Dan Guerrero plays Lucifer in Borderlands Theater's production of "A Tucson Pastorela," which opens for its 12th edition next Friday at Leo Rich Theatre.

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It's still a week before Borderlands Theater's annual pastorela play opens, but Dan Guerrero already looks like Lucifer.

"I wake up this morning, (and) the entire white of the eye is red," he said in an interview last week from his house in West Hollywood, Calif. He rushed to the eye doctor to find out it was a broken blood vessel.

"I swear to you, if the other eye was the same, I don't need any more makeup. . . . So I'm half in costume," said Guerrero, who will play the devilish role in the 12th edition of "A Tucson Pastorela."

Guerrero is the son of the late Chicano music icon, Eduardo "Lalo" Guerrero. He is an independent producer of TV programming as well as director of award shows and concerts at prestigious venues such as The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles and the Cité de la Musique in Paris.

He has also been honored by the Imagen Foundation for his positive portrayal of Hispanic culture in his work and has been selected by Hispanic Magazine as one of the 25 most powerful Latinos in Hollywood.

But as wildly successful as he is, he admits he is still a little nervous about the Borderlands production.

"This is the first part I've done in 30 years," he said. The last time he played a character other than himself was in an off-Broadway show in New York in 1973.

He plays himself in "Gaytino," a one-man autobiographical show about his experience as a gay Latino — Borderlands brought the show here last year. But depicting Lucifer is a different kind of experience.

"(In) 'Gaytino' I'm playing me, so yeah, ('Pastorela' is) exciting and a bit scary. There's a lot of dialogue, and it's all in rhyme, and I do three songs," he said.

As is the tradition in pastorelas, contemporary characters comically appear in the Christmas story that narrates how a group of shepherds are tempted three times on their way to pay homage to Jesus at his birth.

"It's like a mirror of the community because aside from the same story line, every year new events from the community are included," said Eva Tessler, the director of the play.

Nacho Libre and Harry Potter will appear among the contemporary characters this year, and Guerrero will represent the devil through different people, like Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and El Pachuco, a character from the musical "Zoot Suit."

Guerrero said he suggested that the Pachuco character be included in the play, along with the song "Vamos a Bailar." El Pachuco is the character he is most excited about playing because his father wrote and sang pachuco songs in the 1940s zoot-suit era. Those songs, and some of his father's other compositions, were later used by Luis Valdez in his musical "Zoot Suit".

"I don't know if I'll do it as well as he did, but I'm excited to do it," he said, adding that he also sings one of his dad's songs in "Gaytino."

"I like it, 'cause again, anything that keeps his music out there and his name out there, you know, is what it's all about for me," he said. Guerrero also recently co-produced and co-wrote an award-winning documentary on his father.

Even though Guerrero has never lived in the Old Pueblo, he said it holds a special place in his heart because he, like his parents, was born here.

"I totally look at it as my hometown, and they instilled such love for their Pueblo. I mean, they would talk about 'oh back in the '30s, oh we went to school, and the Blue Moon, and the Casino Ballroom,' and so I love that Pueblo."