Archives: Plays

Author: Arian Moayed

Year: 2019

Geography: Americas > Northern America > United States of America

Synopsis: Elizabeth Keathley is an immigrant from the Philippines who came to the United States to live with her husband, a U.S. citizen. She accidentally marked “yes” on being asked to register her for voting on her driver’s license application and then voted in a midterm election after a voter card was sent in the mail. This small mistake sent her to citizenship hearings where she was ordered to be deported. This play was written using some verbatim transcriptions from Keathley’s real hearings as she faces the force of the U.S. Immigration System. The play examines the fragile line of safety all immigrants are walking on when it comes to the landscape of Immigration Services. Even a person going through the process “the right way” faces a system of dehumanization made to discourage migration and hold immigrants to impossible standards.

Publication: Dramatists Play Services 2019 Published edition: Dramatists Play Services by Concord Theatricals

Author: Octavio Solis

Year: 2010

Geography: Americas > Northern America > United States of America

Synopsis: Inspired by the play, Life Is a Dream by Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Dreamlandia takes place in the year 2000 in the border area between El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. In these borderlands multiple characters are trapped in the landscape of drug trafficking and a group of women disappearing from the factory they work in. The clash of worlds and of cultures between the groups of people divided not much distance but by the created borders of countries. The disappearing women begin to become the representation of the border as families and communities deal with their worlds.

Publication: Samuel French Inc. 2010 Samuel French Published Edition Concord Theatricals

Author: Lisa Dillman

Year:

Geography: Americas > Northern America > United States of America

Synopsis: In a border town in New Mexico, Zell Preston inherits her father’s pecan farm and has to move back to her hometown. The community she knew so well as completely shifted from the one close-knit group she was used to. The government has cracked down on immigration laws and in turn pitted neighbors and families against each other as they face deportation. In the pressure the community cracks as a civilian border surveillance group rats out their neighbors and family members. A community combined with immigrants from recent years to years past crumbles against government policy and the fear tactics spewed by the policy makers. This play explores communities made by migration that are purposely torn apart to fit the narrative and the agendas of a government.

Publication: Samuel French Inc. Published edition: Samuel French Inc. Concord Theatricals

Author: Hilary Bettis

Year: 2020

Geography: Americas > Northern America > United States of America

Synopsis: The distance between Tucson, Arizona and Nogales, Mexico is 72 miles. Though not technically far in distance, the miles have the weight of an ever-changing country where home and safety are never near. Anita is deported for trying to cross the U.S. border illegally, 72 miles away to Mexico, from her American born family in Tucson, Arizona. Anita is now living away from her family in a shelter as they grapple with the loss of their mother. The play takes place over ten years as a family in the face of the big picture issues of immigration laws deal with zoomed-in interpersonal dramas as humans. The family desperately try to close the distance of those 72 miles in between them but are faced with a mangle of red tape and challenges that makes those miles feel farther and farther away.

Publication: Samuel French Inc. Published edition: Samuel French Inc. Concord Theatricals

Author: Anthony Clarvoe

Year: 2008

Geography: Americas > Northern America > United States of America

Synopsis: Three narratives arise through three generations of a family migrating across three different continents. Starting in Croatia in 1910, an emigrant longs for change, we then move to Wyoming, United Stated in the 1940s as a woman feels love and loss during World War II, to a family in the pursuit of progress migrating to Japan in the 1980s. The multiple generations show the innate human nature of movement, and migration often wrongly squeezed into a narrative of legality. The family is not connected by time but by their history as immigrants. Many of the people from the United States who come from lines of immigration from Europe do not have to face the struggles of more recent immigrants. The overarching story reveals the common themes of immigrants are not different to the current landscape of immigration.

Publication: Broadway Play Publishing Inc 2008 Published edition: Broadway Play Publishing Inc

Author: José Casas

Year: 2003

Geography: Americas > Northern America > United States of America

Synopsis: The play is based on the true events that occurred in the Arizona desert in May of 2001 where 14 people died of dehydration after a group of 30 were abandoned by a smuggler in their attempts to cross the border. The real-life interviews of Americans and Mexicans who live in these border towns have been collected and made into a series of monologues from a wide array of characters. The play acts as a mosaic of reactions and feelings reeling from the major loss of life, from devastation, to blame, to indifference. The words of the people come together to question what humanity means in relation to immigration. The collective of people come together to communicate a human approach to the events the splayed open the American notion of immigration at the U.S. Mexico Border.

Publication: Dramatic Publishing 2018 Published edition: Dramatic Publishing