Newcomers Encounter America in ‘Docu-Play’

Nothing is as familiar in the story of America as immigration, yet a play debuting tonight is built on the idea that the lives of today’s immigrants are mysteries to most Americans.

“Journeys: The Immigrants’ Tale,” not only a new play, but the first to be presented at the Lankershim Cultural Arts Center, tells the stories of five contemporary newcomers to this country. The play was written by Kimberly Heinrichs, a journalist and North Hollywood resident who gathered her material from conversations with five immigrants in Southern California.

“They’re not the sort of people you’re going to read about in the news,” she said. “They’re like a majority of the immigrants out there. You might pass them on the street and not know that half their family is back in Vietnam. You wouldn’t guess the problems they’re struggling with.”

These include racial and religious discrimination, economic hardship, exploitation, culture shock and separation from loved ones.

But rather than being a catalogue of troubles, the play looks at how the dreams and expectations of immigrants stand up to reality. Director Sally Shore said one scene strikes her as especially poignant.

A Vietnamese teen-ager has been looking forward to her life in America because the scope of education here is much broader than in her homeland. She is correct in that her school offers a vast range of subjects. But the family is so poor, she must work and has little time for study.

“I have so many choices,” Shore quotes the girl as saying. “I could be so many things. But sometimes I wake up and feel I’m still in Saigon.”

The play has two acts, the first largely about coming to the U.S. and the second about adjusting to life here. The immigrants are from Vietnam, Korea, East Germany, Russia and Honduras. The stories are distinct, but characters move from one to another.

“The stories have a lot of commonality,” said Shore. “They’re more about the Everyman than about dramatic occurrences in any one person’s life.”

A nine-member cast from Shore’s company, Theatre to Go!, is presenting the play. All are professional actors, she said. The director added that she has a background in dance, giving the production a “very choreographic style.”

Heinrichs said the stories are nearly literal accounts of the people she interviewed. “Almost everything in there happened to them,” she said. “I didn’t add much. You might call it a docu-play.”

Her interest in immigrants began with stories she wrote while working as a reporter for a small paper in Ontario, Calif. But it wasn’t until later, when she was considering subjects for a play, that the concept of “Journeys” presented itself.

Heinrichs found her subjects through friends and contacts with foreign-language newspapers.

“Being an immigrant isn’t something I’d thought about in any great depth before,” she said. “I never thought about what it would be like to grow up with your mother living in another country and just writing you letters.”

“Journeys: The Immigrants’ Tale”; 8 p.m. tonight, Saturday and Sunday, with a 2 p.m. matinee Sunday; Lankershim Cultural Arts Center, 5108 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood. Continues through Sept. 23. Tickets, $10. Call (213) 559-6894.