[Richard] Culture Clash means to me...
Culture Clash of styles
and culture crash
to have cash
and to clash and to bash
and to smoke your stash
and to get a rash...
[laughter]
don't act rash, right on, culture.
[fingers snapping]
[Herbert] The original "Culture Clash in AmeriCCa"
was directed by Tony Taccone originally
and it was a compilation,  a curation of scenes from
six different site specific plays
that's why it's called "Culture Clash in AmeriCCa."
And so the stuff that you see in "(Still) in America"
are all the characters that old that are 
from the original and a lot of new material as well
so it's old and new material.
[Richard] We're going to look at the ICE detention centers,
ones here in northern California.
We're going to look at immigration
and we're going to find ways to bring 
some humor and levity to it. 
There's not a lot of that
with those very heavy issues
but we're the guys that can handle the dynamite
and along with our director, Lisa Peterson.
[Ricardo] And I think we're going to attack
current issues that are happening today, 
the day we perform we're gonna
probably add something new.
We're going to talk about woke culture,
cancel culture, Latin X, 
American Dirt the new novel,
you know anything that is in the news
we're going to tackle it and you know
we're going to satirize it and we're gonna
add humor to it and we're going to give
some zingers and we're going to get people that
might want to walk out, people that are going to
crack up, comedy is very subjective, 
it's very different, person to person.
[Herbert] I think to me Culture Clash is a style, it's a style...
I've heard people say that's very "Culture Clash"
you know, what do they mean by that?
Well, they mean, you know that it has satire,
it has meaning, it has a message underneath
the satire, it's poetic, it's all, it's everything.
We really use a lot of genres, a lot of styles
in one play and they've always been that way.
[Richard] Culture Clash started in 1984
in San Francisco's Mission District and 
it really was a combination of factors,
the mid-'80s were kind of a strange time
there was punk rock, there was performance art
and there was lots of stand-up comedy clubs
and we were in the same place we are now
there was literally no representation on film 
and television, so the quickest way
to create content for us was that...
we'd put together these wild comedy shows,
the corner of 24th and Bryant.
[Herbert] And so when we were born
it was really the first Chicano theatre group
or comedy group at that moment.
The thing about being born in a gallery 
is.. is... we were part performance art and part stand-up
and part of that performance art we still do
in a sense... you stand, you deliver, you perform.
Horizons, my mom learned how to speak English
in this place that used to be there but it's gone. 
So I basically... 
I grew up here, this used to be my mom's bakery.
My family's bakery called La Victoria.
It was here since 1965 and it just closed
because of gentrification last year.
[Ricardo] To us Chicano is an aesthetic, the art,
the music, the poetry... 
we use that as our base 
but we've been branching out
and later on we started doing more plays
where we went outside our ethnic lines, 
and we were portraying different nationalities.
[Herbert] I think we want to change people's expectations,
I want people to leave saying wow, 
those guys are great, you know, 
they're good American artists... 
like I didn't hear about them
or I didn't know about them, now I do, 
now I know why they've been together
for 35 years. 
[Herbert] So this is our 35th anniversary 
and we're really happy to be here at Berkeley Rep
and the Bay Area where we were born.
[Ricardo] Homecoming. 
[Richard] Cause we were five when we started in '84 
now we're pushing on that big 4-O
come on people, work with us...
We're like the Chicano Aerosmith.
[Richard] You got to come see Culture Clash now cause we're
getting ancient and we're not gonna be able to 
be doing this much longer, you know 35 years
come on... it's better than Netflix, this is 3-D
this is beyond HD, this is live theatre
that you don't often see, we don't come around
the Bay Area that much so you better get out of
your home and get to the theatre to see 
these three guys that you know... 
we're still doing it though...  
and we're a cross between "Dear White People" 
on Netflix and CNN and Bill Maher all mixed in
a live show, so get your butts off the couch...
oh... we're CNN on a stripper pole, yeah... 
