In what's likely to be the pre-Broadway trial run of his latest one-man show, Obie and Emmy Award winner John Leguizamo is bringing Latin History For Dummies to Berkeley Rep for a world premiere, six-week run this summer, beginning July 1. The show, which is a followup to his 2010 hit Broadway show, Ghetto Klown, was inspired by the observation that, despite now accounting for a huge percentage of the US population, Latinos are mostly invisible in the standard American history curriculum. "Just imagine you’re a white kid and all of a sudden everybody’s Latin and everything they’re teaching you is Latin and you don’t hear anything about yourself or about your contributions," Leguizamo says, by way of explaining the show. "And it’s really weird and unfair because we had huge contributions [to American history]."

The show has been in development over the past year at Berkeley Rep's incubator for new work, The Ground Floor, and is being directed by company artistic director Tony Taccone. It takes 3,000 years of Latin history, starting with the Aztecs, and breaks it down "into 90 irreverent and uncensored minutes in his trademark comedic style."

Via a release, Taccone says, "John’s work is funny because it is so unflinchingly honest and truthful. For this show especially, John has really done his homework, and the show should enlighten audiences and spark an important conversation, along with the laughs."

Leguizamo has been writing and performing his own solo theater work for 25 years now, beginning with the off-Broadway show Mambo Mouth in 1991 in which he arguably made his name as an actor, leading to roles in films like Carlito's Way (1993), To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar (1995), and Romeo + Juliet (1996). His second show Spic-O-Rama (1993) earned him a Drama Desk Award for best solo performance, and his third show Freak then had a successful Broadway run in 1998. That was followed by Sexaholix...a Love Story (2001), and 2010's Ghetto Klown, which was actually workshopped at Berkeley Rep under the title Klass Klown.

Look for tickets to the world premiere of John Leguizamo: Latin History for Dummies to go on sale April 6 at berkeleyrep.org. Regular Tickets will be $55 to $60 and if you're under the age of 30 they're $35 to $40.

In related news, Berkeley Rep just announced their 2016-2017 subscriber season, which will include the latest production from acclaimed partner company Kneehigh Theatre, 946: The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips, as well as The Last Tiger in Haiti (a coproduction with La Jolla Playhouse), Roe (a drama about the years following the Roe v. Wade case that's a coproduction with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival), and Broadway hit Hand to God, about a foul-mouthed sock puppet that takes possession of a young boy's arm in a youth church group in Texas.