E-Mail This Article to a Friend Culture mavens The Latino troupe turns its satirical eye on Boston BY SALLY CRAGIN

When the California-based Latino/Chicano theater troupe Culture Clash visited Boston last year, there was plenty to investigate. "Everything was happening in Boston," explains performer Richard Montoya. "The same-sex marriages in Cambridge, and Red Sox Nation and John Kerry and the Boston Archdiocese." The trio’s observations will be filtered through a comedic lens when the Huntington Theatre Company hosts them in Culture Clash in AmeriCCa, a series of monologues and vignettes with a Boston edge.

The show also incorporates work from other shows inspired by similar field studies in New York, San Diego, Miami, San Francisco, and Washington, DC. During their Boston excursions, Montoya and co-conspirators Ric Salinas and Herbert Siguenza had conversations with Brother Blue, Red Sox fans, a Catholic Church abuse survivor, and the late Boston Globe columnist David Nyhan, who Siguenza deduced was "the insider from New England." He notes similarities to the San Francisco Bay area but marvels at types indigenous to the local habitat. "Here in Boston, everything seemed really typical. We really did interview a Beacon Hill garden lady and an eccentric professor from Harvard." He also detected deep Puritan underpinnings. "It’s a subliminal thing. Coming from chaotic California, I don’t feel that, but here, right away, there’s an order — a reserve, a politeness."

Socio-anthropological exploration has always been a mandate for the troupe, which started in 1984 with a single-minded agenda: to explore, explain, and send up Latino culture. Although Culture Clash is probably best known from its revolutionary Latino-themed comedy-sketch show for Fox TV in the mid ’90s, as the years passed, the focus shifted. When Culture Clash began, Montoya explains, "ethnic identity was a preoccupation. Were we Chicano, Latino, or Hispanic? But we felt we figured it out." Now, he says, "what’s interesting is the shared emigrant story — the Haitian story, the Irish story."

All three performers identify themselves as "liberal, lefty Democrats," though, post-election, says Salinas, "those that are left of center are still licking our wounds. I don’t think we get purged enough to let it out." Siguenza concurs: "Boston is a very exciting city and had a real winning feeling to it, but after the election, overall the liberal Democrats are feeling a little bruised. I think the show will be good chicken soup for them."

"We just hope to provide a little humor," Montoya maintains. "The city needs a little catharsis. I’ve been hanging out in the pubs, and people are hurting."

Culture Clash in AmeriCCa incorporates almost three dozen characters inspired by interviews the trio conducted here and elsewhere. "We put voices in we don’t agree with politically," says Salinas. "We always like to do the contradictions and ironies, and we give a little bit more of a shot at the right. We’ve always done that. Our humor isn’t against the people, it’s against the powers that be."

"What we find with our brand of theater is that it’s a bit of a respite from Bill O’Reilly, who’s yelling at you all the time," Montoya continues, noting that Culture Clash productions are like "a town hall with some funhouse mirrors." Siguenza opines that whereas "comedy and satire is the base of our work, we no longer fall under the title of ‘comedic troupe.’ "

"We’re EOO," Salinas declares. "Equal-opportunity offenders."

Culture Clash in AmeriCCa is presented by the Huntington Theatre Company at the Wimberly Theatre in the Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts, 527 Tremont Street in the South End, March 18 through May 8. Tickets are $14 to $50, with a $5 discount for seniors and students; call (617) 266-0800, or visit www.huntingtontheatre.org or www.BostonTheatreScene.com