 Eric Esquivel-Gutierrez as “Pablo” in Theatre Rhinoceros/JT Presents production of Mark-Eugene Garcia’s Goat Blood, June 25-July 19 at 4229 18th St., in San Francisco’s Castro District. Photo: Scott Sidorsky Pablo and Owen are work buddies and drinking buddies and on one perfectly normal night they set up a rendezvous with a couple of ladies from their local bar, but Pablo has other ideas and has arranged it so that the ladies are no-shows. Pablo, sexually assertive and assuredly gay, has registered the heterosexually married Owen on his gaydar, and, being of a somewhat predatory nature, he’s planning to go in for the kill. Simple enough.
But in Mark-Eugene Garcia’s remarkable play, nothing is simple. Everything is complicated by histories: personal, cultural and queer. This pressing history in which the two young men move as if caught in quicksand is personified by a horror: the dreaded chupacabra – the goat sucker. This legendary creature has apparently haunted Pablo since a tragedy involving the death of his younger brother when Pablo was only a teenager. Pablo is burdened with the conviction that the mysterious death was his fault, and could have been prevented.
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 Casey Spiegel (left) as “Owen” and Eric Esquivel-Gutierrez as “Pablo” in the upcoming Theatre Rhinoceros/JT Presents production of Mark-Eugene Garcia’s Goat Blood, June 25-July 19 at 4229 18th St., in San Francisco’s Castro District. Photo: Scott Sidorsky For San Francisco native Alejandro Torres, directing a queer horror-comedy was a no-brainer.
The sometime-actor-turned-theatre-director counts George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead” and David Cronenberg’s remake of “The Fly” as monster-flick favorites. What’s more, the chance to helm a play with a Latine perspective was appealing. The really scary part was having to put on such a niche play in a city that seems to be losing its unique artistic identity. “I’d be lying to you if I told you that I felt that San Francisco was a city friendly to the arts and was invested in cultivating them,” says Torres. “With many venues [pricing out artists] in favor of wealthier tenants, I see fewer and fewer viable places for art to be created and shown in my hometown. San Franciscans are a resourceful bunch, but these days, I think that artists are definitely left to fend for themselves, even more than usual.” Theatre Rhinoceros, the Castro-based company that claims to be “the world’s longest-running continuously producing professional queer theatre,” had worked with Torres before, so he was a natural choice to direct the West Coast premiere of Mark-Eugene Garcia’s “Goat Blood,” which opened June 27. (The play premiered off-off-Broadway in New York in 2024.) |
Mark-Eugene GarciaWriter/Actor/Storyteller. Theatre Maker. Husband. Bad Hombre. Cat Taunter. ContentsArchives
July 2026
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