A county cross-section

A transvestite in San Francisco, a wealthy Cuban-American furniture-store owner in Miami, a day laborer hanging out in the Home Depot parking lot and a couple of sex swingers in Orange.

Welcome to America.

That may sound like the lineup for Jerry Springer’s latest television debacle, but they are actually characters based on real people in real cities, representing a cross-section of the population from coast-to-coast that the Culture Clash trio of Richard Montoya, Ric Salinas and Herbert Siguenza portray in “Culture Clash In America.”

The show landed in Orange County this week at South Coast Repertory, with a bit of a local edge to it.

“It’s so interesting to see Orange County in kind of this postcard image. On the outside, it’s all oranges, perfect weather, beach and a place where TV shows and movies are being filmed,” Siguenza said.

The group is based in Los Angeles, and spent three days in Orange County interviewing and searching for the “real” O.C., not the one people are used to seeing portrayed on television.

“It’s when you dig deeper that you find there are a lot of hot-topic issues,” Siguenza said, issues that include immigration, corruption, the economy, politics and the cost of housing. National issues that are being talked about all across the country.

Culture Clash has been touring for the last five years, visiting cities like New York, Miami and Washington, D.C., acquiring material for city-specific plays.

Portraying the characters, instead of just telling stories and commenting on what they observe, brings a different perspective to the show, challenging an audience to think differently and leave their preconceived notions at the door.

“We provoke and shock the audience,” Salinas said.

South Coast Repertory’s Artistic Director, David Emmes, is directing the show, and said

the trio are “very good chroniclers of society,” often looking in places most of us wouldn’t think to look.

“There are the people in the shadows, and they’re finding really unique and important stories to tell,” Emmes said.

The trio said the biggest surprise they came across was the swinging couples club in Orange, with a membership of about 3,000.

Salinas and Siguenza portray a couple in the show, and they said they felt like “nerds” when they toured there.

“They told us it’s the cleanest, safest club in Orange County, showed us all the different rooms and were really nonchalant about it,” Salinas said.

They got plenty of instruction in the rules of swapping and the etiquette involved in asking and accepting, and all that translates into their on-stage personas.

Montoya portrays a day in the life of an illegal immigrant laborer, with the greater issue at hand being how to deal with the problem at the borders and humanize the Mexican people living and working here at the same time, he said.

“People are vehemently opposed here to the whole issue of illegal immigration, yet in Orange County, someone is hiring them,” Salinas said.

“We’ve made criminals of the illegal immigrants, describing them as banditos, drug traffickers, when really, a lot of them are hard working people contributing [to society] by shining, picking, pruning and diapering the residents of Orange County,” Montoya said.

“The bus drops off the nannies, and they walk up the hill to get to the mansion.”

Adela, the transvestite they met in San Francisco, is Siguenza’s favorite character and the one he said gets the biggest reaction from audiences because she challenges all of our notions about what a man or woman is.

“In the show, Adela’s about halfway there to becoming a woman, and he talks about the whole process, provoking plenty of gasps from the audience. In the end though, the audience ends up really liking her, because she’s a real person,” Siguenza said.

The Cuban character who finds asylum and makes millions opening a furniture store in Miami is portrayed by Salinas, and a perfect example of the differences in Latino cultures in America, he said.

A Mexican faces a very different kind of welcome crossing over the border than a Cuban does, with Cubans receiving instant citizenship and access to all our social services, simply because they’re anti-Castro and anti-communism.

Salinas’ character got a head start, turning opportunity into a fortune.

Instead of just hiring someone to make commercials for the store and advertise his products, he made his own commercials, which looked like news broadcasts with plugs for the store thrown in, Salinas said.

In the course of portraying characters from cities across America, Emmes said Culture Clash is making satiric points about the ways in which people view each other, commenting at the same time on what the political and social issues of the day are.

“This piece is the result of chronicling across the entire country, and woven into it is an American perspective,” he said.

“O.C. is woven through it, and the greater value is seeing O.C. issues and ideas against the backdrop of issues and concerns facing the entire country,” Emmes said.

IF YOU GO

WHAT: “Culture Clash in America”

WHEN: 7:45 p.m. Tuesday through Friday; 2 p.m. and 7:45 p.m. Saturday and Sunday

WHERE: Julianne Argyros Stage at South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa

COST: $28 to $62

INFO: Call (714) 708-5555 or go to www.scr.org.

SUE THOENSEN may be reached at (714) 966-4627 or at sue.thoensen@latimes.com.