Kirsten Potter and Julia Jones in 'Palestine, New Mexico.' Photo by Craig Schwartz.

Whether Palestine, New Mexico, with its gigantic Jewish cacti, exists or not doesn't matter. Culture Clash, the infamous Los Angeles-based Hispanic theater company founded by Richard Montoya, Ric Salinas, and Herbert Sigüenza, made it the home of their new play, which just wrapped its world-premiere run at the Mark Taper Forum.

Richard Montoya, the author of "Palestine, New Mexico," is a multi-faceted guy with many interests and layers of identity. Montoya, who also acts in his play, took his audience on a month-long journey through guilt, messed-up relationships, betrayal and identity issues.

The top layer of the one-act play deals with a soldier's struggle to accept that she lost one of her subordinates and her desire to find out exactly how he died. Captain Catherine Siler (Kirsten Potter) travels to Pfc. Raymond Birdsong's home town to deliver a letter to his father, Indian Chief Birdsong (Russell Means).

Montoya's character, "Top Hat," is a half breed from Calabasas, who never felt fully accepted on the Reservation, a sentiment the writer/actor can relate to. He told JewishJournal.com that "there are times in my life I've never felt Chicano enough, or American enough, or certainly not white enough, and in some cases, when I have such an interest in Jewish culture and have that feeling that I'm not Jewish enough. And it's a silly thing and a terrible thing because you can go your whole life not feeling enough and trying to satisfy others."

Montoya and friends from Culture Clash turned this mash-up of cultures and identities into something fun, entertaining and at times thought provoking. It is not surprising that Culture Clash, who celebrated its 25th anniversary last year, found a permanent home in L.A., one of the largest melting pots in the U.S., if not the world.

"Humor helps in a lot of ways," Montoya told USC students in a Q and A session after last Friday's performance. He said he tried to tackle serious issues such as the cost of war and peacemaking efforts in a humorous way. "I realized that I hadn't paid anything for the war," he said. This feeling of unfairness and the enormous patriotism he encountered on his research trips to New Mexico, where his father's family is from, sparked the idea for the play.

The historical phenomenon of Sephardic Jews who fled the Inquisition in Europe to be able to secretly practice their religion in the new world may have been news to some audience members who have seen the show in the past month, including me. But the desire to know where one comes from and where one belongs is a universal necessity that transports the Jewish-Indian problem close to everybody's life, and that's what makes the play relevant beyond the immediate situations it discusses.