Perla

New Mexican playwright Leonard Madrid won the 2006 Kennedy Center Latino Playwriting Award for Perla, currently running at Teatro Visi�n at the Mexican Heritage Plaza Theater (in English with Spanish superscript). He also won this student-written play Award - which "desires to stimulate the voices of young Latino playwrights in America" - for works he penned in 2004 and 2007.

Perla should stay in the incubator a bit longer, for it still looks and sounds like a college production. It's earnest and poignant, but also illogical and incongruous.

The young woman Perla (Anees Guillen) postpones marriage to Tano (Jay Vera) to search for her absentee singer father Oro (an underused Mauricio Mendoza), now indigent, against the wishes of her sibling Mariposa (Sara Luna) and her T�a Cruz (Rosa Maria Escalante), who has raised the sisters since their mother died and womanizing pop took to the road. On the simple, sparse set (by Leigh Henderson), the characters drift back and forth from an empty stage and indeterminate dream state to their New Mexican front porch, led by a dream girl of some sort, Estrella (Aviana Reyes).

Intriguing premise - enhanced by Oro's songs from the height of his touring and recording career - that is lost without grounded relationships. Perla and Tano have known each other since childhood, but act as if they just met; uncomfortable and stiff. Cruz's interstitials praying to all her santos (saints) for various minor miracles at the outdoor bathtub shrine are humorous, but don't provide any traction towards building characters and conflict. The trio of women continuously hustle in and out of the front screen door with washing and shoes and hairbrushes, but the details of their lives are never revealed, for nobody seems to have a job, or go to school, or make clear how they support themselves, and what's important in their lives. It's difficult to find a compelling story and create sympathy when there's nothing at risk. Truth or Consequences is an actual town name in New Mexico; but truth and consequences are off the map in this play.

Perla eventually flees the homestead to find and bring back her pap� so he can walk her down the aisle. Somehow, she alone brings him - unconscious and twice her size - back to lie comatose (with some unknown affliction) in a lawn chair spanning the dream and real worlds (and why not in a hospital?).

Then two years pass, letting even more tension seep out of act two. Mari is now supposedly married with kids, but is still at the house, and is still frustrated that Perla wants her wayward dad in her life. Then, abruptly, Oro leaves in a dream (or dream state, or something), and Perla re-proposes back to Tano. Now that her two girls have found husbands, Cruz is happy, and concludes the play with this direct address announcement. But the audience is merely left with some haunting song lyrics, and some commentary about wayward husbands and fathers on the road - Oro admits "away is the only place I've ever been" - and not much else.

Latino voices in the arts are certainly under-represented, and absolutely need encouragement. However, having a cohesive story to tell, with fleshed-out characters and well-defined issues, should be part of this initiative. �Santo Gin�s, escuchar esta oraci�n!

Perla continues through May 2 at Teatro Visi�n at the Mexican Heritage Plaza Theater, 1700 Alum Rock Ave., San Jos�, CA. For more information visit the Teatro Visi�n website.