WET: A DACAmented Journey

Reviewed by Martίn Hernández
The Greenway Court Theatre
Through November 13

RECOMMENDED

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, is the Orwellian term for the Obama-era policy that, under certain conditions, currently shields over 600,000 undocumented persons from deportation. Brought to the U.S. as children and now mostly adults, some did not even know their history till they were grownups. Those who chose to participate had to register their “illegal” status with, and occasionally report to, the same Migra mandated to hunt them down and keep them out.

Dubbed DREAMers by the media, they are American except with no “papers,” and have known no other country as home, with many having long established careers and families. Writer-performer Alex Alpharaoh vividly depicts this state of limbo — ni de aqui, ni de alla/neither from here nor from there — in his searing autobiographical solo show portraying his beleaguered life under our country’s racist and schizophrenic immigration policy.

“I am the mirror of our divided nations,” proclaims Anner Alexander Alfaro Cividanis (Alpharaoh’s government name), whose teenage mother carried him, just an infant, from Guatemala to Los Angeles over thirty years ago.  Later, he and his mother are joined by his father, and younger siblings follow.  But while they, born in the U.S., automatically become citizens, Anner does not. Teased about this by other kids, Anner constantly asks why he can’t get his “papers.” “We don’t need papers from a country that doesn’t want us,” is the indignant response of his father, a man with dreams of a professional career in his homeland but that are an impossible dreams in the U.S. His mother pleads with Anner to keep his head down, instilling in him the constant fear that governs the lives of undocumented folks, relegating them to psychological turmoil as well as substandard jobs, housing, and health care — if they can even get any.

Overjoyed at DACA’s 2012 authorization, Anner applies and qualifies. In 2017, however, he faces a decision that could kill any chance of his remaining in the U.S. This is the crux of his story, which is filled with bureaucratic nightmares, divided family loyalties, and a daughter’s entertaining sarcasm.

Alpharaoh has a lot to tell, much of it harrowing but some comical, notably in his dealings with Guatemalan and American red tape. Bouncing from past to present under Daphnie Sicre’s sturdy and fluid direction, Anner expertly portrays a plethora of characters: the teasing kids of his youth; his anguished and fallible mother; his moody yet sanguine father; his flippant but wise daughter and more — Alpharaoh portrays them all with skill, wit and humanity.

Designer Christopher Scott Murillo’s innovative set places Alpharaoh on a raised platform with a large Mayan calendar painted on the floor, and while on either side of the stage are large gray monoliths that could easily represent courthouse walls or a Meso-American pyramid. Center stage is a plywood likeness of a framed but shattered mirror, fragmented like the lives of the undocumented, which designer Azra King-Abadi lights to suit Alpharaoh’s moods and, in key moments, with red, white, and blue hues. Sound and video designer Omar Ramos’ screen projections, showing Guatemalan and U.S. locales and actions, help set each setting a scene’s tone and place. Director Sicre’s laser focus keeps Alpharaoh homed in on the key points of Anner’s his heroic tale, though a bit about his dad’s domestic abuse, fueled by frustration and alcohol, Alpharaoh drops as quickly as he raises it.

At times Alpharaoh dons a baseball cap, spitting caustic spoken word and hip-hop poetry that decry his position and that of his peers at the hands of the U.S. government. He makes the government’s hypocrisy of his situation clear when he suggests that this nation’s immigration policy can just as easily accommodate paperless people like him who have jumped through decades of hoops with the same open arms with which it has accepted newly arrived Ukrainian war refugees. It all just depends on one’s skin tone.

Greenway Arts Alliance at The Greenway Court Theatre, 544 N. Fairfax Ave., Los Angeles; Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 7 p.m.; Spanish language perf., Sat., Nov. 5, 3 p.m.; Running time: 80 minutes with no intermission. https://greenwaycourttheatre.org/