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all in the Family

Playwright Rick Najera airs out one family’s dirty laundry in his new opus Sweet 15 (Quinceañera).

By Idy Fernandez

FATHER-daughter relationships can be tricky. The dealings of dads and daughters run the spectrum from knockdown, drag-out power struggles to tender moments. She wants to be independent, he just wants to protect her. She grows up fast, and he fights stubbornly against it. But, in the end both parties may look back and laugh.
Playwright Rick Najera knows all of this too well. The producer, director, comedian and award-winning comedy writer of shows such as MadTV, In Living Color and the brilliant if short-lived Culture Clash, Najera explores this classic tension along with all the strife it can cause the rest of the family, but with a funny and culturally relevant twist, in his new play Sweet 15 (Quinceañera).
“I wanted to do a father-daughter relationship story that explored forgiveness and showcased that the real living happens between the ceremonies we have of weddings and funerals,” he says.
His play tells the story of the fictitious Valderama family of National City, whose patriarch returns from Mexico after a 10-year unexplained absence that began on his daughter’s 15th birthday. He comes home with “unexplained riches” and promises to get the family back on its feet under one condition: that they allow him to throw his now 25-year-old daughter Sonora a Sweet 15 or quinceañera party.
Najera also authored and starred in Latinologues, a show directed by Cheech Marin and made up of funny and poignant monologues that shed light on the Hispanic experience through the lives of such diverse characters as Buford Gomez, a Hispanic Border Patrol agent, and Miss East L.A. It was on the set of Latinologues that Najera had the first flash of what would become Sweet 15.
“I had my kids with me one day when I was doing Latinologues, and I realized I was treating my daughter differently than my son, and I wondered if I was going to do a quinceañera for my daughter,” he says.
Quinceañeras, the coming of age debut celebrations for girls on their 15th birthday, are much more than parties. For many they are cultural mainstays, celebrating womanhood as much as the link to traditional customs. Girls are dolled up like princesses in fluffy gowns and tiaras, and the parties can be as grand as mini-weddings complete with a church service, a catered and DJ’ed reception and limousine service. It’s all darling and touching for a teenage girl, but for a 25-year-old woman, it might be an exercise in humiliation.
The play, directed by Sam Woodhouse, has plenty of potential for humor at the expense of a 25-year-old quinceañera and a demanding father, but also allows for unscripted moments in which the audience participates.
Funny and family seem to be the requisites for Najera who last month took his stand-up comedy routine titled Daddy Diaries, which focuses on the trials of fatherhood, to 14 cities starting in El Paso, Texas.
“My standup didn’t reflect me anymore.The guy before was single and loose and now I’m this married guy with three kids who range from newborn to 4 years old,” says the Mexican American San Diego native. “I had three kids, which definitely proves I’m Mexican, so I wanted to talk about the things I go through, my differences with my dad and my ‘Mixican’ kids. I call them ‘Mixican’ because they’re half-Mexican and half-Irish.”
In addition to the new stand-up show and play, Najera, a graduate of The American Conservatory Theatre and Warner Bros. Comedy Writing Program, is also gearing up for the debut of The Homies Hip Hop Show. Based on the two-inch, plastic Homies figurines—depicting funny if stereotypical Hispanic caricatures and which have a huge cult following—the show is stop-motion animation and will premier as a one-hour comedy sometime this fall on LATV. Najera was recently named as the network’s vice president of Development for the California-based, bilingual television network that launched nationally in May.
“The creator of the figurines asked me to write a story for them and then I asked him if we could bring it to LATV,” Najera says. “Our next show will be flash animation, so we’re changing the syllabus of bilingual networks.”
Najera continues to hone in on his sketch comedy writing as one of the writers and executive producer of the CBS Multicultural Sketch Comedy Talent Showcase, which the CBS network’s Diversity Institute created as a way to identify and develop diversity in writing, directing and talent. Nearly 2,000 actors, both known and unknown, apply to the showcase annually but only 13 are chosen, Najera says.
“Some of these people already have careers and are working. In fact, at least three members this year are on the MTV show Wild N’ Out,” Najera says. “Some of these are working actors who want to be seen in a different light while others are trying to be discovered, but the work keeps me current.”
It’s a lot to handle while also preparing for the curtain to go up on a stage play. Sweet 15 (Quinceañera) has not yet premiered, but Najera is already looking towards his next big thing.
“That’s the way it works in Hollywood. You can’t walk around with your trophy and say, ‘Yeah, I just did this show,’ ” says Najera. “It’s not about your last job, it’s what are you doing now.”
The full production of the play is scheduled to run November 17 through December 16 at the San Diego Repertory Theatre. For more information visit
www.sandiegorep.com.