XL Entertainment Weekly
By Hector Saldaña
Latino comedy has many fathers.
The tendency in the 90’s is to lump them all together and trace its origins to Freddie Prinze or Culture Clash or HBO’s short-lived "Loco Slam." Seminal influences to be sure, but we shouldn’t be too surprised to learn that "SCTV", "Monty Python", "Saturday Night Live" and even "Mr. Show" have shaped the Latino comic sensibility as well.
In the last few years, the Latino Laugh Festival in San Antonio has featured a wide range of Latino comics, and here in Austin, the Big Stinkin’ International Improv and Sketch Comedy Festival has had a Latino comedy showcase for the past two years. Progress certainly, but with exposure has come some confusion. For the uninitiated, Latino comedy is mostly English, quite mainstream, not always political and, believe it or not, Anglo bashing is not its sole intent.
If you’re interested in a hilarious Latino comedy primer, try the first annual Austin Latino Comedy Festival this weekend at the State Theater, featuring Teatro Humanidad’s acclaimed Latino Comedy Project. The Latino Comedy Project is a local, nine-person sketch comedy troupe formed in 1997 that brings a fresh, distinctly Tejano slant to a laugh industry so dominated by East and West Coast types.
"The bottom line is it’s funny and everyone should get it," said Adrian Villegas, director of the Latino Comedy Project. "Our goal is not to alienate anybody, and maybe even educate. If you can enlighten people and make them laugh at the same time, then you’ve pretty much met the highest goal comedy is capable of," said Villegas, 27.
The Latino Comedy Project is best described as a combination of old-school laughs with a touch of hip-hop edginess. "We’ve never been overly offensive."
Villegas, a writer and performer in his own right, will open the show. He starred in the one-man shows "Six Mexicans Named Gonzalez" and "Barrio Daze." Austin’s popular (and white) Ray Prewitt’s Fourth Grade Class will also perform.
"We included them as an expression of our Chicano affirmative action program. You know, give the white guys a break," Villegas said jokingly. Los Angeles comic Gabriel Iglesias will emcee the two-day festival.
"We sort of threw around the idea of our own festival, and it just snowballed," Villegas said. He acknowledged that the Latino Comedy Project felt lost in the glut of no-name performers at the Latino Laugh Festival this summer. Plus, they were the only sketch troupe on the four-day bill.
"The Austin Latino Comedy Festival is just a matter of giving ourselves a platform to best control our own exposure," he said. "In the future, we want to make this an event with troupes from all over the country."
Villegas says a viable, tightly scripted sketch comedy team is difficult to organize and even harder to keep alive and healthy. "It’s very hard to sustain any kind of creative group effort. People get burned out and chemistry is very important. Sketch comedy is a really ravenous form to work in, because unless you’re going to do the same material, you’ve got to come up with new ideas."
The Latino Comedy Project came together, essentially, as a group of strangers. "You have to see how relationships develop and whether they develop positively or negatively," Villegas said. So far, so good.
What is the notion of Latino comedy? "There is no one definition of what Latino comedy is," Villegas said. "It varies a lot. I think the main thing is that it predominantly draws from references of our communities and our background and our experiences."
The measure of success, Villegas figures, is how closely a comic or comedy troupe can tap into that unique Hispanic experience and still get laughs from non-Latinos. Latino comedy standards must be high or it’s not worth it, Villegas said. His troupe’s comedy can range from the political to the really, really silly—whether a sketch is called "The Chicano Dating Game" or "Latinos for Bush."
"I believe so much in what we’re doing, and we’ve gotten such great response, that we don’t see it as work. In fact, we see it as a responsibility," he said.
Comics like Woody Allen, Richard Pryor and Bill Hicks shaped Villegas’ comic sensibility. "I set a goal for myself to try to mesh mainstream influences like ‘Saturday Night Live’ and ‘SCTV’ with Latino content that wasn’t mainstream. I wanted to use my frame of reference for really commercial comedy."
However, Villegas allows himself more wiggle room when it comes to his solo act, which can be scathing and confrontational. It’s another side of the Latino comedy coin.
On his planned opening monologue: "I’m going to talk about the white kids killing everybody, the suburban high school massacres. You’ll either think it’s funny or you’re going to be pissed of at me," he said. "I try to have a combination of self-incrimination and commentary on society. I try to have a balance. There’s something for everybody."
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