Hechale Productions Opens Casa Hechale in Mexico City

Hechale Productions, a cross-border theatre and performance organization with roots in the San Francisco Bay Area, is expanding its artistic work through Centro Cultural Casa Hechale in Mexico City and the continued development of AWAKEN YOUR ARTIST, its immersive program for performers and theatre-makers.

Established in 2026 in Mexico City's Santa María la Ribera neighborhood, Casa Hechale gives the organization a permanent cultural and development base for work moving between the United States, Mexico, Spain, and Europe. The center occupies a 110-year-old house being adapted for theatre, performance, dramaturgy, movement, sound, moving image, and interdisciplinary research.

The development marks a new chapter for Hechale Productions. For more than two decades, founder and artistic director Héctor Zavala has worked within the San Francisco Bay Area theatre community as an actor, director, producer, educator, and creator of bilingual performance. Casa Hechale extends that history into a physical space where artists can rehearse, write, translate, gather, and develop work over time.

'This is not simply about opening a venue in another city,' said Zavala. 'It is about creating the conditions for artists to stay with a question long enough for it to become a piece of work-and to encounter people, languages, and histories that may change the direction of that work.'

The house is conceived as both a working cultural center and a place of exchange. Its developing program includes rehearsals, readings, workshops, artist residencies, public conversations, interdisciplinary research, and collaborations with artists based in Mexico City and abroad. Spaces within the house include a black box, a front gallery, rooms for rehearsal and reading, shared work areas, and accommodations for visiting artists.

Rather than treating international exchange as the circulation of finished productions, Hechale Productions approaches cross-border practice as a longer process of listening, translation, and relationship-building. Artists are invited to consider how work changes when it crosses a language, a geography, or a cultural frame-and what responsibilities accompany that movement.

That approach also shapes AWAKEN YOUR ARTIST, Hechale Productions' immersive artist-development program. Created for performers, directors, writers, and interdisciplinary artists, the program brings artistic training into conversation with personal history, cultural identity, and embodied knowledge.

Through ensemble practice, movement, creative inquiry, and encounters with Mexico City's cultural life, participants are asked to examine not only how they make work, but also where their artistic instincts come from and what experiences have shaped their voices. The program is not structured as a conventional acting workshop or professional retreat. It creates a concentrated period in which artists can step outside habitual working methods, return to fundamental questions, and reconnect technique with lived experience.

The next AWAKEN YOUR ARTIST cohort will take place January 17-23, 2027, in Mexico City. The program will bring together visiting and Mexico-based artists for a week of practice, exchange, and collective inquiry at Casa Hechale and across the city.

Hechale Productions' current work also includes the development of new theatre and performance projects across languages and borders. In June 2026, the company's production of CLORO was presented in Mexico City through Ciudad Escena, with performances at Teatro Sergio Magaña and Foro A Poco No. The project reflects the company's continuing commitment to work in which questions of identity, intimacy, migration, and cultural memory are carried through the body and through live performance.

Zavala's earlier solo work, SEEKING THE LAST GAY MAN / BUSCANDO AL ÚLTIMO HOMBRE GAY, explored queer Latinx identity, migration, desire, and the search for belonging. The Spanish-language project received a Theatre Bay Area CA$H grant in 2022, and its English-language version was subsequently presented as part of PlayGround's 2024 Solo Performance Festival at Potrero Stage in San Francisco.

The movement from that work to Casa Hechale is significant. A question once explored onstage-where and how belonging becomes possible-has developed into an institution-building practice. The house does not propose a single answer. Instead, it offers a place where artists working across different histories and disciplines can remain in conversation with the question.

'Artists often move between cities because the work requires it, but the structures that support that movement are not always there,' Zavala said. 'Casa Hechale is our attempt to build one of those structures: a place with memory, but also a place where something not yet known can begin.'

As Hechale Productions develops this next phase, the organization will continue building relationships among artists, educators, producers, cultural organizations, and theatre communities in Mexico and the United States. Future programming at Casa Hechale will include visiting artists, new-work development, readings, public programs, and expanded opportunities for cross-border collaboration.

Hechale Productions is a cross-border theatre and performance organization rooted in the San Francisco Bay Area and active across the United States, Mexico, Spain, and Europe. Under the artistic direction of Héctor Zavala, the organization develops productions, artist-training programs, international exchanges, and interdisciplinary projects shaped by questions of language, identity, migration, cultural memory, and belonging. Its Mexico City cultural and development base is Centro Cultural Casa Hechale.