Americans are notorious for not knowing their history — or anybody else’s history, for that matter. There’s always a wealth of gotcha videos interviewing people on the street unable to guess from which country America won its independence. And what history American schoolchildren are taught (whether or not they actually learn it) is nearly exclusively that of white men.
That’s the problem Colombian-American actor and comedian John Leguizamo is tackling in his new one-man show, “Latin History for Morons,” at Berkeley Repertory Theatre. When his son’s getting picked on in middle school and being told Latinos never accomplished anything in America, how can Leguizamo help when he never learned any different? So he hits the books in a flurry of feverish research to try to help his son with his eighth-grade history project and come up with suitable Latino heroes to celebrate.
Developed in Berkeley Rep’s new works incubator, the Ground Floor, “Latin History” is the latest of at least six theatrical solo shows that Leguizamo has written and performed. A co-production with New York’s Public Theatre, it makes its world premiere in Berkeley before playing the Public off-Broadway next spring.
Leguizamo workshopped his previous show, “Klass Klown,” at Berkeley Rep in 2010, which went on to an award-winning Broadway run under the title “Ghetto Klown.” He later turned it into a graphic novel with art by Christa Cassano and Shamus Beyale.
Having recounted his early life in Queens and breaking into show business in previous shows, in “Latin History” Leguizamo chronicles his efforts to teach his son the too-often-ignored story of Latinos in the United States.
He starts the show as if it’s going to be a lecture — complete with a chalkboard on which he scrawls nearly unintelligible notes — but really it’s a series of digressions. His discussion of Latino history from the Aztec and Inca empires onward keeps digressing into stream-of-association personal anecdotes, and his account of trying to help his glum son is interrupted by frequent historical asides.
For all that the historical angle is the ostensible focus of the show, it really amounts to a scattershot assemblage of musings on early conquistador clashes with native cultures, Andrew Jackson’s Trail of Tears, and forgotten Latino officers in the Revolutionary and Civil wars. The unifying thread is really a father’s feeling of helplessness when his son is struggling, and his trying way, way too hard to help anyway.
Leguizamo delivers “Latin History” with the manic energy of a stand-up comedian. There’s also an impressive amount of movement in the piece, in a lively staging by Berkeley Rep artistic director Tony Taccone. Leguizamo throws himself gleefully into re-enactments of great historical battles and bellicose war dances. His character voices are terrifically distinct, if also sometimes uncomfortable (such as a Stephen Hawking impression he does a couple of times). He shifts deftly from playing his soporifically low-key therapist to his comically gesticulating deaf uncle to rubbing chalk dust on his hair to play Andrew Jackson.
The meandering structure — if structure is really the right word — of the piece makes it feel repetitive at times. It seems like he keeps having the same conversation with his son, which in itself is realistic enough but is unfortunate because those sections are the closest thing that the show has to a dramatic arc. Most of the time, Leguizamo is simply riffing on the general theme of Native American and Latino people in American history. But he’s such an animated, dynamic performer that it’s a pleasure to follow along wherever he decides to take us, even when it’s in circles.
‘JOHN LEGUIZAMO: LATIN HISTORY FOR MORONS’
Written and performed by John Leguizamo, presented by Berkeley Repertory Theatre
Through: Aug. 14
Where: Berkeley Repertory Theatre, 2015 Addison St., Berkeley
Running time: 95 minutes, no intermission
Tickets: $35-$60; 510-647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org