Latino Theatre Festival kicks off today at Goodman Theatre

The fourth biennial Latino Theatre Festival kicks off Friday at the Goodman Theatre. Showcasing performances from Latin America, New York and Chicago, the festival will feature works in both English and Spanish (some with super-titles).

The festival runs through August 24 and includes multiple performances of 13 works, including four staged readings of new works by Latino playwrights. For the first time in its history, this year's festival will include music and dance, not to mention puppetry, a children's performance and a one-woman show.

Henry Godinez is director of the festival and a resident artistic associate at the Goodman Theatre, where he has both acted and directed. Godinez is also the founder of Teatro Vista, a Latino theater company in Chicago.

For more information about the festival, visit the Goodman Theatre's Web site.

Q: How does this festival compare to other Latino festivals in the U.S.?

A: I think that we have a broader scope. We don't just bring in international companies: We divide the time between international companies, national artists, and local companies and artists ... and new work.

Q: Why is it important to showcase Latino theater in Chicago?

A: Because we have a commitment to developing a significant Latino theater audience, and to sharing Latino theater with non-Latino audiences. Lastly, because I feel we have one of, if not the most, exciting and vibrant Latino theater scenes in the whole nation in Chicago.

Q: Does the festival tend to draw a large Latino audience?

A: At least half, and maybe closer to three-quarters. ... We definitely want it to be both [Latinos and non-Latinos]. We want to make sure that non-Latino audiences are excited to come, to see that they don't have to be Latino, they don't have to speak Spanish -- that part of the idea is to enjoy another culture and see how it relates to your own.

Q: Several of the plays address immigration and the experience of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. What was your thinking in choosing these plays?

A: I wish that I could say that those issues have gone away. Unfortunately, I don't think they have. And yet in the festival I think that we have [pieces] that explore those issues in really subtle and beautiful and personal ways. It's not banging us over the head with it; I don't feel it's very didactic. The pieces that we have show a very human side to that story. With all the talk and the politics about building fences and the border, there's still a lot of concern for immigration, with Latino and non-Latino audiences alike. It's a pretty hot-button topic.

Q: What's the biggest challenge for you, as director of the festival?

A: Finding work of the highest artistic quality. Putting together a program that is specific, but universal: that all audiences would enjoy, yet that says something specifically and uniquely about the Latino community and the Latino experience. That's why we went to doing [the festival] every two years [in 2005] -- it takes awhile to find [this kind of work], and then to raise the money.

Q: How did you decide which pieces would be performed in English and which ones would be performed in Spanish with super-titles?

A: You know mostly they either came that way, and if they didn't, I thought, 'These pieces we should super-title.' That's always with the permission of the author. For instance, with the first piece that opens tomorrow night, [Laura Crotte's Mexican musical adaptation of Federico García Lorca's "Blood Wedding"], it is in Spanish and the director and adapter felt very strongly that using super-titles would compromise it, so I had to respect her wishes. So, that one is not being super-titled. Part of that challenge is then balancing it -- finding [other] pieces that are either super-titled or in English. But generally, it's kind of self-evident.

Q: What do you hope audience members will come away with after attending one of these performances?

A: My hope is that they'll come away excited about the theater that they've seen that represents Latino culture -- excited about how different it is, how exotic it is, how cool it is. Yet, at the same time, realizing that it's universal, that it's not unlike their own experience of the world, if they're non-Latino. If they're Latino, I'm hoping they come away with a great sense of pride in their culture represented artistically in one of the great cultural institutions in the city of Chicago -- which is exactly as it should be, in my book.