Issue Preview Subscribe Gift Subscription Renew Subscription Subscriber Services

Subscriptions     Advertiser Center     About Us     Contact Us     Register/My Account

The Party Is On

Share

Stage

WHY WOULD LA MESA NATIVE Rick Najera, who has a thriving and lucrative career producing, writing and directing for television and film, want to take the time to write and perform in a play?

“It’s the instantaneous feedback,” he says. “I lose money every time I do it, but I really enjoy hearing the people laugh.” Hence he’s appearing in his new Sweet 15——Quinceañera, the fourth Najera work the Rep has produced, a comedy commissioned by the San Diego Repertory Theatre and helmed by Rep artistic director Sam Woodhouse (November 17–December 16). It’s a kind of homecoming for Najera, who lives and works in Los Angeles.

Set in National City, Sweet 15 concerns a man who returns to his family after vanishing for 10 years. Because he left just before his daughter’s 15th birthday, she didn’t have the traditional Mexican quinceañera celebration. Though she’s now 25, he wants to give her the big party she missed. The play had a workshop run last November in the Lyceum Space and, Najera says, proved so popular “they had to put in extra seats.” Because it clicked so well, he says, they didn’t make many changes. But he did follow a pal’s suggestion to “give yourself funnier lines.”

He likes giving funny lines, whether to himself or others: “I just want to make people laugh and have a good time,” he says. “Some writers are made to be read, some to be performed. I need to be performed. I can write some direction like ‘Say with an accent,’ or I can just say it that way.”

Quinceañera is a break from Najera’s main duties these days as vice president of development for LATV, a bilingual television network established in April. His creations include The Homies Hip Hop Show, a comic, stop-motion animation series using the two-inch Homies figurines that are so popular, Najera says, 150 million have been sold worldwide. His workaholic’s résumé also includes a role in the current indie comedy film Universal Remote and an assignment to direct a CBS talent showcase for multicultural sketch comedians in January.

ION THEATRE, one of our town’s top small companies, has settled into a home at the Academy of Performing Arts in Grantville. Ion ——with its artistic-directing team of Claudio Raygoza and Glenn Paris——lists a program including two world premieres and a local debut. First up is Punks (November 3–December 2), conceived and directed by Paris and written by Raygoza based on Jean Genet’s controversial classic, The Maids.

The other introductory work is Raygoza’s La Gaviota (April 18–May 17), an adaptation of Chekhov’s The Seagull set in revolutionary Mexico. Equally intriguing are Martin McDonagh’s much-praised, darkly humorous fantasy The Pillowman, getting its first San Diego staging and directed by Raygoza (January 20–February 16); Franz Xavier Kroetz’s one-woman stunner Request Concert, directed by Paris (May 24–June 14); and a jazz-themed version of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, directed by Raygoza (July 6–August 2).

MOONLIGHT AND STARLIGHT are blending this winter in Vista. Moonlight Stage Productions, the city’s summer outdoor musical company, annually moves indoors with a three-play schedule at the Avo Playhouse. This year’s slate includes the hit-the-road musical Route 66 (January 31–February 24), directed by Brian Wells and David Brannen from that other summer company, Balboa Park’s Starlight. Comic drama The Magic Fire (November 1-18), staged by Moonlight artistic director Kathy Brombacher, also represents an up-county move. Written by Lillian Groag, an associate artist of the Old Globe, it had a successful stint there in 1999. The season concludes with G.B. Shaw’s romantic delight You Never Can Tell (March 6-23), directed by Jason Heil.

Do you like what you read? Subscribe to San Diego Magazine »