Writing Latino lives: 'Keeping Track' spins comedy around family issues

Erica Saenz keeps track of a mélange of things.

There's her 14-month-old son, Victor Augustin. There's her husband, Victor, an assistant professor of education at the University of Texas. And then there is Saenz's own job in UT's Office of Diversity and Communit y Engagement.

There's also Saenz's career as a playwright and actress. And that part of her life has led to the premiere of "Keeping Track." Produced by Teatro Vivo, Saenz's new comedy opens tonight at the Salvage Vanguard Theater.

The two-act play follows a contemporary multigenerational Mexican American family trying to balance keeping their bond and yet also keeping boundaries. Add baby monitors, implanted micro-chip IDs and nosey, hovering single friends to the mix, and a family's issues with new definitions of boundaries in the 21st century can get humorously confusing.

"We all have to manage boundaries," says Saenz over lunch at the campus-area Kerbey Lane Café. "And now we have all this new technology that makes the situation all that more confusing."

The South Texas native, who has a large extended family herself, recalls hearing a news report about a Wisconsin law that made it illegal for employers to implant their employees with micro-chips for security and identity purposes. Then she started hearing about other technological tracking devices like "elder cams" in retirement homes and micro-chips that allowed family members to track their elderly relatives online.

"What's all that do to a family?" she wonders. "It's got to interfere in weird and funny ways."

Comedy comes naturally to the effervescent 35-year-old. In 1998, the same year she graduated from UT with a theater degree, she became a founding member of the now award-winning sketch comedy troupe the Latino Comedy Project.

Saenz was one of only three women in the troupe. And the only female to put pen to paper and write for the troupe. "The guys were doing great writing, but I didn't think they were really creating great female roles." Saenz's sketch writing and acting efforts netted her honors from the Austin Critics Table and the B. Iden Payne Awards.

Then Saenz and her husband relocated to Los Angeles so he could attend graduate school at UCLA. Though she returned to Austin periodically for Latino Comedy Project gigs, she also made the audition rounds in Hollywood. The experience proved eye-opening.

"I'd walk into a room and see 50 Latina women who looked exactly like me all trying for some tiny role," she said. The immigrant maid, the tough gang girl, the struggling single mother — Saenz found herself auditioning again and again for roles that continued stereotypes of Latino women.

"I realized the problem was a lack of material," she said. "There just aren't the scripts out there that feature strong, intelligent, professional Latinas."

Brushing off her writing portfolio, Saenz applied to UCLA's highly competitive graduate writing program, winning one of only three spots available. She penned an earlier version of "Keeping Track" as her MFA thesis.

"The play got a staged reading by a predominantly white cast of students for a predominantly white audience," Saenz recalls. "And it worked. Everyone got the humor. And the first thing I thought was 'I have to do this play in Texas.'\u2009"

That idea became a reality when her husband finished his doctorate and accepted the position at UT. Longtime Austin Latino theater organization Teatro Vivo offered Saenz the opportunity to produce the play as part of its regular season.

Saenz herself is playing the role of Yolanda, a single woman in her 30s who rather forcefully keeps herself involved with her married friends, their infant and their live-in grandmother.

"There's such a need for modern Latino plays, and especially plays that have strong women characters," Saenz says. "The power is in the writing."

jvanryzin@statesman.com; 445-3699

'Keeping Track'

When: 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays through April 25

Where: Salvage Vanguard Theater, 2803 Manor Road

Tickets: $13-$16 (Thursdays pay-what-you-wish)

Information: 474-6379, www.teatrovivo.org