Six Picked for SCR Hispanic Playwrights Project

Six young authors have been selected from 78 applicants for the third annual Hispanic Playwrights Project at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa.

The group, which will meet Aug. 2-14 for readings and workshops with dramaturges, directors and actors, includes: Rafael Melendez of El Paso, Tex., (who will bring a play called “The Immaculate Salvation Auto Body Parts Store”; Bernardo Solano, a Yale University drama major (whose play is called “Imagenes”; Lynette Serrano-Bonaparte, a Puerto Rican native now living in New York (“Broken Bough”); Charles Gomez of New York (“Bang Bang Blues”); Rafael Lima of Miami (“Everything in Its Place”), and Josephina Lopez of Los Angeles (“Simply Maria”).

For the first time this year, the project is including play development sessions besides those in August. The first was held last week: an “in-house” reading of Los Angeles-based writer Leo Garcia’s new script, “Dogs: A Fugue in One-Act or Conversations with a Middle-Class Mexican-American Family.”

The project is one of very few devoted to developing Hispanic writers. Four of the plays from the first summer session, in 1986, have been produced: Arthur Giron’s “Charley Bacon and His Family” and Lisa Loomer’s “Birds” at SCR; Eduardo Machado’s “Once Removed” at New Mexico Repertory Theatre, and Ruben Gonzalez’s “The Boiler Room” at San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre.

Jose Rivera’s “The Promise,” read in the 1987 project, played the Los Angeles Theatre Center this year.