OnStage Playhouse’s ‘Young Audiences’ play focuses on untold narratives

The name of the producing institution in playwright Mabelle Reynoso’s play “Young Audiences” is Pure Wonder and Imagination. That’s a maybe-not-so-subtle play on the acronym for  Predominantly White Institution,or PWI for short.

Or as Reynoso puts it: “We see you, white theater.”

In Reynoso’s new work, opening Friday at OnStage Playhouse in Chula Vista, Pure Wonder and Imagination’s associate artistic director Lizzie Sanchez’s (Denise Lopez) plan to stage her Latina feminist play for its youth theater audience is waylaid by “the system.” The artistic director, the deep-pocket donors and parents who make up “the system” prefer something like, well like “Hamlet Jr. the Musical.”

“Lizzie’s just been promoted and is trying to make changes,” Reynoso said, “but is facing the obstacles that one faces in making theater. She’s being asked to compromise. But she is determined to find a way to produce her show.

“I’m hoping to challenge what the ideas are of who gets to decide what stories are told, what are our responsibilities in telling those stories, and what do we risk to tell them?”

Youth theaters, as with many professional theaters for adult audiences, face the same pressures, Reynoso said, to tell safe and familiar stories at the expense of new work and of that which reflects underrepresented communities.

“This play (‘Young Audiences’) will resonate with people who are in creative, artistic spaces, and not necessarily just theater,” Reynoso said. “Spaces where historically Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) are not equally represented, and where artists of color have to endure micro- and macro-aggressions to make the thing that they love.”

Reynoso’s experience writing for and telling stories about underserved communities in San Diego is prodigious. Her works for the Latinx company TuYo Theatre, for example, have included the site-specific “La Llorona On the Blue Line” this past summer and “La Pastorela 2.0” at San Diego State, where Reynoso is a lecturer in the School of Theatre, Television and Film.

“I choose to write for my culture and my community,” she said.

“Unless I’m explicitly told to write about something else my plays rarely do not center on Mexican or Mexican-American characters.”

Neither is Reynoso a stranger to youth theater.

“I go to the national conference every year and I present every year,” she said. “My youth theater work has been produced all over the country.”

While “Young Audiences” is not specifically for young audiences, it does, Reynoso explained, make the point that theater can speak to youth about difficult and adult subjects and issues.

“Kids can be really sophisticated,” she said. “We forget that they live in the same world that we live in. They’re exposed to all of the same challenges and fears of this world. If anything, it’s scarier because we’re not having the conversations with them. We think they can’t handle it, so we don’t talk about it. We underestimate the resilience of young people.

“The plays that I write for young people are exploring how kids have to be brave in these small moments and in really big moments.”

One of those new plays for young audiences is Reynoso’s “When She Became the Moon,” a production of the theater department at San Diego State, opening in February for a two-week run. Another is  “Colorín, Colorado,” a production of La Jolla Playhouse’s POP (Performance Outreach Program) Tour that will visit schools next spring and be performed April 25-26 at the Playhouse’s WOW Festival on the UCSD campus.

‘Young Audiences’

When: Opens at 8 Friday, Nov. 14, and runs through Dec. 7. 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays; 5 p.m. Sundays

Where: OnStage Playhouse, 291 Third Ave., Chula Vista

Tickets: $15-$25

Phone: 619-422-7787

Online: onstageplayhouse.org