to Mexican-American folk singer Lalo Guerrero for his "preservation of Chicano history.

COAXING A CHORTLE out of a Southern California audience used to require little more than saying the words "Los Angeles River." A river? Here? Maybe once, but after a 1938 flood killed more than 100 people, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers replaced it with one of the world's ugliest concrete-lined flood channels. In clear weather, it became a stone-dry campground for the homeless and a canvas for taggers, with just a trickle of treated wastewater running down a narrow central ditch.

What could be the Los Angeles Theatre Center's final two scheduled performances played to comparatively thin houses Sunday night as theater officials struggled to raise $250,000 they say is needed to bring up the curtain again Tuesday. LATC organizers said a flurry of weekend fund raising made them optimistic that the struggling downtown stage complex may meet its goal and remain afloat--at least temporarily.

Imagine a TV show hosted by a Chicano-based comedy group, whose first guest is a Puerto Rican comedian who makes fun of a popular Cuban singer. Formula for the much-discussed, long-awaited Latino TV hit? We'll see. Culture Clash, the L.A.-based trio, is finally getting its chance. The group, whose theater productions have been wildly successful here and around the country, has a six-week trial run on KTTV Channel 11 (premiering tonight at 7).

The world premieres of a new Stephen Sondheim musical and a new James Lapine comedy, both directed by Lapine, will highlight the La Jolla Playhouse's 1993 six-play season. Announced over the weekend, the season will also include a show by the Los Angeles-based Latino comedy troupe Culture Clash, and plays by Eugene O'Neill and George Bernard Shaw performed in repertory. For the first time in the company's 11-year-history, artistic director Des McAnuff will not be directing.

Hoping to give audiences something to buzz about in the expanded lobby yielded by its $30-million renovation, the Mark Taper Forum will offer a 2009 season that includes revivals of the Broadway musicals "Pippin" and "Parade" and Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya" as well as three new or recent plays concerning Irish terrorism, the Iraq war hitting home on a New Mexico Indian reservation, and a Mexican American family in 1970s Texas trying to cope with a daughter's serious injury.