It seemed Jade Esteban Estrada was born to be a performer.

     His family's connection to the arts goes back to the Great Depression, when U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt established the New Deal and the Works Progress Administration to create jobs in America.

     His relatives found employment through the WPA as mariachi singers in southern Texas after World War I, but the family eventually lost touch with its artistic roots.

     Estrada closed the gap in the early 1990s, when he became a professional singer and choreographer.

     "I'd always been a singer and a dancer," Estrada said in a telephone interview from San Antonio, Texas. "Later in life I was attracted to the stage through community theatre and was a stand-up comic for awhile. All of these things sort of tugged on me my whole life."

     Estrada, who will be at Washington State University on Friday to perform his award-winning one-man show "Tortilla Heaven," has built an impressive resume over the past decade.

     A number of his shows and comedy routines have appeared regularly on Comedy Central and HBO. He as worked and studied with the Back Street Boys, Jennifer Lopez and showbiz legend Charo and others.

     Estrada never had a hard time finding work because he had a wide range of skills to pull from.

     After a while, thought, he grew tired of dabbling.

     Estrada said he wanted to do something that required all his skills in music, dance, comedy, acting and writing.

     "I was in Europe, where I'd written all these songs and was forced to make an emergency trip back to America," he said. "I kept thinking, though, I want to do something with these songs  and decided to use them in a one-man show. I discovered this format allowed me to utilize all my skills as a performer."

     He opened his first solo show, "It's Too Late...It's Already in Me" in 1997.

     "I had an awakening," he said. "I realized 'Oh, my God, I'm really good at this. This is my mission in life.'"

     "Tortilla Heaven," written by Estrada's sister Celeste Angela Estrada, and directed by his brother David Miguel Estrada is a story of first, second and third generation Mexican-Americans trying to relate to one another in the United States.

     "It is loosely based on our family," Estrada said. "It's very common in Mexican families living in America that you have grandparents who don't speak English very well, and their children, who were products of the 70s and 80s, were never encouraged to speak Spanish."

     "So this third generation kind of understands Spanish, but can't speak it," Estrada said. "My sister and I and a couple of cousins are the only people now in our family who speak Spanish and that's only because we chose to go out and learn the language."

     Estrada said everyone, Mexican or not, has struggled to understand older and younger generations in their own families.

     "'Tortilla Heaven' is a beautiful experience," he said. When you watch it, you become one with us. The whole point is that your family, no matter how crazy they are, and no matter how much you might fight with them--will always be there for you when you need them."

     Estrada said he takes great comfort knowing his family will be there when the chips are down. When the touring schedule that keeps him on the road 10 months out of the year, his family's love is sometimes the only thing he can count on.

     "When you have a family--parents, siblings and cousins--you are one," he said. "Your success is their success and there success is your success."

©2006 Moscow-Pullman Daily News