COSTA MESA, CA -- South Coast Repertory's Hispanic Playwrights Project will have its biggest presence ever at the two-year-old Pacific Playwrights Festival, which runs June 10-21 on SCR's home grounds.

HPP, in its 14th year, is considered one of the country's most consistent sources of new work by Latino playwrights. This year, HPP's contribution to the Festival includes four plays (two in five-performance workshop productions, two in single-performance staged readings), a panel discussion with prominent cultural figures, and a kick-off reception for audience, supporters and artists. The readings and half of the workshop performances, along with the opening night reception will take place June 10-13, creating an HPP festival weekend.

The plays, chosen from 70 scripts submitted from around the nation, are Eduardo Andono's Cuchifrito, Jonathan Ceniceroz's Lupe, Now!, Rogelio Martinez's Illuminating Veronica and Jose Rivera's References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot.

HPP, directed by SCR artistic associate Juliette Carrillo, was organized in 1986. Since then it has developed more than 50 Hispanic- American plays, with more than half moving to productions at theatres across the country, four of them at SCR.

HPP and PPF are part of SCR's Collaboration Laboratory (Colab), a research and development effort aimed at providing assistance for writers at every step of the play creation process: commissions, readings, workshops, residencies and full-staged productions. Within the last two seasons alone, four of the writers whose plays were chosen for HPP received subsequent commissions from SCR for new scripts. For additional information or tickets call (714) 708- 5555.

-- By Willard Manus
Southern California Correspondent