"What's With The Funny Accent?"

Chuy in the Sky (with dime bags)

We are punch-drunk at the maternity ward of comedy, the laughs ricocheting from the sides of the tiny Dougherty Arts Center stage.

Adrian Villegas is Chuy Mendoza, an East Side traffic reporter for the evening news feature, "Chuy in the Sky.'' The funny part is that Chuy, on a rooftop and without a helicopter, reports on gang-bangers, drug deals and borrachos near a taqueria stand.

"Yes, beware the unmarked cop vehicle circling the area,'' Chuy warns. "He doesn't know that anybody knows he's a cop, but you don't see too many 'Bush for Governor' bumper stickers on the East Side, know what I'm sayin'?"

To prove he's OK up on the roof by himself (and high as a kite), he does a little dance, singing "Push up the roof! Push up the roof!'' a mangling of "Raise the Roof.'' Then, he falls to his death.

I'm the straight-arrow news anchor, and I play up the moment instantly. I take off an imaginary pair of glasses, put my hand to my eyebrows, and launch into Walter Cronkite by way of the Kennedy assassination.

"Ladies and gentlemen,'' I begin, "A bright light has been extinguished. Chuy Mendoza, our man in the sky, is now literally our man in the sky. His last words were (pause for effect and holding back tears) 'Push up the roof. Push up the roof.' "

From the ad-libbing, a dozen ideas push out in all directions like a nova. Erica Gonzalez suggests a quick-shot slide showing a bad picture of Chuy with the dates "1979-1998'' superimposed.

Somebody else suggests the anchor mention the newly established "Chuy Mendoza College Memorial Fund.'' Diana Chavez wants Chuy paraphernalia: T-shirts, hats, buttons, a commemorative video. We can show old high school pictures of Chuy in his early days as "Candle in the Wind '97'' plays.

And we are doubled over, gasping for air, amusing the hell out of ourselves for what will only account for five minutes of a two-hour show. Stomachs hurt, breath is short.

I wonder, keeping it to myself, if catch-phrase characters like the Church Lady and Ed Grimley came from such laborless births.

Into the void

Teatro Humanidad Cansada comes across like a favorite aunt. In fact, the figurehead of the group, Mary Rocha, is quick with hugs, with words of encouragement, with raucous laughter, with a smile that belongs exclusively in the domain of the favorite aunt. So the favorite aunt group decided they wanted to bring Latino comics together to do a show.

Like every band that forms or every theater group that is launched, members come from other projects and form something from other patches of experience: a performance quilt. Some members come from groups that had "creative differences,'' then came apart. Some people who've done regular acting before come looking for a chance to do anything different.

So they came together, Adrian Villegas, Rodney Garza and Rupert Reyes and they asked the Teatro to help get this together. A few months later, in December, auditions were held. Now, in late February, the show opens with six performances, beginning tonight at the Austin Community College's Rio Grande campus.

A comedy group in Austin is not a new idea: Esther's Follies, Monk's Night Out and others are already well-established. There have even been local Latino comedy groups, like the Chicano Inteligencia Agency, of which Rodney was a founding member. But the three comedians, Adrian, Rupert and Rodney, wanted to work together. They thought they could find some untapped talent here. They held some auditions, they found the people they were looking for, and the people together wrote skits that made people laugh. And over two months, we prepared to perform, hoping to bring theater to a Latino community that rarely sees itself portrayed on the stage.

"There's a void that's been in Austin for a long time without a bilingual theater company,'' Rupert said.

So the Latino Comedy Project, the group borne of this need, tries to fill the silent void -- with laughter.

El Jalapeño

I see the first handout flyer after three weeks or so of rehearsals: It's got a jalapeño, and so had a few other people, but we were outvoted, so here it is.

One of the tag lines on the leaflet: "The funniest Latino comedians in Austin performing. . ."

I'm nervous now, thinking people will come to the show expecting brown-skinned Jerry Seinfelds and "The Next Paul Rodriguez.'' Some of the people in the show could officially be called comedians: Adrian did a one-man comedy show last summer that I thought rivaled the shows John Leguizamo has done. Mical Trejo did Esther's Follies for a while. Rupert Reyes wrote and acted in "Petra's Pecado,'' and Patricia Arredondo, Rodney Garza, Diana Chavez and Erica Gonzalez have all done professional shows as actors, directors or crew.

Which leaves me, the guy who did a little drama in high school and college, but gave up one starving art for another, going the writing route instead.

I look a little closer, trying to figure out why I'd been so averseadverse to using the jalape4o logo. I decide, finally, that the grinning pepper looks like he's laughing at me.

The language cosa

We are our parents' semi-assimilated children. We're the first Mexican-American generation in which the influence of television was nearly as strong as the influence of la familia. And, where most of us grew up, the television was in English, was white (at least until The Cosby Show) and could not pronounce "El Salvador."

Some of us speak Spanish better than other members of the troupe. I traveled my whole life and was kept away from my Texan roots long enough to lack the fluency I wish I had in Spanish. A skit written entirely in Spanish, the Spanish soap opera parody, takes twice as long to perform on a first read-through as the actors grasp at inflection, at unfamiliar words ("corriente?"), at long sentences. We know Spanish, we can roll our r's, but are the words as graceful as they were when they played in our ears as kids , from our parents, from grandparents, from my favorite uncle who could double me over in laughter with a single word?

Born in the Valley

A lot of us are from the Valley, the South Texas band of towns within spit-take distance of the Mexican border. I was born in Weslaco. Erica, Rodney and Mical are from Edinburgh. Patricia is from Pharr.

There's a shamelessness I've noticed in Valley humor; something I thought was exclusive to the barbecues and holiday gatherings of the Gallagas, the Cuellars, the Gonzalezes, the Ansisos of my family. It's a willingness to tell a joke, add a layer, spread a laugh like the frosting on a cake, add a punchline, laugh some more, go too far, laugh again, completely go too far, send the room erupting into endless, teary, laughter. A never-ending joke string that builds and builds, until a joke becomes mythic. Five years later, a punchline can come up and the joke is a full-force grenade; everyone dives in hysterics.

At Christmas, any one of my relatives can bring up "Poncho,'' and everyone in the room laughs. It's about my father going to Mexico. Like a good dad, he's shopping for one of the in-style ponchos that I'd asked for from Las Flores as a teen-ager. He goes into a shop, and in a lapse of Spanish, asks the shop owner for a "Pancho."

In Spanish, the owner responds, "Oh, Pancho doesn't work until Friday."

My dad smiles, says "OK,'' and walks out of the shop.

Los hombres y las damas

It's early still and the skits haven't been finalized yet. Diana brings up a point that up to now had been tip toed around. A lot of the skits are hombre-centric. With few exceptions, many of the skits have an obligatory female character amid funny male ones.

The consensus: We have three talented female actress and not enough good material for them to go around. I'm an offender -- the sole skit I wrote has three parts for men, no women.

It's an important thing -- rehearsal stops dead and a discussion follows. Do we add more skits? Get rid of some of the material we already have? Do we change some of the existing roles to female characters?

It's not the quantity of roles, Diana says, channeling the sketch-comedy ghosts of Nora Dunn, Janeane Garofalo and Catherine O' Hara. It's playing characters that are interesting and will expand an actress' range. That shuts a lot of us up for a few minutes.

We throw around a few ideas for skits or at least characters to build skits around. I lamely suggest to Rupert a Latino Martha Stewart parody, but Rodney tells me that another comedy show did a similar bit.

It's Thursday. Deadline for new skits is Monday. We all agree to go home and try to bring back some new material.

On Monday, Erica comes in with three, funny, short "Consejos Breves,'' three-women point/counterpoint skits that are read, with hilarious effect. Adrian redrafts a monologue he'd written about a pregnant 15-year-old celebrating her Quincinera to incoporate all three actresses.

The problem isn't fixed, but it's better. Some parts are swapped out. Diana switches with Patty. Now Patty is the lead in "Pendejo Self Defense'' and Diana will be Margret in "Manuel y Margret.''

One small step for the Latino Comedy Project. A slightly smaller step for Latinakind.

A funny guy I met, then met again

I met Adrian Villegas for the first time twice. On a quasi-date, I saw his one-man show, "Six Mexicans Named Gonzales,'' last summer. I laughed hard and after the show, my date, a mutual acquaintance, introduced us. I shook his hand, congratulated him and he was gone, a funny guy in a funny show I saw once.

Now he was a funny guy in a funny show I saw once, who happened to be the roommate of one of my best friends. I'd visit my friend and almost invariably, Adrian would be lounging on the couch, watching bits from his collection of Monty Python tapes, or watching a favorite "Saturday Night Live'' skit. I didn't know for a while how serious Adrian was about comedy.

I get a glimpse later: Adrian, shorter than me, a little round and about as intense as James Woods on crack cocaine, reads scripts voraciously. He carries in an oversized backpack scores of hard-bound three-ring binders holding a collection of monologues, scripts, character sketches, re-writes, second drafts. The first time I see him dig through it, I expect Eric Bogosian to pop out of the pack and do 30 minutes.

One night, before going out to a party with my friend, Adrian and I get to talking about comedy. We have a few favorites in common: Kids in the Hall, a few particular Python moments, some vintage "SNL.'' He says I should audition for an upcoming show. I say that would be nice.

I go to my party and all but forget the conversation.

A month later, I've auditioned. I get a half-dozen calls from Adrian: he says he's excited about the show. He tells me he's pushing to get me cast. He says the number of slots have changed to accommodate three female cast members. He says Teatro Cansada changed its mind again. He says I'm in the cast, then I'm not in the cast.

In the end, I'm not in the cast. Four male cast members (three of them already pre-cast), a guy from Esther's Follies and three female cast members are all they can afford.

Afford? I didn't know there was money involved.

I can write for the show, Adrian tells me, but it'll be a little bit like building an atom bomb by way of a suggestion box: Drop your jokes in a slot and maybe we'll get to them someday.

Cold read

The morning is cold, cloudy and dismal, as if determined to dull my audition piece, a short, silly, self-written monologue about an alien implanting itself in my aunt's uterus and appearing uninvited during Thanksgiving dinner. (Not, by the way, a true story.)

It's nine in the morning and in the chilly room, I throw myself around before five members of Teatro Cansada (including Adrian, Rodney and Rupert), hoping for the one available male slot in the show. I get some laughs; I'm told that if I'm not cast, they'd still like me to write for the show.

I exit back into a cloudy Austin morning.

A few weeks later, I'm invited to the first official meeting at Rupert's house. We all show up, some of us meeting for the first time, while Rupert's wife serves orange juice, coffee and bagels.

The first order of business is to pick a name for the group. Somebody has already suggested Latino Comedy Project. A few rejected ideas: Royal Flying Jalapeno Circus, Chicano Conspiracy Theory, Chicano Comedy Party.

We sit in a circle and start throwing around ideas. Adrian prepares a list from his backpack stash. I throw in my idea for a barrio sports broadcast, which will become the Mexican Basketball Association skit. Rupert has a few skit ideas, as do Mical, Patricia and Erica.

We wonder if we should have a theme. Should the show have a name? Will it tie us down to writing certain kinds of material? Should we have a topical news broadcast? We want to do a Spanish soap opera parody, but can we make fun of Henry Cisneros, casting him as a Lothario with many mistresses?

When the smoke clears, we have ideas for 25 skits, some previously written, some detailed, others just whims of ideas or character sketches that need developing. We divvy up the skits, go our separate ways, and get to the task of writing. The number of skits that will actually show up, fully written when rehearsals start, will be about half the 25 we started with.

My position isn't really set. I write a skit chosen for the show. I get assigned a few bit parts. Am I part of the group, or a freelancer? As the show goes on, I get offered more lines, a few more parts, am invited to give feedback on some of the things written.

It happens slowly over the weeks we rehearse, and I begin to feel less like ivy on the wall. But everyone is generous -- the bits I get to do aren't table scraps. Before too long, the group of seven becomes eight, without too much fuss, and with no secret comedy handshake for entry.

Is it funny?

Before it is sufficiently ethnic, before it is ad-libbed into some sort of high-improvizationalized form, before it is cast and nuanced, it has to be funny.

Inside the Dougherty, in the same tiny, sober room where auditions were held, we have our first read-through. A giant, wood "committee'' table that might have been carved from some extinct genus of redwood, seats eight of us together. Scripts, worked over from ideas born in our first real meeting, are brought out.

We take turns reading them, and the process begins. Each writer goes through their own script, playing each of the characters, reading the stage directions out loud. Most everything gets laughs.

A lot of the initial material is written by Adrian, he of the ever-abundant backpack. He has a few monologues, a parody of "The X-Files'' ("The Mex-Files"), the Pendejo Self Defense Kit, and others. Mical brings in two skits including "Cash for Kilos,'' but warns us that they're rough and could use some finessing.

Some of the scripts are handwritten, a few are typed. Rupert brings in "The Gordo Show,'' a hilarious monologue about a big guy with a cable access show, and "Porno Confession'' about a young man revealing his adult film acting to a curious priest.

We work as a kind of invisible jury, passing judgment on pieces as they are read. Nothing is final -- a piece that doesn't seem to work on a first read might be great when the parts are cast and the skit is fully acted out. But even at this early stage, with scratch-outs, scribbled inserts and ideas not fully fleshed out, it's not hard to see what's funny and what's merely amusing.

Erica submits the first skit she's ever written "Amor Imposible," an all-Spanish soap opera parody. From the puzzled looks Mical and I exchange, it's clear that not all of us understand all the Spanish -- but Erica reads through the piece like the last tornado in "Twister,'' but funnier. She leaps through the read, giving the piece such exuberance and energy that the language barrier is broken, crossed over and transcended. We are laughing before long, as much at Erica's tour de force as the script itself.

"Maybe we could have a translator for the Spanish impaired,'' somebody suggests.

"I think it would be hilarious if Erica just went out and read the plot."

The biggest fear, for everyone, is that the writing won't be smart enough. That something will be as formulaic as bad "SNL;'' a silly premise that isn't written up well. Or a one-joke pony that rides on far beyond the point where it still gets laughs.

Is it funny?

Skits that are funny and skits that aren't go through the process, gently. Suggestions for a trim or a tightening could mean the script just isn't funny enough. But at this early stage, no one will say that something isn't good. It just might not be right for this show. Maybe the next one. Maybe after the re-write. Maybe the skit will go into the comic void, never to be laughed from again.

Intermission: Cameos

After rehearsals one night, I had a dream about the pimpled stepchild of comedic acting, the cameo. I dream about the cameos because I'm making them constantly in this dream, a near-invisible apparition showing up on the set of every comedy skit I'd ever loved, watching:

• Eddie Murphy is hoppin', jivin', singin' "In the hot but!" as the horn section behind him riffs; perfect James Brown synthesis occurs, as I watch, holding a towel for Mr. Murphy offstage.
• Eric Idle is sleaze in a suit: He elbows Terry Jones with the nudge nudge, wink wink, inquiring about that "candid photography." I watch from the spare park bench, next to Graham Chapman as he does a crossword from the London Times.
• On location and it's freezing on the Toronto street where Mark McKinney sits on a piece of lawn furniture, crushing people's far-away heads with his index finger and thumb. I'm an extra, walking by in a gray trenchcoat, tiny on the opposite side of the street. I get called a "yuppie scum" and exit scene, head crushed.
• I wake up in the middle of a Benny Hill skit. I remember there was a bawdy song, a bunch of scantily clad women, a short bald man and Benny Hill in drag. For some reason, I can't pin down what skit this is from.

Las Latinas

Sketch comedy is supposed to work when there's a dynamic, a variety of people who can play different parts and different types. Rupert tells me that the casting, especially for the female cast members, was done with this in mind. They wanted a variety of women who could play different types: someone who could slip into ingenue roles (Diana), someone who could play up a pratfall (Patricia) and someone who had a gentleness of character and a talent for generating material (Erica).

The typification wasn't too far off the mark. Diana is the youngest of the group, slim and pretty, and a serious actress by trade. Erica is generous, quick and funny -— she is the first to look out for other cast members and make a ruckus when things are moving too slowly or someone is being treated unfairly. And Patricia is outrageous and shameless, part Carol Burnett, part Jim Carrey, throwing every facial muscle, every bodily tic, into her lines.

Lines (racial lines, lines of taste, lines to memorize…)

There are lines, scenes and costumes in the show that, if performed by a non-Latino group, could provoke a riot of controversy. Where's the line? How blurry can it be before something we say or do, something that could be perceived as stereotypical or negative, goes too far?

Patricia has the grandmother test.

When the show started, she says she thought about the material and whether it was offensive. She comes from a politically active Mexican American family. Patricia said, "I kept asking myself, what are we making fun of? Is it healthy? Am I making fun of the things my family worked very hard to make me proud of?"

Ultimately, Patty said, she would ask herself if her grandmother would approve. But beyond being sensitive and being politically correct, the skits needed to educate, or at least show sides of Latino culture that are not familiar and provoke a reaction, even if they're not positive ones.

For most of the cast members who'd already done a lot of theater, the group has been a chance to speak Spanish on stage for the first time; to show characters that are from our families, from our culture; from the small border towns a lot of us grew from.

"I know my culture," Erica said. "I live my culture. But in my (acting) work, it was never reflected."

It's comedy for a targeted audience; Latinos who might not otherwise go to the theater because the work doesn't affect their lives. So it's a challenge, and a dangerous one — showing those lives truthfully, but with some exaggeration and in a way that correctly answers the question, "Is it funny?"

For people like Patricia, Erica and Mical, this show offers more control than they've had before. "Patty's never been given a forum like this to do these kinds of characters," Adrian said. "When Mical was at Esther's Follies, he could write material, but he couldn't perform as much new material like this."

"This show is so us," he added. "It's for, by and from the community, and we're venting a lot of stuff."

In only one case has the show gone too far and been changed. Rupert remembers a part of the Chicano Dating Game that made cast members uncomfortable. In the skit, one of the bachelors is a militant Zapatista guerilla who's found it hard to meet women in the jungle. A year ago when the skit was written, the material was funny. This year, in the wake of a bloody massacre involving the Zapatistas, the skit hits too close to the bone. "It was just in real bad taste," Rupert said. "Not one word of the script had changed, but the context had changed."

Transients

Late one night, I visit Rupert's house to help type up a mailing list. Rupert, of the graying hair and saintly demeanor (which is skewered in one skit by his portrayal of a slightly naughty priest), is by far the funniest person in the group for he opposite reason that any of the rest of the group is funny: He is subtle and gentle. His humor sneaks in under the radar and grabs you, deliriously.

In script readings, he can hardly deliver a line that doesn't get laughs. It goes without saying that when he has a suggestion, it is followed. Everyone in the group trusts his judgment, not just as the elder cast member, but as the one among us who's written a successful touring play that packed in audiences every night.

At his house, I chat with Rupert and his wife. He talks about his dream of a theater space where Teatro Cansada can reside permanently. Regular plays can rotate on the schedule with comedy and improv shows. The comedy project would have a home. In the meantime, after this run, he wants the group to do open mike nights, open for Esther's Follies maybe, play a few skits at the Capitol City Comedy Club on Latino Comedy Night.

The group hopes to buy a theater where porn emporium Cinema West now resides. But there are politics. Another group, the Latino Arts Consortium of Austin, is pushing for a minority-organized theater, the Mexican American Cultural Center on the East Side. They want a bond issue passed. But if it fails?

"We might be a year behind with nothing to show for it if that happens," Rupert said. It's hard to pick sides, to be political when all you want to do is perform. But it happens. For now, LCP is homeless: We don't know where we'll be after the ACC shows.

The Preview (or, The Near Cannibalism)

Confusion: All I know is there's a show on the UT campus and we're doing an early preview of two skits, "Pendejo Self-Defense" and "Cash for Kilos," a skit Mical wrote about his experience auditioning for one of those crappy real police stories shows. They wanted him to play a straight-up Mexican, but rejected Mical because he sounded "too refined."

In the script Mical wrote, a producer I play tells an aspiring actor auditioning for "Unsolved Rescue 911 Mysteries" to be "more Mexican!"

The first act, I discover the night we perform, features a quickly put-together comedy group called Flojo Style. The deal is, we'll perform our two skits during the first act, in the middle of their show. The second act is a one-man performance by comedian/cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz.

Rupert, Diana, Mical, Rupert's 8-year-old daughter Anya (a late addition to the show) and I wait in one tiny room offstage along with a few members of Flojo Style. The room is full of props, chalk boards and clutter. It is a space so small, I wonder how long we'd last if the door locked on us, trapping everyone; who'd be the first to bring up their vote for tastiest soccer team?

When we finally go on, toward the end of the first act, the audience response is deafening. We get great reactions throughout the "Pendejo" skit with a full-out hootin' and hollerin' burst of applause at the end. "Cash for Kilos" gets a slightly cooler reaction, but a fair share of laughs. We are pumped; the skits were thrown together at the last minute, our lines barely memorized, and they killed.

The show is three weeks away. None of us can wait.

Of dread and delight

The final weeks that lead to a stage performance are, for actors, an excruciating mix of panic and excitement, of dread and delight. Anticipation takes over, but so does that fear that something, anything, will go wrong and ruin The Event.

Every acting company that has ever put on a show must at some point convince itself that it is different. That what it is offering, in its pantomime, projection or performance, is special.

The feeling in this show, expressed in jittery tones, both English and Spanish, is that this show is a little more personal for all of us than any performance we've given before. There are abuelas who will see their language used on a stage for the first time. There are young Latinos who we want to see laughing and maybe to inspire to get involved in something, anything, more creative than watching Jerry Springer. And there are our parents, who corrected our sloppy Spanish when it lapsed — who, over arroz con pollo, watched us grow, their brows furrowing over how much of their culture, which even they sometimes feel slipping from their grasp, will live on through us.

Is it funny?

Yes. It is funny.

But when the curtain rises, that will be the least of what matters.