ChiIL Live Shows on our radar
Midwest debut of Evelina Fernández’s ‘60s comedic drama with music Hope: Part II of A Mexican Trilogy is part of DESTINOS – Chicago International Latino Theater Festival
Romance meets physical theater in Marvin Quijada’s world premiere The Dream King, directed by Sandra Márquez
Make way for an all-female mariachi band in American Mariachi by José Cruz González, directed by Teatro Vista co-founder Henry Godinez, in association with Goodman Theatre
The Midwest premiere of Hope: Part II of A Mexican Trilogy by Evelina Fernández brings a grand exploration of Mexican American life in the ’60s to the start of Chicago’s fall theater season. Hope follows the voyage of the Morales family through that turbulent, transformational time, marked by a new young president, the dawn of the sexual revolution and the rock ‘n’ roll explosion. Teatro Vista Artistic Director Ricardo Gutiérrez directs. Hope: Part II of A Mexican Trilogy is also the company’s entry in DESTINOS – 3rd Chicago International Latino Theater Festival. Performances are September 21 – October 27, 2019 at a location TBA.
Next spring Teatro Vista breathes life into The Dream King, a world premiere by ensemble member Marvin Quijada, directed by fellow ensemble member Sandra Márquez. The Dream King is a genre-bending classic love story with a twist: a man falls in love with the woman of his dreams, while in his dreams. Imaginative, inventive, sweet and sometimes scary, The Dream King is a stunning piece of physical theater, told with a lush musical score and mostly without words. Performances are April 4 – May 10, 2020 at The Richard Christiansen Theatre in The Biograph, 2433 N. Lincoln Ave., Chicago.
Women mariachis? It’s about time! Teatro Vista’s third 2019-20 production is American Mariachi, a heartwarming and hilarious new comedy about the freedom to dream big by José Cruz González, presented in association with Goodman Theatre. Familia, amor and tradición are at the heart of this hilarious and heartwarming new comedy about an all-female mariachi band. Goodman Resident Artistic Associate Henry Godinez, who co-founded Teatro Vista 30 years ago, directs. Performances are April 25-May 31, 2020 in Goodman’s Albert Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn St., Chicago.
Teatrovista.org is your online gateway to tickets and information about the company’s 2019-20 season.
Single tickets to Teatro Vista’s fall production Hope: Part II of A Mexican Trilogy go on sale this summer via clata.org, the DESTINOS – 3rd Chicago International Latino Theater Festival’s website.
Tickets to The Dream King go on sale Monday, February 24, 2020 online at victorygardens.org and via the Victory Gardens box office,
(773) 871-3000. Single tickets to Teatro Vista productions are $20-$35, with discounts for students, seniors and groups of 10 or more.
Memberships to Goodman Theatre’s 2019-20 season including American Mariachi are on sale now at goodmantheatre.org, in person, or by calling (312) 443-3800 (12noon – 5 p.m., daily). Single tickets to American Mariachi, $20-$70, go on sale on February 14, 2020. Discounted tickets for groups of 10 or more are available now.
More about Teatro Vista’s 2019-20 season
Hope: Part II of A Mexican Trilogy
A Midwest Premiere
By Evelina Fernández
Directed by Artistic Director Ricardo Gutiérrez
September 21 – October 27, 2019
At a location TBA
Part of DESTINOS – 3rd Chicago International Latino Theater Festival
The Midwest premiere of Hope: Part II of A Mexican Trilogy by Evelina Fernández is a grand exploration of Mexican American life in the ’60s. Hope follows the voyage of the Morales family through that turbulent, transformational time, marked by a new young president, the dawn of the sexual revolution and the rock ‘n’ roll explosion. Filled with nostalgic ballads, fantasy sequences and healthy doses of humor, Hope pops with keen visuals and poignant storytelling as it offers a glimpse of the Mexican diaspora in ’60s America.
Teatro Vista’s Hope: Part II of A Mexican Trilogy is presented as part of DESTINOS – 3rd Chicago International Latino Theater Festival, September 19 – October 27, 2019. DESTINOS, produced by the Chicago Latino Theater Alliance (CLATA), is dedicated to showcasing the Latino experience as told by Latino artists from Chicago, the U.S. and Latin America. Discover more at CLATA.org.
Evelina Fernández (playwright), born and raised in East LA, is an award-winning playwright, screenwriter and actor and she writes about the U.S. Latinx experience. She received the L.A. Drama Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Writing of a World Premiere Play for A Mexican Trilogy published by Samuel French. The first work in the trilogy, Hope: Part II of a Mexican Trilogy, premiered in October 2011 at the Los Angeles Theatre Center to critical acclaim, earning Fernández a Best Playwright Ovation Award nomination. Charity: Part III of A Mexican Trilogy premiered next in May 2012 (Backstage’s Critic’s Pick) and Faith: Part I of a Mexican Trilogy followed that October, also to critical acclaim. In fall 2016, the plays were combined for a six-hour epic production, A Mexican Trilogy: An American Story at the Los Angeles Theatre Center. Her plays have made the Los Angeles Times Critic's Choice list; Solitude (2009), Dementia (2010) and her holiday pageant play, La Virgen de Guadalupe, Dios Inantzin, have been featured in the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times. In 2003, Dementia won the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Theater Production in L.A. and received four L.A. Stage Alliance Ovation Award nominations, including Best World Premiere. Her most recent play, Premeditation was nominated for three Ovation Awards including Best Theater Production in 2014. In March 2015, her adaptation of Plautus’s Pot of Gold, LA Olla was staged at the Getty Villa Lab and had a full production at her home base, the LATC. She was part of the CTG Writers Workshop where she began her “Virgin” series with The Mother of Henry. She was a writer for Emmy Nominated East Los High seasons two and three and is developing A Mexican Trilogy for television with Wise Entertainment, producers of East Los High. Fernández has won several awards and recognitions nationally and internationally for her work in film and television, including the Nosotros Golden Eagle Award for Outstanding Writing for her produced screenplay, Luminarias; International Film Festival in Bolivia (Best Screenplay – Luminarias), and many more. She was nominated for the Humanitas Prize in 2005 for an episode of PBS’s Maya and Miguel, “Give me a little sign." She was awarded the "Women in Entertainment" award by the Comision Femenil of Los Angeles along with other prominent Latinas; and was honored by the Community Coalition for her community work. She received a commendation from the Los Angeles City Council and was the recipient of the Lifetime Television Latino Pioneer Award in Washington, D.C; the Spirit Award from the Latino Legislative Caucus in Sacramento, CA and the Latina Business Women Association’s Entertainment Award. She was a proud member of Honorable Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s Transition Team in 2005, was appointed by both Mayor Villaraigosa and Mayor Garcetti as a Commissioner on the City of Los Angeles Human Relations Commission. Fernández was honored by La Opinion with the Mujeres Destacadas Award for her contribution to the Arts, received recognition awards from Playwright’s Arena, the National Hispanic Media Coalition and the California State Assembly. Fernández is a founding and board member of the Latino Theater Company and the Los Angeles Theatre Center.
Teatro Vista Executive Artistic Director Ricardo Gutiérrez (director) recently staged the company’s world premieres of Stephanie Alison Walker’s The Madres and The Abuelas. Other Teatro Vista directing credits are The Wolf at the End of the Block, Parachute Men, In The Time of the Butterflies, Between You, Me & The Lampshade, A View From The Bridge, Momma’s Boyz, i put the fear of mexico in ’em and La Mágica Posada. He is co-founder of the Alliance of Latinx Theatre Artists of Chicago (ALTA), a service organization dedicated to promoting and fostering Latinx theater artists in Chicago. As an actor, his credits include Destiny of Desire at Goodman Theatre and South Coast Repertory, In The Heights at Paramount and the world premieres of Song For The Disappeared and Fish Men at Goodman. He has also performed at Actors Theatre in Louisville, Denver Center Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre, Victory Gardens and Lookingglass Theatre. TV credits include Chicago PD, Sirens and Boss. Before joining Teatro Vista, Gutiérrez served as the artistic director of Nosotros in Los Angeles and The Canterbury Theatre in Indiana.
The Dream King
A World Premiere
By Marvin Quijada
Directed by Sandra Márquez
April 4 – May 10, 2020
At The Richard Christiansen Theatre in The Biograph,
2433 N. Lincoln Ave., Chicago
The Dream King is a genre-bending classic love story with a twist: a man falls in love with the woman of his dreams, while in his dreams. Imaginative, inventive, sweet and sometimes scary, this piece of physical theater, told with a lush musical score and mostly without words, evokes wonder and delight as it delves into the places where sometimes you must confront your personal demons in order to prevail.
Marvin Quijada (creator, performer) is a Chicago based electronic music producer/composer, iOS musician, DJ, theatrical actor, and a clown/mime. He is an ensemble member with Teatro Vista and Silent Theater. His Teatro Vista stage credits include La Havana Madrid, Mommas Boyz and i put the fear of mexico in ‘em. Other Chicago credits include Pericles, Short Shakespeare! The Comedy of Errors, Romeo and Juliet and Othello (Chicago Shakespeare), Season on the Line (The House Theatre) and The Dueling Gentlemen (Silent Theatre Company) which he wrote and directed. His New York credits include Lulu: A Black and White Silent Play (Silent Theatre) which won best play at the NY Fringe Festival in 2005. TV credits include Chicago Fire and Chicago P.D. Follow him on SoundCloud and Instagram: SILENT MARVIN.
Sandra Márquez (director) is a longtime Teatro Vista member where her directing credits include Fade, My Mañana Comes, Breakfast Lunch & Dinner and the Jeff-nominated Our Lady of the Underpass. She has acted in numerous Teatro Vista productions including A View from the Bridge for which she received a Jeff Award. Márquez joined the Steppenwolf ensemble in spring 2016 where she most appeared in Mary Page Marlowe, The Motherf**ker with the Hat, The Roommate, A Streetcar Named Desire, Sonia Flew and One Arm. She completed a three-year arc playing Clytemnestra in what was billed as Court Theater's Iphigenia Cycle (Iphigenia at Aulis, Electra and Agememnon). Film and television credits include Boss, Empire, Chicago Med, Chicago Justice and Timer. Márquez is on the theater faculty at Northwestern University.
American Mariachi
In association with Goodman Theatre
By José Cruz González
Directed by Henry Godinez
April 25 – May 31, 2020
At Goodman’s Albert Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn St., Chicago
Familia, amor and tradición are at the heart of this hilarious and heartwarming new comedy about the freedom to dream big. Lucha spends her days caring for her ailing mother, but longs to shake up her 1970s home life. When a forgotten record album sparks her mother’s memory, Lucha and her cousin strike upon a radical idea: to create an all-female mariachi band. Infused with live mariachi music, this “big-hearted, musical tug at the heartstrings” (Denver Post) reveals how music and love can make just about anything possible.
José Cruz González's plays include American Mariachi (Denver Center Theatre Company, Old Globe Theatre), Sunsets & Margaritas (Denver Center Theatre Company), September Shoes (Geva Theatre), Curious (Teatro del Pueblo), Among the Darkest Shadows (Wharton Center for Performing Arts), The Highest Heaven (Childsplay), The Long Road Today (South Coast Repertory), The Astronaut Farmworker (La Jolla Playhouse) and The Magic Rainforest (The Kennedy Center). González has written for PAZ, the Emmy Award nominated television series produced by Discovery Kids for The Learning Channel. His plays have been published by Dramatic Publishing, University of Texas Press, Smith and Kraus, Inc., Anchorage Press Plays, Inc., Playscripts, Inc., Lion and Seagoat Press, and Dutton Children’s Books. González was a 2016 PEN Center USA Literary Award Finalist, 2015 Orlin Corey Medallion by the Children’s Theatre Foundation, 2012 Ann Shaw Fellowship by Theatre for Young Audiences/USA, 2010 Kennedy Center National Teaching Artist Grant, and is a member of the College of Fellows of the American Theatre, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. He is a professor at California State University Los Angeles and a member of The Dramatists Guild of America and TYA/USA. He is a Playwright in Residence at Childsplay (AZ).
Henry Godinez (Director) is the Resident Artistic Associate at Goodman Theatre. As an actor, Godinez appeared most recently in Robert Falls’ reimagining of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, 2666 and the Goodman/Teatro Buendía of Cuba world premiere of Pedro Páramo, and at Writers Theatre in the title role of Quixote: In the Conquest of Self. He has also appeared on television in Chicago PD, Above the Law, The Beast, The Chicago Code, Boss and Chicago Fire. His Goodman directing credits include Charise Castro Smith’s Feathers and Teeth, The Sins of Sor Juana and Mariela in the Desert by Karen Zacarías; José Rivera’s Boleros for the Disenchanted (and world premiere at Yale Repertory Theatre); Regina Taylor’s Millennium Mambo; Luis Alfaro’s Electricidad and Straight as a Line; The Cook by Eduardo Machado; Zoot Suit by Luis Valdez; the Goodman/Teatro Vista co-production of José Rivera’s Cloud Tectonics and the 1996–2001 productions of A Christmas Carol. He also served as director of the Goodman’s Latino Theatre Festival. Co-founder and former artistic director of Teatro Vista, Godinez is the recipient of the 1999 Theatre Communications Group Alan Schneider Director Award, the Distinguished Service Award from the Lawyers for the Creative Arts and was honored as the 2008 Latino Professional of the Year by the Chicago Latino Network. Born in Havana, Cuba, Godinez is a professor at Northwestern University and serves on the Board of Directors of the Illinois Arts Council and Albany Park Theater Project.
American Mariachi | Director Henry Godinez
About Teatro Vista
Teatro Vista shares and celebrates the riches of Latinx culture with Chicago audiences. The company provides work and professional advancement opportunities for Latinx theatre artists, with special emphasis on the company’s ensemble members, and seeks to enhance the curricular goals of Chicago students through theater. Teatro Vista was celebrated as one of “Chicago’s Cultural Leaders” by the Arts & Business Council of Chicago and received the League of Chicago Theatre’s Artistic Leadership Award.
Teatro Vista’s primary focus is producing new works by Latinx theatre artists and presenting classic plays featuring artists of color. Its artistic vision is shaped by the company’s ensemble members, a group of multi-generational, multi-ethnic and multi- disciplinary artists. They inform Teatro Vista’s artistic aesthetic by devising original works as well as by selecting plays with themes that are engaging and relevant to Chicago’s diverse population.
Teatro Vista was founded in 1990 by Edward Torres and Henry Godinez. As Teatro Vista’s first Artistic Director, Godinez guided the company during the formative years. He helped stage successful productions and establish vital relationships with other theatre companies and artists. When Godinez stepped down, Torres was appointed Artistic Director. Under Torres’ direction, Teatro Vista used the stage to engage, connect and challenge audience members using the company’s mission as his guide.
In 2012, Torres moved to New York and the Board of Directors promoted Associate Artistic Director Ricardo Gutiérrez to the position of Executive Artistic Director. In 2017, Sylvia Lopez joined Teatro Vista as Managing and Development Director. Previously, Lopez was Director of Marketing and Development of the International Latino Cultural Center and had her own
multicultural event production company.
Teatro Vista ensemble members include Charín Álvarez, Max Arciniega, Desmín Borges, Cheryl Lynn Bruce, Ramón Camín, Ivonne Coll, Laura Dahl, Sandra Delgado, Liza Fernández, Khanisha Foster, Cruz Gonzalez-Cadel, Issac Gomez, Ricardo Gutiérrez, Erik Juárez, Jon Lyon, Sandra Márquez, Eddie Martinez, Salome Martinez, Joe Minoso, Ayssette Muñoz, Christina Nieves, Marvin Quijada, Tommy Rivera-Vega, Gabriel Ruíz, Nate Santana, Cecilia Suarez and co-founder Edward Torres.
Teatro Vista’s Board of Directors is Tom Vega-Byrnes, President; Joan Pantsios, Secretary, and Ezequiel “Zeek” Agosto, Bhuvana Badrinathan, Adela Cepeda, Edgar Delgado, Ricardo Gutiérrez, Kelly Jones, Sylvia Lopez, Kareem Mohamednur, Carina Sanchez, Angel Torres and Jose Vasquez.
Teatro Vista is supported by Alphawood Foundation, Paul M. Angell Family Foundation, The MacArthur Fund for Arts & Culture at the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events of the City of Chicago, Art Works, Illinois Arts Council, Lester and Hope Abelson, The Shubert Foundation, The Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelly Foundation, the Bayless Family Foundation and Vidal & Associates. Purple Group is Teatro Vista’s Headline Season Sponsor.
For more, visit teatrovista.org, or follow the company on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.
About Goodman Theatre
GOODMAN THEATRE, America’s “Best Regional Theater” (Time) and “Chicago’s flagship resident stage” (Chicago Tribune), is a premier not-for-profit theater distinguished by the quality and scope of its artistic programming and civic engagement. Led by Artistic Director Robert Falls and Executive Director Roche Schulfer, the theater’s artistic priorities include new play development (more than 150 world or American premieres), large scale musical theater works and reimagined classics. In addition, the Goodman is the first theater in the world to produce all 10 plays in August Wilson’s “American Century Cycle.” Key to the theater’s success are its distinguished members of the Artistic Collective: Brian Dennehy, Rebecca Gilman, Henry Godinez, Dael Orlandersmith, Steve Scott, Chuck Smith, Regina Taylor, Henry Wishcamper and Mary Zimmerman. Awards for artistic excellence include two Pulitzer Prizes, 22 Tony Awards and more than 160 Joseph Jefferson Awards. GoodmanTheatre.org
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