The Bard With a Beat

You might expect that East L.A. Classic Theatre, the company that set “Romeo and Juliet” in East Los Angeles in the zoot-suit milieu of the 1940s--with an Asian American Juliet and a Latino Romeo--would have something a bit different in store for its tailored-for-young-audiences production of “Twelfth Night,” opening Saturday at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre as part of the “Ford Family Fun” summer series there.

The company’s executive director, Tony Plana, meets those expectations by moving Shakespeare’s gender-bending romantic comedy to an imaginary world of self-indulgent Latin pop stars.

Plana adds another dimension by casting black actors as Sebastian and Viola, the twin brother and sister who are shipwrecked and separated and must make their way in that imaginary Latin world.

“I realized that this was a fish-out-of-water story,” Plana said. “That’s why Viola disguises herself as a man. But I’ve never seen a differentiation made between the country she’s supposed to have come from and the country she finds herself in.

“That started me thinking: When we go play at schools, we usually play to mixed populations of blacks and Latinos. I have found it alarming that these groups seem to find so little in common; they group together and seem very alienated from each other.

“I thought, wouldn’t it be interesting if we create this Latin country and Viola and Sebastian are black, and everyone falls in love with Viola. What a wonderful opportunity to communicate a message of cross-racial and cross-cultural harmony.”

That theme is carried out, too, in the music that has been written for the play, a mix of R&B; and Latin American rhythms, with Shakespeare’s language as lyrics.

“We’re having a lot of fun with this,” Plana said.

The play, performed by theater professionals, has also been whittled down to an hour for its target audience of ages 9 to 18, and some of the language has been altered.

“I wanted to reinterpret it to make it relatable for young people today,” Plana said. “I thought, what is the most logical equivalent of royalty, the class structure that is in [the play]: pop stars and movie stars, a perfect milieu for ‘Twelfth Night.’

“All these people who think only about themselves--Orsino, who is more in love with being in love than with the object of his love; Olivia, who is going to mourn her lost brother for seven years, overindulging her emotions; Malvolio, who wants to marry for ambition, not love. When you look at the whole arc of the play,” he said, “in its basic elements, this fish out of water, Viola, transforms everyone. Even Orsino goes from a shallow character to someone capable of loving someone else.

“We’re trying to push the envelope of theatrical presentations for children,” Plana said, noting that his company has also done a pre-Columbian-era “Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

“We have two objectives as a company: one, to familiarize our kids with these wonderful plays; and two, to help them form a love for the written word through dramatic literature.

“You want to give the best you can,” he added. “It’s just like you would throw your heart and soul into creating a production for adults. We want to apply that same passion and imagination in creating great theater for young people. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, but you try to go for the best, so that these young people will be hooked into theater. They’ll realize, hopefully, the power and the excitement of it, the joy of it, the human emotions available to them there.”

* “Twelfth Night,” John Anson Ford Amphitheatre, 2580 Cahuenga Blvd. E., Hollywood, Saturdays and Sundays at 10 a.m., through Aug. 30. $7. (323) 461-3763.