Playwright-in-residence penning trilogy called ‘This Golden State’.

Luis Alfaro is obsessed with stories. And the struggles of his spiritual seekers, gangbangers and prisoners end up in his works. “The community tells you the story it wants you to hear,” the 53-year-old playwright says. In “Oedipus el Rey,” for example, Alfaro swaps ancient Thebes for the barrios of south-central L.A. for a contemporary take on the story that Aristotle called the perfect tragedy.

His new project, “This Golden State,” will trace three generations of a Hispanic family in America in a three-play cycle jointly commissioned by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland and San Francisco’s Magic Theatre.