Henry Godinez is the Carlos Montezuma professor and chair of Theatre at Northwestern University, the Sabl Resident Director at Goodman Theatre and the curator of the biennial Latino Theatre Festival. He’s directing a re-imagined version of the musical Man of La Mancha with a new setting: a detention center on border of the U.S. and Mexico. The show opens April 25 at the Ethel M. Barber Theater, 30 Arts Circle Drive on Northwestern’s Evanston campus.
His daughter’s idea
The idea for this show came from his daughter, Gaby, who had hoped to direct it during the spring semester of 2021 for Arts Alliance, a student arts organization on the Northwestern campus. Unfortunately COVID restrictions were still in place and the Alliance ended up doing an online abridged version instead of the full musical version. Gaby has since graduated and works in New York for the show Hamilton. She is part of the press and marketing division for all Hamilton shows and touring companies.
In preparation for the 2024-2025 theater season, Godinez wanted to revisit his daughter’s idea. “And then last year, sort of anticipating the election, something brought it to my mind, and I asked her if I could steal the idea. I proposed it to the Wirtz Center, and here we are. So it’s really Gaby’s concept,” he said.
“The only thing I changed of Gaby’s idea was originally, she meant it to be a detention center for undocumented immigrants at the southern border. We have made it a detention center for undocumented immigrants and others that are being deported out of the United States,” said Godinez.
A timely production
Godinez believes the timing is right for this production.
“I think that’s part of the reason that I pitched it in the first place,” he said. “I noticed that at Northwestern now we have a really robust group of Latino students. So I was confident that we had the students, the actors, to populate a production like this. And because, you know, people are detained at the border and people are being deported from this country that are not just South American or Latin American, but also from the Middle East and from Africa and Asia. Our cast reflects that reality as well.”
Two aspects were changed from the original production: the initial setting, and a scene toward the end, where Quixote and Sancho encounter a group of gypsies, was dropped. Godinez said, “The play was written in ’65 when they could
get away with referencing Moors and Arabs in a particular way. That is just too insensitive for us right now, and so the estate and licensing company let us cut that scene.”
The framing device, of the play within the play, is the same.
Play within a play
Early in the 17th century, Miguel de Cervantes wrote the novel, Don Quixote, or The Ingenius Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha. The novel inspired the musical, but it does not replicate Cervantes’ life or Don Quixote.
The novel takes place during the Spanish Inquisition. Cervantes and his friend/assistant, Sancho, have been arrested. They wait in a prison room crowded with other prisoners. The other prisoners take their possessions, but Cervantes asks that they not take a wrapped package of papers he is holding. He asks if he could “win back” his package if he proves to them that it is of value only to himself. They agree, and help him put on the play, Don Quixote.
“The scenery that we’re changing is really the background for the framing device, you know, but then once we go into the story of Quixote, we are very purposely contrasting that background with beautiful kinds of period looks in the costumes, the lighting and the scenery. So, because in the world of our play, Cervantes is just as he is in the original. He says he’s an actor, right? And he so when it comes to defending himself to the inmates who put him on trial, he puts on this play in our world, in the world of production, you know, he’s an actor as well. He just happens to be presumably an undocumented Mexican actor … an activist actor,” Godinez said.
Theater as a way to reach out
There is a rich history of Latino actors using theater to reach out to unrepresented migrants. The social activist, playwright, director and actor Luis Valdez used his theatre group, El Teatro Campesino, to educate farm workers about their rights and inspire them to feel proud of their cultural identity.
Here Godinez and music director Andra Velis Simon include a mariachi band, all musicians from Mariachi Northwestern.
“We want to try to get into people’s hearts and souls, to make them think about who we are,” Godinez said.
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Man of La Mancha will be on stage at the Ethel M. Barber Theater, 30 Arts Circle Drive on Northwestern’s Evanston campus, from Friday, April 25 through Sunday, May 4. Ticket prices vary between $8 and $30 based on age and student status. Tickets purchased online ($3) or over the telephone ($2) and include a service charge. The company suggests theatergoers be older than age 13. The production runs 1 hour and 50 minutes and does not include an intermission.
Dale Wasserman wrote Man of La Mancha with music by Mitch Leigh and lyrics by Joe Darion. Albert Marre directed the original 1965 production. The Music Director for the Evanston show is Andra Velis Simon and it’s directed by Henry Godinez.
Correction: An earlier version misspelled Gaby Godinez’s name. The RoundTable regrets the error.
Coming soon to Northwestern, a ‘Man of La Mancha’ for our times is from Evanston RoundTable, Evanston's most trusted source for unbiased, in-depth journalism.