Encore: Ricardo Salinas, Actor and Director by / Lisa Drostova

Salvadoran-born Ricardo Salinas came to San Francisco with his family when he was five. He grew up in the Mission and got a broadcasting degree from SF State. In 1984 he performed in a one-off Cinco de Mayo show that evolved into Culture Clash, a juggernaut of political and social satire on stage, television and film. Although Culture Clash has been based in Los Angeles since 1992, it maintains strong ties here, performing locally together and individually. Salinas is starring in Paul Flores’s new play “Placas,” presented by the SF International Arts Festival (sfiaf.org), delving into the Salvadoran criminal underworld in the US.

How did Culture Clash begin?

René Yañez, an arts curator and innovator, decided to try something different for Cinco de Mayo. He decided to do a night of six individuals [Salinas, Marga Gomez, Monica Palacios, Richard Montoya, Herbert Siguenza and José Antonio Burciaga] who spoke about what it was like living in the US as a Latino/Latina. No mariachis, no piñatas. We were irreverent, we spoke our piece and didn’t hold anything back. We called ourselves Comedy Fiesta. We kind of blended teatro campesino and what the Mime Troupe did. I think the only reason we dealt with politics in our humor is because we were from the Bay Area. I don’t think we would ever be who we are if we didn’t have roots in the whole vibe here.

My first job after college was at KRON. I worked on “Home Turf,” a youth program that dealt with hip hop and rap. René heard me on the radio; I was bilingual rapping, and I was breakdancing at the time, so he brought me in.

How did Culture Clash emerge from that?

After a while you find out what coalesces. Monica and Marga already had their thing, they did stand-up comedy before we did, so they took off, and then there were four of us. Around 1988 it became Culture Clash. Not only was it the culture clash of being Latinos in mainstream America, but the culture clash within the Latino landscape, the difference between Puerto Rican, Salvadoran, Chicano, Mexican. Then we were touring, and José had kids in high school, he was a fellow at Stanford, he ran Casa Zapata, and it was time for him to let go. The three of us decided to pursue it, and the only way to get recognized was to write a play. We wrote “The Mission,” and it was all the different sketches we had been doing. We did it at Intersection for the Arts, and we never looked back. Then in 1990 we did a show in Los Angeles. There was a huge Chicano audience down there; we could do no wrong. So in 1992 we moved down there.

Culture Clash is not on hiatus, exactly, but…

Richard is writing. Herbert has done his shows about Picasso and Cantinflas. I’m going into directing. I directed “The Funny of Latin Dance,” Bill Santiago’s show, and I got to direct Teatro Zinzanni for two of their shows. They wanted a show that had a Latin flavor, Latino themes.

You’ve been in some movies together.

We realized that it would be difficult to cast the three of us, but they do. We’re in “Hero” with Dustin Hoffman. We’re sitting around the table with Dustin Hoffman, and he said, “God dammit, you guys are theatre actors, aren’t you? You don’t have to scream it out; talk normal.” We were just in a film called “Larry Crown” with Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts. We’d done an adaptation of Aristophanes’ “Peace” at the Getty Villa, and Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson were in the audience. The next thing we know we get a call from his agent. Hanks’s character has to go back to college because he gets a divorce and he has to work in a kitchen with Mexicans.

In 1989, you were shot trying to break up a fight in the Mission.

When the crack epidemic hit all the neighborhoods, petty crime was everywhere, from stealing our laundry to breaking into cars, and the gang thing started coming up. I stepped outside of my house and they were beating up a kid. A 17-year-old kid decided to pull out a sawed-off shotgun. Sixty pellets went into my body, my lungs, my heart, my liver, my kidney, my throat. I woke up 12 hours later. I opened my eyes and heard the doctor say, “Ricardo, you’re going to be okay.”

Luckily I ended up able to walk, talk, function. I have permanently damaged muscle, but you wouldn’t know. Coming back to Culture Clash was my cure too, because I thought I wasn’t going to be in the group. Connecting that to “Placas,” it’s that sad reality of the violence in the streets and having innocent bystanders affected by this underworld of gangs. I never blamed that individual in the truest sense. I know that there’s a bigger picture of why this person did it, a bigger issue, a social issue.