Isle-Hopping to America's Mainstream : Theater: Eduardo Machado's 'Floating Islands' is a symbol for L.A.'s Cuban Americans who see their own stories reflected in the drama.

By JAN BRESLAUER

Nov. 21, 1994 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

The Mark Taper Forum may be a long way from Miami’s Little Havana, but lately it has become a gathering spot for Los Angeles’ Cuban Americans.

The draw is Eduardo Machado’s epic drama, “Floating Islands,” the story of one clan’s journey from Cuba to the San Fernando Valley.

Presented in two parts, the production comprises four plays, beginning with “The Modern Ladies of Guanabacoa,” which is set in a middle-class Cuban home in 1928. “In the Eye of the Hurricane” and “Fabiola” take place in the pivotal years of 1960 and 1961. And the final play, “Broken Eggs,” unfolds in 1980 Woodland Hills.

Filled with stormy domestic imbroglios and set against the backdrop of a country turned on its ear by revolution, the saga tells of one bourgeoise family’s struggle, relocation and eventual assimilation into a new culture. It follows three generations of characters and takes more than six hours to perform.

It’s based loosely on the playwright’s own family history. Yet partly because so few plays about the Cuban experience have made it to mainstream stages, “Floating Islands” has become a symbolic moment of visibility for many Cuban American theatergoers who see their own story reflected in the drama.

One play can’t, of course, be all things to all Cubans. Consequently, some feel it represents their experience well, while others are disappointed. But nearly all are pleased to see the presence of Cuban characters onstage.

“It was a beautiful nostalgic trip,” says George Hernandez, director of post-production at Paramount Pictures, who left Cuba at age 7 and lived in Miami until he was 19. “It was a satisfying tapestry of memories, reflective of a middle-class Cuban experience and also of my memories of my grandparents.”

“Floating Islands” also reflects the Angst.

“I was moved by the play,” says Al Nodal, general manager of L.A.’s Cultural Affairs department, who went to Miami from his native Cuba in 1957 and lived in Florida until 1972. “It captured the Cuban ethos--the psychological torture that we all go through dealing with the loss of our homeland--in an elegant way.

“The experience that we all share is displacement, and Eduardo did a good job of playing out the reasons for that,” Nodal continues. “It captured feelings that we all have without getting overly political.”

In fact, the response to Machado’s drama has been more cultural than political--probably because L.A. County’s Cuban American population, numbering approximately 50,000, tends to be less overtly partisan than its Florida counterpart.

“There’s more diversity of points of view here,” Nodal says. “There’s everything from people who support dialogue to die-hards for the embargo. There are some who support the revolution at this point, but a small amount.”

Yet those differences don’t seem to matter when it comes to “Floating Islands.” And that is largely a matter of tolerance, especially when it comes to Machado’s comparatively liberal agenda.

“Cubans in L.A. have a more open attitude,” Hernandez says. “We don’t look at it only as Castro/anti-Castro. There’s more to life than hating Fidel Castro.”

Then too, the left-leaning tendencies of the entertainment industry skew the curve. “There’s definitely a Latin network (in the entertainment industry), and a lot of them are Cubans,” says Carola Ash, director of development for actor and fellow countryman Andy Garcia’s production company. “But because people are here for film, you tend to talk more about that than politics.”

Those who have little firsthand knowledge of revolutionary Cuba do praise Machado for raising the general consciousness of that time and place.

“I enjoyed it very much, particularly the first two stories,” says Ash, who left Cuba in 1964 at age 6, grew up in England, and has lived in L.A. for the past 2 1/2 years. “My family was not a typical case, because my father was a writer, so it wasn’t like he had a business that was taken away. But I know a lot of hard-working people whose property was taken from them.”

The one aspect of “Floating Islands” that consistently draws criticism, however, is the drama’s prominent representation of homosexual incest.

“There are some rough things . . . but that is part of the plot,” says Teresa Munoz Shaffer, who left her native Cuba in 1962, moved to L.A. in 1975 and works as an arts journalist for the Florida magazine Replica and the L.A.-based newspaper El Noticiero. “It had nothing to do with the revolution. It has some political things in it, but it’s definitely not a political play.”

Others feel that Machado’s work fails to evoke the richness of Cuban culture. “It was lacking in a cultural basis,” says Armando Castro, manager of Hollywood’s El Floridita restaurant, a Cuban community hangout since it opened in 1987. “The music, literature and art is not in there. For being too long and sometimes boring, I would say it was incomplete.”

In that way, he says, “Floating Islands” fails to counter the ills of assimilation. “Cubans here lose their culture (when) they come into the American stream,” says Castro, who emigrated from Cuba to Florida in the mid-1950s. “The kids become Americans and go eat hamburgers. Eventually they don’t even know what Cuban food is.”

The absence in L.A. of a specifically Cuban neighborhood like Miami’s Little Havana also contributes to the disjuncture. “Cubans in L.A. are all over the place geographically,” says Hernandez. “We don’t live in the same neighborhoods.”

Still, the same factors that mitigate against a unified identity also make L.A. Cubans hungry for their native culture. “You’re never going to find a more Cuban group of Cuban Americans than the ones in L.A.,” says Hernandez. “Because we are so far away from Miami and Cuba, we are almost like double exiles.

“We are more appreciative of the cultural things because we don’t have them easily accessible,” Hernandez continues. “In Miami, it’s in every corner. Here, we have to look for it.”

* “Floating Islands,” Mark Taper Forum, 135 N. Grand Ave., Through Dec. 11. Pay-what-you-can performances are being offered Tuesday (Part One) and Wednesday (Part Two) and Friday (Part One) and Saturday (Part Two). Call for complete schedule of both parts. $28-$35.50 (each part), $56-$71 for both parts. (213) 972-0700.