Cultural chameleons: the irreverent sketch comedy of Culture Clash has developed into sophisticated docu-comedies that revolve around a geographic hub and the disparate perspectives of its local inhabitants.(protest & art)

If the last 19 years writing and performing conscious comedy with Culture Clash have taught Herbert Siguenza anything, it's focus. "At one point you have to decide whether you're an activist or an artist. Our battle was getting on stage, reaching audiences, and doing a great job of educating and enlightening, and exposing our culture. To me, that's as important as organizing a rally."

Being an artist is a full-time job for Siguenza, who, along with co-conspirators Ric Salinas and Richard Montoya, has starred in a dozen original Culture Clash productions, authored two books of plays, and even landed a maverick sketch comedy spot on Fox TV in the early '90s. The Culture Clash guys are goofy and well read--their shows are part vaudeville, part Shakespeare. They've digested the manifestos and the diatribes, so what comes out onstage is a kind of humor that rewards you for your convictions but also disarms you of your humorless approach to them. Theirs is a stealth approach to activism.

"A clown has always had a function in history. You don't take what he does as seriously because he's a clown, but he might be saying some

real truths that hurt. We're clowning, but we're saying something that's very real," Siguenza says.

As a result, their alternative takes on American history reach national audiences at venues ranging from the Berkeley Repertory to the Lincoln Center, and their staying power as a theater collective is unparalleled. The Culture Clash players are affectionately irreverent curators of Chicano-Latino iconography; they're cultural contortionists who deliver insider satire on ethnic American subgroups--Miami retirees, the free trade bohemians, Vietnamese low-riders, and Dade County inmates. "We'll write a joke knowing that Latinos will laugh at this one, but then we'll write jokes that only Anglos will laugh at and Latinos have no clue what we're talking about--like a Spalding Gray reference or something."

The early Culture Clash plays patched together a series of fast-paced, loosely connected sketches. Over the years, however, the Culture Clash formula has become increasingly sophisticated. Their last several productions are docu-comedies that center on a geographic hub--Miami, the U.S.-Mexico border, Washington, D.C.--and the disparate perspectives of its local inhabitants. Before they sit down to write these site-based plays, Siguenza, Salinas, and Montoya interview a variety of people around town, and then play back onstage--verbatim, we presume--the best bits they've discovered. It's Anna Deveare Smith drama with plenty of leeway for the inherent humor in the real characters they've met.

For example, "In Radio Mambo, this Miami Cuban woman says to her husband, 'Let's stop talking about Fidel.' You know? And then they go silent. Because even though the right-wing Cubans hate Fidel, they can't stop talking about him. They're obsessed with him. I think deep down they admire him."