SCR Showcases Hispanic Playwrights : Stage: Trio of staged readings at South Coast Repertory’s sixth annual festival includes ‘R and J,’ which puts Romeo and Juliet in East L.A.

After a week of rehearsals, workshops and consultations, the performance portion of South Coast Repertory’s sixth annual Hispanic Playwrights Project begins tonight at 7 with the benefit “Una Noche del Teatro ’91.” The evening of music, theater and comedy, includes skits by Octavio Solis--one of this year’s three playwrights--and Lisa Loomer, who participated in an earlier program.

Two of the three full-length staged readings set for this weekend as part of the project touch on the lure of the Anglo-American dream.

In Edit Villarreal’s “R and J,” which will be performed Friday at 7:30 p.m., the playwright draws on Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” to raise the question, “What is lost when one assimilates?” Set in East Los Angeles, Villarreal said that what began as “a straight-on adaptation” of the Shakespeare classic “took on a life of its own” by the third draft.

Drawing on the same Italian novella used by the Bard, Villarreal made the central conflict in “R and J” one of class, with the young woman the daughter of an upwardly mobile striver who hopes the young woman will marry an Anglo law student. But the daughter has fallen in love with a working class, undocumented Latino.

“The class thing is more interesting,” said Villarreal, “it’s more contemporary and biting.” In addition to avoiding verse, she also decided not to take the route of updating the gang milieu used in “West Side Story.”

In another twist, “R and J” continues after the death of the young lovers, incorporating “the Mesoamerican idea of death,” having the characters returning, “happier in death than in life.”

In “September 11,” by Chilean native Guillermo Reyes, the central character faces a number of life choices, including whether to leave Chile and come to the United States to become “Hollywood’s happiest maid.” Another alternative is to marry a rising star in General Augusto Pinochet’s secret police.

The play, named for the date in 1973 when the Chilean military overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende, takes place on the same date two years later, which is also the birthday of the young woman facing the choices. The play, says Reyes, “uses humor in a very deadly way,” and is told from the point of view of “people who are part of the (Pinochet) regime, not from the victims’ point of view.”

“September 11,” which will be performed Saturday at 2:30 p.m., is directed by Lillian Garrett, an Argentine playwright whose “The White Rose” had its world premiere this year at the Old Globe Theater in San Diego.

The third play, “La Illuminada,” by Solis, will close this year’s project Saturday at 7:30 p.m. Solis’ play portrays the efforts of a nuclear physicist to bring back a long-dead lover as a hologram--a three-dimensional image created by laser technology. In order to write “La Illuminada,” which is directed by SRC’s artistic director, David Emmes, Solis said he wove disparate elements of alchemy, physics and Catholicism. In particular, Solis said, he has been immersing himself in scientific literature, particularly “chaos theory,” and one of the better books on the subject, “The Turbulent Mirror: An Illustrated Guide to Chaos Theory and the Science of Wholeness,” by John Briggs and David F. Peat.

* The Hispanic Playwrights Project will be at South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Tickets for each of the three staged readings are $6 ($2 for seniors and students) and are available through the SCR box office at (714) 957-4033. Tickets for “Una Noche del Teatro ‘91” are $25 each at (714) 957-2602.