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Left to right, Katy Rubin Founding Artistic Director of Theatre of the Oppressed NYC and Mino Lora Artistic Director of Peoples' Theatre Project.
Story and photos by Sherry Mazzocchi
It’s like real life, except with Pause, Rewind and Do Over buttons.
The Immigration Circus, a series of three one-act plays, allows the audiences to write and rewrite the outcome. Each act is based on actual immigration and documentation stories that ended badly. Afterward, audience members are invited on stage and assume the principal roles in order to alter the outcome.
The themes deeply resonated with the overflowing crowd of 100 people at Word Up bookstore this past evening on Fri., Nov 11th .
The stage was bare and the props, mostly made of cardboard, were minimal. The scenes might have seemed farcical, but were startlingly true to life. Cast members wrote the script and the stories are from their own lives.
In The Dream Act, high school students harass a classmate, calling him a wetback. He wants to go to college and study acting.
His guidance counselor says, “I loved you in ‘Bye-Bye Birdie,’” and hands him a stack of military pamphlets.
When the young man objects and says he wants to study theater, the guidance counselor asks him if he’s familiar with the term ‘theatre of war.’
Afterwards, an audience member turned into a temporary actress. Taking on the student’s role, she tried to convince the arrogant guidance counselor to help her find a college. She reversed roles on him, asking if he had different options as a high school senior.
When he said, “Of course I did, Princeton was my safety school,” she made it clear that she deserved options, too.
“Role reversal and keeping people slightly confused [does] work,” said Katy Rubin in English, while Mino Lora spoke the same words in Spanish.
The two theatre producers collaborated on the bilingual event.
The evening also came with some free legal advice.
Rodolfo Estrada, executive director of Northern Manhattan Coalition for Immigrant Rights, told the audience that families shouldn’t use children as interpreters.
In Speak, Don’t Speak, the only English-speaking person in the family is an 8-year-old girl. When a family member is being deported, she desperately tries to translate during the court proceedings, only to have both the judge and her parent object.
Estrada said children should not translate for parents because they might be put in the position of reliving painful events like domestic violence.
“You don’t want a child in that position. You’re supposed to address an actual interpreter that’s being paid by the court,” Estrada told the audience. However, he added that in certain proceedings, such as asylum hearings, immigrants lose their right to a court-appointed interpreter and have to bring their own.
Just as in real life, some of the solutions offered by audience members had unintended consequences. An immigrant In Guilty, Not Guilty is arrested by an undercover cop for selling drugs. His case is bungled by an disinterested lawyer who only speaks English and incoherent legalese. When an audience member reworked the scene, he asks the undercover policeman, “Are you a cop? Because if you are, you have to say you’re a cop,” adding that any search would be illegal if he didn’t properly identify himself.
That proposed tactic received a large round of applause from the crowd.
But another audience member warned that tactic could also get you beat up.
The plays were produced in collaboration with The People’s Theatre Project and Theatre of the Oppressed New York City.
Before the plays got underway, Lora and Rubin told the audience that the plays would ask questions they would be expected to answer.
“Even though it’s a Friday night,” Lora said, “you’re not here to chill.”
For more information on upcoming projects from The People’s Theatre Project, please visit www.peoplestheatreproject.org.
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