‘Goat Blood’ – Mark-Eugene Garcia’s stage fright at Theatre Rhinoceros- Jim Gladstone, Bay Area Reporter

Adrian Nava (left) as “Mr. Sanchez”, and 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

Horror is having a moment on stage. Earlier this year, a theater spin-off of the “Paranormal Activity” movie series shattered San Francisco box office records. It skulked onward toward Broadway, where it arrives next month, joining “Stranger Things: The First Shadow” and the musicalization of ’90s vampire flick “The Lost Boys.”

Here in San Francisco, at Theater Rhinoceros, another fearsome tale lurks in the wings: Playwright Mark-Eugene Garcia’s scary, sexy “Goat Blood,” a co-production of the Rhino and JT Presents, begins performances June 25.

But unlike the brand name fright franchises that have jumped from screens to stages (arguably jumping the shark en route), “Goat Blood” is an original, written specifically for the theater.

Particularly well-suited to the close confines of the Rhino, it’s intimate, shivery, and not at all dependent on big-budget effects.

“A lot of my inspiration came from old radio programs and “Twilight Zone” episodes,” said queer playwright Garcia in a recent interview with the Bay Area Reporter. “I wanted to focus on what works best on stage rather than in a movie. It’s a lot about what you can’t see. What’s scary is what’s unknown.”

“Goat Blood” seeps into you.

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 Horror and hormones
“I want the audience to experience the same suspense as the two main characters,” said the California-raised, New York-based Garcia.

Those characters are co-workers Pablo (Eric Esquivel-Gutierrez) and Owen (Casey Spiegel), both in their thirties but immature. They spend much of the play getting under each other’s skin as they shoot the shit in the bed of a pickup truck.

They’re waiting for two women they met in a bar earlier, but becoming ever more flirtatious with each other. When Pablo reminisces about his troubled past, some of his more disturbing anecdotes are staged as flashbacks, including harrowing near-encounters with El Chupacabra, the bloodsucking livestock-stalking beast of Latine lore.

Is this unseen creature fantasy or reality? Is there a monster to fear, or are the men’s fears themselves the monstrosity, holding them back and destroying their dreams?

“A man seals himself off to survive,” suggests a slippery third character. “All becomes defense. If fear, or any emotion, surfaces, crush it. True manhood is unwavering. Vulnerability is for cowards.”

Garcia toys with the tropes of machismo as well as those of the horror genre.

 Scary smart
Garcia confesses that, as a kid growing up in suburban San Gabriel, he steered away from even a mention of the word “horror.”

“Forget about it,” he said. “I was terrified. I was afraid to watch ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’ and ‘Little Shop of Horrors.’”

By his teen years, though, Garcia was emboldened and developed a particular fancy for films featuring cryptozoology.

“I love monster movies, like the original ‘Anaconda.’ And it’s a running joke among my friends that my favorite movie is ‘Congo.’’” (Ironically, that 1995 shaggy ape tale featured Tim Curry, the original Frank N. Furter).

The legend of the Chupacabra provided an ideal bridge between Garcia’s past work and “Goat Blood.”

Garcia’s earlier plays focused more realistically on Latine and queer culture in the U.S., addressing topics including immigration, racism, and intergenerational conflict. “Goat Blood” doesn’t shy away from such themes, even as it cloaks them in genre trappings. It’s Garcia’s “Get Out.”

While “Goat Blood” is intended to jolt audiences with the stuff of nightmares, Garcia recounts his own life these days as something of a dream come true.

His partner of more than two decades is fellow theatermaker Rodrigo Ernesto Bolanos, who directed the premiere of “Goat Blood” in 2024.

“I like to joke that he’s in the business of making my fantasies come true,” said Garcia. “When I said I wanted to move from California to New York to pursue my career in the theater, he’s the one who made the plans and booked that first trip. I’ll come up with a crazy idea and he’ll say, ‘Ok, this is how to make it happen.’

“In one of my plays, I wrote a stage direction that pretty much said, ‘So she pulls a blanket out of her bag, and the blanket becomes a mountain; they climb the mountain and then throw someone off the top.’ And he’s like ‘Great! Here’s how we can do that!’ We have a very unique connection.”

When Garcia’s not writing or acting (the playwright is also a performer), he’s deepening his connection to the New York theater scene through his job managing The Drama Book Shop, a venerable New York institution that, as of 2020 is owned by Lin-Manuel Miranda, director Thomas Kail, and a handful of other Broadway notables.

“I’m surrounded by inspiration on the shelves every day,” said Garcia, who co-hosts the shop’s weekly podcast The Drama Book Show. “And every customer who walks in the door is someone I share a passion with.”

‘Goat Blood,’ $17.50-$25, June 25-July 19, Theatre Rhinoceros, 4229 18th St. www.therhino.org

https://www.markeugenegarcia.com/

The Drama Book Show
https://broadwaypodcastnetwork.com/podcasts/the-drama-book-show