STAGE REVIEW : ‘De Donde?’: Political Drama on Illegal Aliens Hits Home

‘De Donde?” is a timely political play that compels you to reconsider the dilemma of the Central American refugee.

“De Donde?”--shorthand for “Where are you from?”--is the first question that U.S. immigration officials ask of Latinos suspected of being illegal aliens.

Playwright Mary Gallagher and the Friends and Artists Ensemble dramatize life in what the Immigration and Naturalization Service is heard to euphemistically call a “processing center.” In the play, the detainees call this center a jail, and that is exactly how it is depicted.

The action, spread over 20 scenes with an ensemble of 16 actors portraying some 40 characters, is set in the INS holding center for refugees in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. We could just as well be in the INS detention facility in El Centro, but it is the Rio Grande where the playwright researched her material and also accompanied INS agents on border patrols.

With vigorous pacing from director Marc Handler and a darkly stark wire mesh fenced set from designer Robert W. Zentis, what we have is a theatrical docudrama. The production is overlong, its structure a bit scattered, and some of the scenes expendable, but the work knows precisely where it’s going at all times and the cast is a sharply-honed ensemble.

Gallagher is first a dramatist, not a preacher. This is not agitprop theater. It is not Brechtian. It offers no solutions to the moral dilemma. But certainly by implication and observation, the play seethes in anger against a system that is seen casting the poor and oppressed into a soul-numbing, labyrinthine quagmire.

Call it a stench that even those with the best of intentions, such as the young idealistic lawyers and nuns in the play, can’t deal with. There’s lots of burnout here.

Most of the INS agents, like cynical jailers, physically and verbally abuse their charges. Meanwhile, the characters, the economic and political refugees, endure months of incarceration as they wait for a hearing to determine if they are eligible for political asylum. In this scenario, none get it. That means deportation, which for these Salvadorans (particularly Hector Herrera’s rigorous innocent) amounts to a threat of death.

Among the performers, Raquel Salinas’ refugee stands out for her luminous dignity. And James Staskel’s eager, garrulous defense counsel nicely mirrors a fresh law school grad who still has enough passion to care.

This is the West Coast premiere of a script that went through workshops in Houston (funded by the National Endowment for the Arts) and Woodstock, N.Y., and will be staged in August at Joe Pap’s Public Theater in New York. For Angelenos, the play hits close to home and humanizes whatever imagery, cliches and certitudes we have tucked away in the back of our heads about that border problem.

At 1761 N. Vermont Ave., Thursday through Saturday, 8 p.m., Sunday, 7 p.m., through June 17. $15. (213) 466-1767.