Goodman Theatre

Massacre (Sing to Your Children), a darkly comic thriller by Academy Award-nominee José Rivera, makes its world premiere in a Teatro Vista production in association with Goodman Theatre. Chuck Smith directs the play Chicago audiences first heard as a staged reading as part of Teatro Vista’s Tapas Reading Series in Pilsen and then at the Goodman’s 2006 New Stages Series. After an eight-year absence from acting, Goodman Resident Artistic Associate Henry Godinez returns to the stage to reunite with the Teatro Vista ensemble. The cast includes Teatro Vista Artistic Director Edward F. Torres; Teatro Vista ensemble members Sandra Delgado, Sandra Marquez, Joe Minoso and Juan Francisco Villa; and Anthony Moseley and Sona Tatoyan. This world premiere is the culmination of Teatro Vista’s 15th Anniversary Season.

“The Goodman is thrilled to partner with Teatro Vista to present the world premiere of the important, electrifying new play,” said director Chuck Smith. “Massacre challenges the audience to discover answers to the questions it asks about violence, revenge and the demons in us all.”

Adds Teatro Vista Artistic Director Edward F. Torres: “Massacre is about what we do to ourselves when we do not actively pursue our inner voice, and we succumb instead to the social and political complacency that our modern world wraps us in.”

Covered in blood, seven people rush into the living room of an old New England farmhouse clutching ice picks, cleavers and pitchforks. Members of the closely knit Latino community of bucolic Granville, New Hampshire, have just murdered their fellow citizen Joe, town bully and local tyrant. They are exhilarated, having liberated the town of Joe’s outrageous crimes after six years of terror. But as the excitement wears off, the seven begin to have doubts about the righteousness of their act, about each other’s trustworthiness and, worst of all, about Joe: is he really dead? Massacre explores the courageous and volatile connections between members of a community forced to bond together and act against terrifying oppression, and the emotional toll of such an act.

José Rivera is a recipient of two Obie Awards for Playwriting—for Marisol and References to Salvidor Dali Make Me Hot, both at the New York Public Theater. His screenplay for Diarios de motocicleta (The Motorcycle Diaries), directed by Walter Salles, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, a British Academy of Film and Television Arts Award, and a Writers Guild Award. The screenplay received Spain’s Goya Award and Argentina’s top award for screenwriting. Other honors include the Imagen Foundation’s 2005 Norman Lear Writing Award, a Fulbright Arts Fellowship in Playwriting and a Rockefeller Foundation grant. In 1989 Rivera studied with Nobel Prize Winner Gabriel García Márquez at the Sundance Institute. His plays Cloud Tectonics, Each Day Dies With Sleep, Sonnets for an Old Century, Sueño, Giants Have Us In Their Books, Maricela de la Luz Lights the World, Adoration of the Old Woman, and Massacre (Sing to Your Children), which was commissioned by LAByrinth Theater Company, where it had a staged reading in association with the New York Public Theater, have been produced around the country and translated into seven languages. School of the Americas premiered at the Public in the summer of 2006 in a co-production with the LAByrinth Theatre Company.

Teatro Vista, Theatre with a View was founded 16 years ago by Godinez and Torres to provide an increased number of opportunities for Latino performing artists in Chicago. Committed to reflecting the Latino experience, it has emerged as a leader in the Latino theater movement in the United States. Over the past decade, the Goodman and Teatro Vista have enjoyed fruitful partnerships and frequent collaborations. Members of the Teatro Vista ensemble, including Massacre cast members, have appeared on Goodman stages, and Teatro Vista is a regular participant in the Goodman’s biennial Latino Theatre Festival.

Massacre runs March 24 - April 22, 2007, in the Owen Theatre. Tickets to Massacre (Sing to Your Children) are $15 to $30 and may be purchased online at GoodmanTheatre.org, at the Goodman Theatre Box Office, 170 North Dearborn Street, or charged by phoning 312.443.3800.