Bruno Bichir — who, along with his brothers, Odiseo and Demián, belongs to one of the most internationally renowned acting families from Mexico — recalls a time on a movie set when a starlet looked down upon him and his fellow Latin American actors on set. “She treated us like lovely savages who don’t have education,” he said. “But it’s the whole opposite, and I was furious, because she thought it was that simple. My history — that she didn’t know at the time — was more complex.”
It’s relegations like these that fuel the comedy of Bruno and Odiseo’s production of eXtras, a loving send-up of Hollywood and all its hierarchies playing at the Rubicon Theatre through May 1 in association with Foro Shakespeare, with a Spanish-language version on April 19 and May 1. The play, written by Sabina Berman, is a loose adaptation of Marie Jones’s Olivier Award–winning script Stones in His Pockets. Directed by Bruno and acted out entirely by both him and Odiseo — with more than 15 characters played between them — eXtras tells the tale of what happens when a Hollywood production set visits a California/Mexico border town for a film shoot and consequently disrupts the entire community.
The Brothers Bichir, then with Demián, had first performed the play in Mexico more than 13 years ago, and the Rubicon recently reached out to them about staging it in Ventura. It will be the Bichirs’ U.S. stage debut. Opening the evening will be 17-year-old phenom Maya Burns, the young, bilingual Mexican-by-way-of-California composer who will also add transitional and background music for the play.