Dream Acts (reading)

On Sunday, March 10, I attended Dream Acts at the Skirball Center. It was a staged reading about the difficulties experienced by five young, undocumented immigrants in the United States. There were five speakers, each of whom played a different immigrant. These 5 distinct, individual stories were unified by the fact that they are all in the same situation, experiencing similar difficulties and emotions.

Structurally, the reading was separated by short stories, each beginning with an omniscient narrator to set the scene. The speakers switched off in telling their stories every few minutes, which really interweaved their stories together. A couple scenes take the format of a chat forum for specifically for young illegal immigrants. Each speaker would cut in with a chat message and each of them intervened rapidly. The pace was fast moving, resembling a real chat, and there was added humor when the speakers said abbreviations like “lmao.”

While an individual was standing and telling a story, the dialogue would be spoken by one of the remaining speakers in the back, resembling a dialogue very realistically. To add to this effect, speakers would often speak with an accent, which was very effective for revealing and distinguishing different ethnic backgrounds. Because the speakers often spoke at the same time, it made the performance very modernist, because the audience was seeing a single story from many different angles and voices.

This reading was tied politically to the DREAM Act, a legislative proposal introduced in 2001 that aimed to benefit illegal immigrants, but was highly controversial and never passed. During the performance, there was an overlying tone of fear and hiding. There was repetition of words like “invisible,” “existence,” and “undocumented” that emphasized the invisibility of illegal immigrants because they do not have a documented identity and have to constantly hide in fear of homeland security. The speakers often said “shh” and spoke under their breath, which gave the reading a great deal of tension. This reflects how illegal immigrants are constantly living in hiding and fear.