Multicultural Troupe Forms, Aiming for ‘Art on Run’ : Cucucuevez is presenting a comedy about the adventures of the ancient Toltec god Quetzalcoatl in modern L.A.

A new multicultural theater troupe called Cucucuevez is being formed in Orange County and will present the world premiere of Garden Grove playwright Roy Conboy’s comedy, “Buscando America,” as its first production in August.

The 39-year-old Conboy, who will be the artistic director, said Friday that the troupe “will be established for the long term” by a group of about 15 writers, directors and performers representing “Latinos, Anglos and Asians.”

The first production--described as “a comedy about the adventures of the ancient Toltec god Quetzalcoatl in modern-day Los Angeles”--will be staged at Rancho Santiago College’s Little Theatre West in Santa Ana for two weeks, beginning Aug. 10.

“We won’t have a permanent home for a while,” said Conboy, a former general manager and casting director of the Grove Shakespeare Festival. “Among ourselves, we think of what we’re doing as ‘art on the run.’ ”

The troupe, an outgrowth of the college’s New Plays and Players Workshop, will receive logistics support from Rancho Santiago’s theater department but will have to raise $5,000 on its own to pay for staging “Buscando America.”

“We took the name Cucucuevez (koo-koo-KWE-ves) from the name of a homeless child who was found abandoned on the street by a man on his way home from work,” Conboy said.

“We want to be identified with the values that gave that child a home and allowed her to live and prosper,” he added. “Her story also poses the question of how we balance the values that our culture handed down to us with the necessities of modern existence.”

Conboy’s play has received staged readings at South Coast Repertory in the Hispanic Playwrights Project and at other workshops in Seattle and New York.

Jose Cruz Gonzalez, the director of the Hispanic Playwrights Project, will also be a founding member of the new troupe, Conboy said.

Scenes from “As Is,” which played the Forum Theatre in Laguna Beach last winter and subsequently transferred to the Comedy Store Playhouse in Los Angeles, will be featured on “Entertainment This Week” at 6 p.m. Sunday on KNBC-Channel 4 as part of a segment about one of its actors.

David Napier, who played a role in William Hoffman’s bittersweet play about acquired immune deficiency syndrome, is the focus of the segment.

Karen Wong, who produced the segment, said it talks about how Napier copes with the disease in real life and how he feels playing someone with AIDS.

Five actors who have previously appeared at the Grove Shakespeare Festival will co-star with actress Kelly McGillis in a benefit performance at the Festival Amphitheatre to help match a $50,000 Irvine Foundation challenge grant, it was announced Friday.

McGillis, who was recently appointed to the classical theater’s board of trustees, will be joined in “A Midsummer Night’s Eve at the Grove” on July 30 by Gregory Itzin, John-Frederick Jones, Daniel Bryan Cartmell, Carl Reggiardo and Kamella Tate.

The cast, assembled by the Grove’s producing artistic director, Thomas F. Bradac, will give readings and perform scenes from a handful of Shakespeare’s plays, including “The Taming of the Shrew,” “Romeo and Juliet,” “Henry V” and “Julius Caesar.”

The 12-year-old theater company also hopes to raise money with a pre-performance dinner to be attended by the cast and with a gallery exhibit of paintings by artist Jean Pol d. Franqueuil in the Village Green Courtyard.

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