Born in Cuba, Henry Godinez came to the U.S. with his family when he was three years old. “I literally was Cuban-American: Cuban at home and American at school,” says Godinez, now an associate professor at Northwestern and, since 2003, curator of the Goodman Theatre’s biennial Latino Theatre Festival, whose fifth edition starts Saturday. He studied acting at the universities of Dallas and Wisconsin, specializing in Shakespeare and classical theater. But in 1985 Godinez performed in Broken Eggs by Cuban-born playwright Eduardo Machado, and, he recalls, “woke up to the potential of exploring my heritage through theater.”
Not so far. We started a long time ago and we secured a great immigration lawyer, a guy named Bill Martinez, and every step of the way everything has been smooth. We had figured that under Obama the atmosphere would be a little more positive.
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We tried then. I was in Cuba in 2003, right after the first festival. I saw a production by Teatro Buendía and I went, “My God, these people are amazing.” I came back and we contacted Bill Martinez, and he said, “You know what, I’m not even going to take your money. It’s not gonna happen.”
Yeah. They had to start by getting the green light from the ministry in Havana. It helps that Flora Lauten, Buendía’s artistic director, is considered a special person in Cuba because she was the last Miss Cuba, in 1962, and then she used her celebrity to promote the revolution. She would go into the campo—to the countryside—and promote the revolution. Over the years, like so many artists in Cuba, she became somewhat disillusioned, as you can imagine. Buendía has played all over the world, and they haven’t defected. They love Cuba and they’re committed to living there, but their work also is not shy about pointing out the failures of the revolution, the difficulties of the situation there now.
Luckily, not here in Chicago. In my own family? Yes. [Laughs.] I’ve gotten flak from some of my own siblings—very passive aggressive comments, because, generally speaking, the thinking in my family and in the exile Cuban-American community is that we wouldn’t return to Cuba until Castro was dead. But I’m also the only theater artist in my family, and for me there is a clear divide between politics and art and culture. I just feel that cultural exchange and the arts open things up and that it goes against every spiritual rule of art to allow politics to divide us.
And that’s so fraught now, especially since the anti-immigration law was passed in Arizona. Does that issue figure into the way you perceive this festival?
Do you feel a need to make sure that there’s work that’s being done in Spanish?
