 to the debate around the immigration reform and then the other issues related to undocumented immigrants and those topics that are so much surrounded by discussions at this point and hopefully, things will move forward in the right direction. And we're going to talk about what's the right direction for each of us. So, we have here on our panel Carlo Alban, who's an actor and theater artist. We have Martin Denton, who's editor-in-chief of nytheater.com and indie theater now. We have Micah Espinoza, an assistant professor at Arizona State University, and Jessica Litwak, a playwright and a professor. Jessica, we are part of the five women writers together with Chiori Miyagawa, Mia Chung, and Andrea Tom, who co-wrote Dream Act, a play about Dream Act eligible youth. Actually, next Sunday at Skirball Center at NYU, we'll be having a reading with the Broadway actors directed by Christine Horton and the panel discussion with immigration lawyers, an immigration scholar, and undocumented youth. So, check us out. However, today you'll have a little preview of our Dream Act play. We'll have Ithaca College students and NYU students, the CJA lead, and my Ithaca College students, Jillani Pitcher and Julian Risetto, will read an excerpt from our Dream Act. So, we'll get a little sense of it, and then we're gonna have a Q&A with you guys. So, first, let's get started. I'd like to ask each of our panelists to tell us how does your work or your life related to Dream Act, to our play Dream Act, or generally to the immigration issue? If you can give us a sort of five minutes introductory remarks. Thank you, Carlo. Hi, good afternoon, evening. My name is Carlo Alban. I'm an actor, primarily, and my connection to the issue of immigration is personal. I emigrated to this country when I was seven years old with my parents and my brother. We came on a tourist visa, overstayed our visa, planning to stay the whole time, came on a tourist visa, overstayed our visa, and then proceeded to apply for documentation, and we did everything by the book as much as possible, except maybe overstaying our visa, and that process took 12 years. So, from the age of seven to 19, I was undocumented, and I was not like one of those kids that find out when they all of a sudden need to get their license. My parents told us the whole time we were aware, so that created a certain kind of tension, I guess, for as a child and in our family dynamics. And also, additionally, I became an actor when I was 11. I randomly auditioned for a play and was cast, and it was a big moment of decision for my family because we were kind of keeping it on the lowdown, and but ultimately my parents decided that we had come here to give us children opportunities, so they decided to let me do this play, and the play turned into a career. It turned into something that I started doing. When I was 14 years old, I was cast on Sesame Street as a regular on the program, and I proceeded to be on that show for five years as an undocumented immigrant, not behind their backs, but they didn't know. I presented, just as anybody who was trying to get a job in a restaurant would present the fake papers, a fake green card, a fake social security number. I did the same thing, except it was not for a television program. And I was on that show for five years. My family was finally documented when I was 19. It was my sophomore year of college, and I continued in the arts, and I became a member of a theater company in New York, and they encouraged people to grow as artists and to develop as writers and directors, and not just actors, and so I decided to write a play about it called Intringulis, which is a solo show that I did that I developed over seven years. The last time it was produced was in New York by Intar, and I'm talking a lot. That's my connection to this issue, so it's very personal. I know a little bit. I try to keep up with the news. I know a little bit about what's going on with the laws and the dreamers and how that's constantly shifting, but mostly what I know is just my personal experience, and I also have been working with Saviana and Andrea and Chiori and Jessica and Mia with the Dream Act, and I'm gonna be taking part in that reading next Sunday, right? So yes, that's who I am. Thank you so much, Carlo. Now, Micah, I know that you have lots of connections and your work is pretty much in depth in terms of Arizona Dreamers and everything related to immigration over there. Can you give us a little insight into that? Hello, I'm Micah Espinosa, Professor of Voice and Acting at Arizona State University in Tempe, and I am a social justice in the classroom advocate, a cultural voice activist, a theatrista, a libro traficante, and a third generation sonoran. I live in Phoenix, where daily dreamers and immigrant advocates plan waves of demonstrations and other events to keep pressure on the federal government. I live in a state where a group of Republican politicians brazenly deny dreamers' driver's licenses, whose share of target dreamer families where ethnic studies has had to fight their way back into existence and where teachers are fired, where teachers are fired for having Mexican accents and whose racist laws and policies have emboldened other states to create copycat legislation. But I also live in a state where the sacrifices and the hard work of a group of undocumented students and their advocates are transforming the cultural, economic, and political landscape of our state and the nation. I am happy to report that the ground is shifting in Arizona. The tough stance on immigration is wearing thin. The negativity and financial damage to Arizona has awakened Arizonans in really interesting ways. It is estimated that there was a loss of one half billion dollars in the economic activity between 2010 and 2012. Suddenly, because of our reputation and a boycott of the state, Arizona was not on the shortlist for numerous companies. 300,000 undocumented left the state. APS and SRP are electric companies. They felt that fallout. So an odd positive side effect is that Anglo leadership business and Latino leadership business have been in conversation. An example of that is Arizona Latino Leadership Research Enterprise and Arizona Blue Cross Blue Shield have been seeking solutions because immigration reform equals business. There are now more Latinos in leadership positions and more Latinos are registered to vote than ever before. Of the 70,000 new voters in Maricopa County, 70% of those were Latinos. The artist community has partnered with dreamers finding solutions embracing the complexity giving body and voice to change. For example, Arizona playwright and journalist James Garcia, aptly named Dream Act, follows a young girl's plight as she studies to become a doctor at ASU, pays for education and lives in the library. Her parents, fearful for their freedom, have returned to Mexico and she is homeless, alone and struggling to work and stay invisible. Visual art has been created, songs have been written, films have been made and much of this response has been played out on the steps of our capital. We've raised our voices in support of the dreamers and protested through song, poetry, theater, dance and music. The national artistic community has come to support Arizona artists and dreamers. Last year, no passport, hosted its conference on the campus of Arizona State and we dialogue about this very issue. And now in 2014, some of you may know this but I'm gonna go ahead and announce it again that ATHA, the Association Theater in Higher Education will be having their conference in Scottsdale and they have decided to name that conference Dream Act. Yay. Latino politics is looking better. With the help of Citizens for a Better Arizona, the people of Maricopa County successfully recalled Russell Pierce. Now Pierce, whose law enforcement mentality, affiliations with racist organizations and he was the mastermind behind SB 1070, had to go. And now the citizens of Maricopa County are actively seeking to recall Sheriff Joe Arpaio. We need 350,000 some signatures but we are on target. There are hundreds of people every day getting those signatures. In Tucson, even the ethnic studies fight created some interesting shifts in favor of Latinos. Three new Latino school board members were elected and a new, more vibrant program has been imagined and required by the federal government. Dreamers fit into all of this because their influence politically embodies and symbolizes a sophisticated grass root, ooh, that's a hard one, grass root effort to organize and embody the best of our democracy. Dreamers are the best of our democracy. They are not the ACLU. They are not constitutional attorneys. They are a youth led organization that has the spirit of every great civil rights movement and they are undocumented and unafraid. These dreamers, they dream big. While other students there are worrying, their age are worrying about proms and dating. They are fighting not only for a path to full citizenship for themselves but also for each of the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the nation. And I was thinking about today and how all this fit into today. And I think that maybe their stories, their struggles, their dreams are the new great American play. They challenge hierarchies every day. I've been going to their meetings. I've been protesting alongside of them and they inspire me. In place should be written about them. Thank you so much, Micah. Martin, you know a lot about indie plays. Give us a little insight into that and how your work relates to immigration and playwrights writing about immigration. I'm Martin Den, is this working? You hear me? Am I good? So I'm not, let's move it a little closer. How are we now? Okay. And you can tell that I am totally lacking poise and experience with microphones. But that's because I spend my days in the audience reviewing theater most of the time so I don't have to do this type of stuff. My company is a New York theater experience which is a nonprofit based here in New York City that has a mission of trying to promote the theater and trying to level the playing field. That's kind of our mantra, I guess. And that means a lot of things. It usually means that we're talking about comparing well-funded commercial theater or large nonprofit theater and trying to call attention to the rest, the much larger and more vibrant part of the theater community who don't get the attention that that sector gets. But in this context, it also talks about something that's really important to me which is the fact that we try very hard to be very inclusive and diverse in covering theater that reflects cultures and issues that are different from my own experience and the experience of for one of a better word and just to generalize, if we'll permit me, the mainstream. I do not have an immigration story myself. I'm a third generation American. I'm very comfortable. I don't have to worry about looking over my shoulder, thankfully. But the thing that has been great about working in the theater in the way that I do is that I have been able to meet and learn so much about experiences that I never dreamed, I never thought about. I'm so comfortable in my environment. And when Chiori and Salviana and the other ladies brought Dreamax to my attention, it was really a wake up call for me because I did not have really much knowledge. I guess I had some vague awareness that there was some legislation about this topic, but it didn't really matter to me. And the great thing about great theater, great art is that it makes things matter to you. It opens your eyes, calls your attention to new work, new issues that you didn't know about and that's what Dreamax did for me. And what I have hoped to be able to do through the various projects that I operate is to help Dreamax then call, do the same wake up for others who aren't aware. We have two main programs at New York Theater Experience. One of them is nytheater.com, which is a website that's been around since 1996, which is mostly a review and listings website. We try to review as much theater as we can here in New York every year. I think we've probably reviewed more shows over the last 16 years than any other media outlet. And that's how I've come to meet so many of these amazing immigrant authors. That's how I met Saviana Saviana. I love my meeting story with Saviana. If you don't mind, I'm gonna tell it. Every year since 2002, we have reviewed every show in the New York International Fringe Festival at nytheater.com for the only place that does that. It's about 200 shows to review in two weeks. And the only way we can do that is to get lots of hands on deck. And the first year that we started it, we made the announcement actually at the Fringe NYC town meeting, which is a place where the participants gather to prepare and get information about the upcoming festival. And so in 2002, I made the announcement that nytheater.com was going to attempt this for the first time and review every show and invited people who were interested to join us. And then outside the theater after the meeting, here comes this lady who I'd never laid eyes on before, who said, I'm Saviana. I have a show in the festival and I'm from Romania. I've only been in the country about a year. And I would love to be part of this. And I admired so much that her desire to immerse herself in the New York theater community in this wonderful participatory way. And so without knowing anything else about her, I said, fine, you're hired. And Saviana has actually been part of our big family of reviewers and writers ever since. And I've been so privileged to get to know her and to see her work progress. She has really advanced in this country. And I mean, she was always a great playwright. But she is thankfully becoming a little better known. I'm proud that I'm the, we were the first to publish her. We published her short play, Arlok Blues in our anthology plays and playwrights 2006. And we also published Saviana and Carrie Dodd. And I don't know who else is in the room. If I don't recognize you or see you, please forgive me. But many, about 200 other playwrights on our new website, which is indytheaternow.com, which was launched last August and which is a place where we're actually publishing scripts online for basically for academics and students and actors and people who are interested in just keeping track of the course of theater. And again, trying to provide a place, a home for work that would not be seen elsewhere. And that's always been the main impetus for everything that we try to do in New York to experience, which is to try to call attention to this worthy work that people that's falling under the radar. And so I've been excited that I have gotten to work with and meet and help hopefully start to call attention to and bring focus to the work of many folks. Dreamax is one of the plays we published in indytheaternow. It's available there now. I also was happy to see the very short run that they did last year at here. And I wrote something about that for indytheaternow. And I really have just been trying to be as supportive as I can of not just the immigrant cause that's documented in the play, but sort of the larger cause of theater being able to bring positive social change because I really firmly believe that it can. And I probably talk way longer than five minutes. I'm sorry. Oh, thank you so much, Martin. Yeah, you have helped so many theater artists and playwrights to really make a little impact here in New York City. Jessica, our project Dreamax conceived by Ciori Miagawa who asked us, the other four players to co-write this great play that I think tackles important issues. So we started to do research. We did so much together. Can you talk a bit about our project Dreamax and of course generally about your work connected to immigration and the Dreamact? Thank you. Thank you, Saviana. You're so good at this. I've been at a couple of things that she's emceed and it's really exciting. My daughter designed that. So, just thought I'd say. My, you know, my deep connection to this project is, well, I'll talk a little bit about how it came to be, but first I'll just tell you my orientation, not like sexually, just, you know, professionally. I am a core member of Theater Without Borders and on their steering committee I've worked with an organization called Free Dimensional. This year we have, one of our big projects is to connect those two. So if you go to the Theater Without Borders website there's a button that took us about five months to get on there that you can push and it's for artists in distress. It's for people who are in trouble and that goes directly to Roberto Verera and myself and it's an intake form which, where we field a lot of the theater artists. It's for theater artists because there are other organizations like Free Muse that work with musicians and it's for theater artists in distress all over the world. And we are right now dealing with an actress who escaped from Afghanistan and we've got her in Delhi but we're trying to make sure she has enough money for rent, that kind of thing. Since all we have is the Actors Fund. There isn't a lot for theater artists, as we heard earlier when we come together as a community to take care of our uniformes who should be a millionaire and instead it's a few people from the theater community that are making sure her last few days are okay. So this is something I'm very involved with. I also work for an organization called Acting Together on the World Stage and teach, I teach a lot about peace building and performance and theater and social change. I'm a playwright and a performer and about two and a half years ago Chiori and I were doing some workshop at the Lark and I decided I was gonna write the entire Spanish Civil War in five days but I wanted to finish the entire thing in five days and I think she just thought I was the weirdest person she'd ever met so she invited me to dinner with Kristen and we had dinner with two teachers, two amazing young women who teach in Queens and Brooklyn, one of whom had I think in her class of 66 students in 11th grade, only six were citizens, only six of 66 had any sort of documentation and so she told us stories over dinner about some of the things these youth were going through and one guy was this very, very handsome guy and some Ecuadorian young man who was about to get a job and then they asked for his papers and he said I don't have any and they said funny you don't look undocumented, which actually became a line in the play I think over time. So this became a conversation with teachers and in need it was a vision that Chiori had and eventually the five playwrights from five different ethnicities came together and we worked, one of the things that was my job to do originally was to get workshops together with undocumented youth and match playwrights up with youth. I think you had to go to a coffee shop and meet your two, and we actually, the way it developed was pretty cool, there were five women and Kristen, so six women and we, but each of the five playwrights we divided up the aspects of the DREAM Act into five different aspects, the legal aspect, the language aspect, the daily life, I got detention and deportation. We, and we divided them up, so each of us got one and then we each got an ethnicity. So, and not the ethnicity that we were. So Saviana got the Middle Eastern one. Andrea was Eastern European. Mia was wrote about her own ethnicity when she wrote about Korean and Chiori wrote about African, an African woman, an African undocumented youth and I wrote about a Mexican youth and then, but you're not supposed to know that really because that's, that was just how it began and then we put it together. So hopefully if you come back on the 10th, you'll see a piece where you won't know who wrote what and so part of what this collaboration was is about five playwrights and working with five stories and five different ethnicities and five different, and the stories that we tell are not stories of specific youth. We worked with the youth to get ideas but we didn't tell their stories. These are completely fictional stories that we fabricated based on research. So hopefully it's a piece that you won't see who wrote what. It's just an interesting process that it took us to get there but it's hopefully quite seamless and the way Kristen has worked with it is beautiful and for me, I'm leaving in a few hours to go to Lebanon to work on a play. I was about to say a theater project. That's the way my uncle says it, theater. Gonna come see your theater and I'm going to work with Iraqis. I went to Bazar, Iraq and worked with and did theater and taught and I'm working on a play collaborating with a male Iraqi younger than me guy and he's a playwright and I'm a playwright and we're writing together and it's the hardest thing I've ever done. And we're going to Lebanon because right now it's not safe to go to Iraq so we're meeting in Beirut which apparently is very safe. And but it is the difficulty of communication is the work of my life now of theater as a tool for peace building and social change really in action and putting myself kind of on the front lines of that in daily life and I just want to end with this one thing that's one of our great playwrights Katrin Fio who I think was here earlier but it's not here now but she said we were talking and she said you know I wonder maybe it was Heather Raffa who said this to me. I've been having a lot of discussions about this this week so forgive me I might be misquoting the wrong female playwright but she said it is sometimes you have to choose between true collaboration and a great play. You know you really have to make a choice are you gonna go in there to make cultural exchange in that case let go of the result and just allow it you know the microphone to fall and see what comes and really there is no agenda if you go in there and I of course wrote 60 pages of what I feel is you know and then fell in love with it and now may have to throw it away when I get to Beirut so you know do you have to give that up do you have to give up art for message do you have to give up art for true collaboration and hopefully the example of working with five women together we did not have to give up art for message or art for collaboration we worked quite you know and I don't know if that's because you know we're chicks but it's definitely because we had to work we had to work hard at it and Kristin sort of guided us there but I'm telling you it's it is the language and cultural difference is a challenge and we're in the trenches. Yes thank you Jessica I think you summed up so beautifully the way we worked. So as for me my personal story of course connected to immigration is that I came here from Romania in 2001 after of course living in during the totalitarian regime of dictator Chauchescu and then I worked as a journalist throughout the transition towards whatever democracy we got and then since I moved to New York City and of course to the US all my plays are about immigration maybe because this is what I was experiencing. So all my work is about living in between negotiating between the old values and the new values. I'm exploring nonstop the way in which American dream can turn into an American nightmare sometimes. So yeah this is what I think I've been doing through my plays Alliance with Extraordinary Skills which actually is the title of a visa that I was on and they are published by NoPassport as well. So now let's try to talk briefly about what is the role of theater in fostering social change. Can we really foster social change? What do you guys think? Can we really make an impact? Can we really push social change through our work? Carlo? I believe that we can. You know when I first decided to write the play that I wrote there wasn't much talk of this. It wasn't in the news, nobody was writing about it that I knew and that's one of the main reasons why I decided to do it and now there's all this activity because people have started speaking up which I think is very important and I think that a large part of that activity has come from the arts and has come from theater and because we are endowed with the power to speak, we give people a voice that they don't normally have and in this case there's specifically people who tend to be voiceless so yes, I think absolutely the more that we get the information out there and the more that we speak, the more people will understand and the more that communication will be fostered and I believe the more change will happen. Change is happening, it's been happening and I think it will continue to. An outlet for a community to feel, to be able to express themselves is absolutely huge and then when I said literally we've been performing on the Capitol, we've been putting on plays right there in front of the Capitol and so I think that was pretty powerful, that got the news out there and I think the relationship between the artists and the shows and as an act of protest, these plays were happening and the journalists were there and that triangle between the journalists and the artists, the performers and the activists became very, very important in this movement in Arizona. I just wanna say, to Carlo, one of the things that's really powerful about your play is a kind of outing of the audience that they were watching that kid on Sesame Street all those years, I mean I remember watching your show and thinking how powerful that is to go, you were watching one of those undocumented youth like every week thinking he was just a normal kid and look, he was one of them. Yeah, there's a section in the play where I talk about being in the Macy's Day parade, Sesame Street had a float and I was in the parade and there's literally millions of people lining the streets of New York City, waving at me like I'm their neighbor because they know me, me, us, the show and the fact is that that's happening all over the country. I grew up knowing that there were so many people like me but I didn't know who they were because nobody was speaking up and also because I was fortunate to be on the show, aside from the fear that I felt there was a great sense of responsibility and I mean I knew that media and the arts are, there's a lot of power there and there's a lot of possibility and if you are in the position in which I found myself and in which we all are I think it's a responsibility. Thank you Carlo. And yes, I for instance I created an alliance called New York Immigrant Artists and Scholars and we have an annual event at the New Rican Poets Cafe called New York with an Accent where various artists and scholars showcase their work for five to seven minutes and actually it's gonna be this year on March 13 from six to nine when we of course accept all kind of artists, emerging artists, newcomers, established artists so it's really important to develop this kind of sense of community. I don't know if we're gonna really make social change but at least we're gonna take it one step at a time, we're gonna make a step forward I think. Yeah, I mean I believe it, I performed in that last year even as a Jew. You know I mean really seriously there was a, I do a lot of work about Emma Goldman and my grandparents were immigrants, they had raised me and at that point it was, you know it's something that is not on the radar of immigration but I grew up with the sense of being an immigrant and now I really am looking at the privilege of being a Westerner and spending so much of my time this year in Iraq and West Bengal and Lebanon and Palestine looking at what are we, you know what is social change through the arts? What are we accomplishing? What are we trying to do? Are we trying to open people's eyes? We had this, we taught this workshop, David Diamond and I at La Mama last week and we're traveling around the country teaching of like how do you do this? Do you, can you do social justice in theater? Can you do peace building and performance? And we asked the participants to come up with one crazy idea, crazy idea for social justice and I think the crazy idea that Chiori had is let's get the DREAM Act passed with a play. Let's actually pass this legislation with a piece of theater. I think this is a good plug for having a little excerpt of DREAM Act's read. So we have our student actors from Ithaca College, the BFA students, Jilani Pitcher and Juliana Risetto, take your places and from NYU, CJ Leeds. So they will read the 15, no, no, no, they are fine. So they will read the little excerpt from DREAM Act. So you guys understand what we are talking about. Where's Ramon? Say quietly. I need to talk to Ramon. Would you need? I've got one person with me. Ramon, this is the first day I've been in this place. He's from my neighborhood, you know what I mean? Ramon's been in detention even longer than me but they haven't moved them around as much. So it's just been in here a really long time. I don't think my mind even knows where I am anymore. It's just me and him and I haven't seen or heard from Ramon in three or four days now, maybe five. I don't need your personal radio show going on and on. I need you to be invisible inside. I am already invisible. You can't see my voice. See your voice. Are you a poet? No, you people make too much noise all the damn time. You want two people and document a kid to Latinos. What are you? Christmas and gender. Come on, silence, kid. Sure, that's cool. I ain't nothing to look at anyway. Silent and invisible, yo, blank, like a blank sheet of paper. Okay, man. You know what Ramon says? Here we go. Ramon says after all this time with no paper we are finally documented with prison print, man. I got me a correctional jacket, fat as this wall. Ramon calls it bad paper and we got it because we never had the glue paper to begin with called the passport, called the visa, called the birth certificate, called certification of citizenship, called the social security card, called the green card. Card that gets me in that door to a real night to find a legal job. Too many quiet and you're wanting, you son. Follow orders or you'll end up in the hole. I've been following orders my whole 18 years, man. I did what my father told me. I did what my teacher told me. What my priest told me. I only defied it. One order. I got on that bus. My mother said, Danny, don't stay out of the way at all like a good boy. Ever since I knew I were illegal, I've been sneaking around like a Siamese cat. No one walks more careful than me. It was the senior class trip to Atlantic City. Of course I didn't have no driver's license. I could've asked for a ride like my mother said, but I wanted to impress my girl, my new lover. I was Batman, man. I was invincible, dude. I ain't afraid to know ice. What a dumbass. Now I probably wanted to see her again. I'll be as invisible for her as I am for you. And invisible is pretty close to being there. Yo, you listening? God, where is Ramon? And you made a release to Dreamers on this forum? Most Dreamers are Latinos, man. I know an Australian guy. WTF. If I had Australia as my plan A, I wouldn't need a plan B or D. Any students? Sure thing, man. We're all in the same boat. And you get to college. You got papers in New Jersey? Qualified for tuition assistance at school. I had to show them proof of residence. You know, driver's license or utility bill, my name on it. No driver's license. So I had to get creative and invent some legal algorithms. That's arguments. I'm a reliable math nerd, that's my base. So I called the utility company. They asked me for my social security number and I begged the M-Lady in my sweetest voice possible. Asked her if she could just add my name on the bill right now and I called it back to give her my social security number because I don't remember it. That beautiful lady said, okay, I never called back. Holy fuck, dude, nice work. Back to Twitter. Are you done over there, Daniel? You know, how many ways do I kill yourself? Pledge you. Stuffing wet towels into the door until you pull a bucket with ammonia and bleach. Making air embolism in your neck with a needle. Slush your wrists across with a stick and then run them under hot water so that the blood can't come out of it. High weight stainless ankles and just jump off the George Washington Bridge into that ocean. All right, that's enough of that. That's right, you've got a lot of choices. And then the only thing you can really do is just hang yourself. You got window bars, bedsheets, shoelaces, socks, belts, underwear. You can stand up on a chair, tie anything around an overhead pipe, fix the knot around your neck, and take away the stool. You don't got a stool or a pipe. You can just tie it into the radiated pipe and just twist your body to cut off the circulation. Grab any zone you need, and you can just hang yourself sitting on the floor. Just lean your neck against itself with the block of cardboard out of this one. One guy I heard about tied the end of his pants together. He stuck his head in there and just rolled around. Over, over! Twisting it tighter and tighter until he just blacked out and died. Usually takes about four to five minutes. I'll set you up with a social worker for tomorrow. How could you have let him kill himself? Why weren't you watching? Making sure he slipped with an extra thick blanket that can't be torn into strips. Give him the paper gown, check on him every 15 minutes. Just mix up the schedule so he doesn't know you're coming. You should have gotten a sitter who stayed in arm's reach. God should be trained for this shit. Or did he just turn away? He's gonna let him die, right? Saves the government more money, saves the fucking death stage. If someone in his pants won't kill themselves, Daniel, you can't stop them without a straight jacket and padded walls. All right, those are just what trees we do not have here. Ramon was my friend. Ramon taught me shit. He watched out for me. He was from Guatemala. He was the third of five sons. His mother had a crippled hand from working all her life in the fields. His grandfather was a union organizer for Cesar Chavez. He grew up here like me. He had a woman who was pregnant with the son. He was going to start a business. And why did he off himself? Because when you were in the legal, you got no papers. When you got no papers, you got no job. When you got no job, you got no self-respect, no rights and no country. You got nothing. And sometimes you wake up, it's just too dark to see the things that kept you alive yesterday. There's no reason to keep fighting, especially when you're in solitary confinement in a six by six or with only a radiator pipe, and sure it's so old it almost tears itself. It doesn't seem like giving up. It seems like the only great thing left to do. Okay, guys, I need you and your gods and the universe and the golden ratio and the supreme scientist and the 1001 virgins and whatever else has super power or the wardles out there. It was a crazy choice I'm about to make. I'm taking this girl Jess to a party and I have to drive her home after that. It's our first date. Don't do it, dude. No girl is worth that kind of risk. I'm proud of you. Avoid driving nights. Actually, just don't drive dollars here in Dr. Dupont. South Cal here, I think there are times when checkpoints are random, but usually it's on holidays. Second of the mile was the last time they had a checkpoint. On those nights, just make sure to take back roads because usually they'll set up a checkpoint under the streets. I avoid taking certain exits off the freeway since I know they have tracks at the bottom. The best advice is don't be out at all. Wish me luck. You're one and only Middle Eastern dreamer on this forum. Dude, it's the 9-11 weekend. It's gonna be full of cops and checkpoints out there. Don't do it. Why did he pull over his car and turns off the engine? Shoo, shoo, shoo, shoo, shoo. What the fuck? Sorry, there's a checkpoint or something. What? The party's pretty good. Yeah, it was great. Stony stones? Did you smoke when I was asleep? I feel thin, clean water here. You didn't smoke in here. Go back to sleep, Jess. Ooh, go back to sleep. Mr. Wadda tells me to go back to sleep. Or shall I call you Woody? I like that brunette. Your stalker, you know what her name? Michelle. She kept calling you Woody and you didn't pay attention. Woody Wadda prepared, just a name. You got a crush on Michelle. How can you say that? I was there with you the whole time. I didn't pay attention to any of them. So she did. Pay attention to you, Mr. Look around, like, shoot her. Stop it, Jess. Oh, pardon me. Woody. Woody Allen or Woody? Woody would see you for fun. Jess, please, be normal. That cop is going to come to us soon. I'm so stupid. Sorry, it's that. They're going to see that your name is Woody, then they're going to write, profile you with 9-Eleven and all that shit. Yeah, that's why you're freaking out. They're going to see an error in the name of your driver's license, and they're going to, like, humiliate you. Don't worry, silly. I'm here. Perfect American for all. Blonde, blue-eyed, fast reader. He's not a terrorist, sir. No, sir, I can guarantee it, sir. He can be a little stubborn and dark, and it's, like, hard to get a smile more often to show off that pretty smile of him. But no, sir, please, no terrorists. Believe me, sir. It's not funny, yes. Sorry. It's not funny. I know. I'm going to do something about it. I'm going to go out there and talk to that cop before he comes in. No, no, no, yes, yes, please. Stay here and let me do the talking. All right? I'm going to show him my student ID and tell him that I forgot my driver's license at home. No, no, at the park. I forgot my wallet at the park. You forgot your driver's license? We're fucked then. We'll both show our student IDs, and you can say that you know we're from school, and we're both from college, and we ran a student's party. Yeah, yeah, I don't like this party. You think I like it? Well, finally, you used one thing, and losing your driver's license is different, and the combination of those two, it's, it can be really shitty. This is not how I expected my Friday night to go. You know? And then, and I was just getting trying to queue. I didn't know I was, huh? I'm ugly all of a sudden. You know, why he is cute? What is gorgeous? And fucking why he was just my other, right? No, no, he expected something else to happen in this car, you know? Not law enforcement. My dad didn't law enforcement. No, I didn't know. Good friend. Good for you. Uh. He enforces the law. I see it might be like that. I look so freaking up, but I think he makes a sweet drunk. My guy is a new dad, you see? Fuck no. He looks familiar. He might be going to his house, he might know me. Two minutes ago, you were like ready to run to him to talk about my profile, me. Yeah, but two minutes ago, you had a driver's license. In my mind, you had it. Now you don't. Now we're illegal. Interesting feeling, huh? To be illegal? I'm not stupid. I know what's going on here. I have a school from Jackie, our advisor. They gave you in-state tuition, although you don't have a social security number. I see now. You don't have a driver's license either. You're like, sorry, like an illegal alien. So you're going with me now? You're lucky I've got in-state tuition too. I would have hated you. Why don't you go to that cop and report me and your dad would be very proud of you. Now you're starting to show your aggressive side. I can feel it. I'm not stupid. No, you're passive-aggressive. What's going on here? She's a little upset. Sir, we got to do an argument. Upset my ass, she's too. You seem a decent guy. You didn't drink with me. No, no sir, I don't drink alcohol. I'm a master and alcohol is not good for my brain. I could show you my student ID and what you want. All right, all right, all right, James. I won't serve you. Welcome. Here, it's on those lights out, man. You know Ramon. As well as I know you. I ain't gonna end up like you. Really? One day before I'm in the race, I'll get smart, but I ain't gonna be the man who comes. I'm just gonna be the worker. Brooklyn is good if you get legal. It's a fine borrower. Who hate people like me, don't you? Maybe your country. I don't have a flag on my car. Almost the only car in the prison employee life don't got one. After 9-11, we all started waving him off the antenna. You know, hop the windows. I can't do it. I'm a lot of things. Son, brother, uncle, friend. I ain't American. I can't wear the flag like it's me. I've seen too much. All right, kid, I'm going home now. What can kids and footballers be, and ride kicking? The football season's over. My wife left me a year ago. Chicken's out to my right. Dancing, extra crispy, and coconut pieces. You like the extra crispy. Dream about that. All right, then. That's what I'll have. You'll be here. It's good to dream, son. And C.J. Lee, thank you guys for contributing to this. Before opening the discussion to your questions, I'd like to ask, actually, does anyone here and everyone know what Dream Act is? Okay, so it is a legislation that hasn't passed yet, but people are trying to push it that would make youth that are undocumented, and they were brought by their parents before the age 16 to get a path towards citizenship if they are under 30. That would be in a nutshell. But let's get to your questions so we can get the debate going. There aren't any questions. I'll go ahead and start with your questions from the panelists then. Well, yeah, Dreamers wanted me to let everybody know that the definition of Dreamer needs to be expanded, and they're actively doing that because families are being separated. One of the things that Sheriff Joe Arpaio is doing is targeting Dreamer families. So actually August 15th, 2012, a deferred action program was sort of put into place. So they're a lot less afraid that there is something gonna happen for them. People are applying, they can apply, if you wanna apply for the development relief, you can, as of August 15th, but now he's going after their families and separating them, and that's so the definition of Dreamer has to be expanded and something that I also wanted to bring up about papers. So let's say I have a 16-year-old and we're undocumented, and you have a 16-year-old and both those kids have fake IDs and they go into a bar or something and they all get caught, right? Your kid gets a misdemeanor, my kid gets a felony and now can never become a citizen. And so they're going after Dreamers and prosecuting them for things that would normally be petty misdemeanors and getting them upping the charges to felonies. So that's something that's going on. Thank you. Yes, as you could see also from the play that is based on interviews, but fictionalized, the daily life, the things that happen in the daily life and for American citizens seem normal. They are taken for granted. They can be huge risks for the Dreamers. Any other questions from the panelists for the other panelists? It's endless. I mean, I know kids who are now 29 who were marching for the Dream Act in 2000 and had just graduated high school. So they're gonna age out pretty soon. I don't know where it stands, but I know that they're part of it was if you did two years of military service and two years of, or if you were in college, you had to be a college student in good standing. But I did hear a lot of Republicans say that they were pushing the two years of military service, which means that if you don't die, you get to apply for a green card and eventually a path to citizenship. Because I think that's important that people know that it's not here, you're automatically a citizen. It's really just a path to citizenship. It could take a 28-year-old another 10 years to get it. And there is actually a deferred action program that sort of postpones deportation. But yeah, that's the one that's in place right now. Although people say that the bipartisan agreement might be reached towards the passing Dream Act, being the only piece of the immigration reform where I hear Republicans and Democrats sort of agree. They don't know yet. They don't know yet. Everything depends also on what state you're in there. 12 states that have, I pulled them up, Texas, California, Illinois, Utah, Nebraska, Kansas, New Mexico, New York, Washington, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, and Maryland. Maryland has their own Dream Act. Have approved so that dreamers can get in state tuition because one of the things is not only two years of service but getting your higher degree, being able to get your higher education degree. Get it? Yeah. And also there are certain colleges that are blind and others that aren't to documentation. And it's really important to look at that. To look at which colleges are still paying attention to documentation and which ones are letting it go. One of the young women we met with in the creation of this play had just been accepted to Princeton. And she had absolutely no documentation. The question was really whether she was gonna be able to go or not. I think Vassar just made a statement that they're now document blind. But it really goes, it's not only state by state but it's college by college. In terms of the actual admission or in terms of the financial support that they get? Both. I mean, it depends in state tuition when you're talking about a private college is a different story. But even the admissions process, I mean, I don't know how it would be if somebody had a lot of money and was gonna pay full out and never go through. You know, it's not ask questions but in every case it's college by college when there's any financial aid involved even in the admissions process. Hi. So over the past what feels like since our last election cycle started I feel like I've noticed a lot of vocabulary I haven't heard before like self deportation like the GOP's Hispanic problem. Like all this language that feels really violent and weird. And then there's this like the dream act which is, I don't know, I guess what I'm asking is as writers and artists, actors, critics, activists how you relate or interrogate or embrace the word dream dreamers how that intersects with your identity or not. Can you, sorry, can you ask the question again? I'm just asking kind of about your relationship to the word dreamer. Yeah. And yeah. I don't know how to answer that. My relationship to the movement and to these kids is that that would have been me. You know, I would have been in their exact same shoes if there had been this much activity around it at the time. I think that the dream act, who started it? Was it Ted Kennedy? Who started the dream act? Who wrote the legislation? Who made the phrase? Yeah. Yeah, well who wrote the legislation and who started this movement? The development, relief and education for alien minors. So I think they took a really bad alien minors and turned it around. I mean, that's to me the interesting thing that they put hope in it. They took this alien, I'm an alien, and then made something great out of it. Now it would be nice to have someone signing the alien minor. Sintar. The language is wonderful. It's such a great point because there is, in Danny's story, he's called a removable alien. So he's removable, that's an actual phrase, removable alien, self-deportation. So dream act, and it's funny because we struggled with what to call the play. And I think Sabia, why not dream acts? That it's so simple to not be fancy about it, to really get to it. It's just so simple. And to actually hear the dreamers talk of themselves as dreamers, the young man who got on the bus, on the Greyhound bus, because Greyhound made an agreement with ICE to be able to go on to any bus and ask for papers of any passenger, and then haul them straight off. And this young man that we met with, that had happened to him, I spoke to him and he said, I knew, I was a dreamer, and the other dreamers told me don't answer questions, but I was in there and they kept saying to me in the detention center, if you admit that you have no papers, we'll let you go home to your family, but he watched all the people admitting it going straight to deportation. So he kept his mouth shut and he said, it's because the other dreamers had told me not to do that. And to hear them self-identify in comparison to all the words and the phrases they're identified with, like removable alien, to me it's a very simple, maybe naive, but beautiful word. Yes, and actually I like a lot, I think that those lines actually that you wrote, I shouldn't disclose that, that you'll be eating it, I'll be dreaming it. Somehow they sum up the essence of our play, I always love those lines. Any other questions? Do you have anything to do with the phrase of Martin Luther King saying, I have a dream? That's an amazing question, like let's relate the dream that Martin Luther King had to this dream issue and the dreamers now. Let's try to make that connection. Martin, maybe you can start to respond a little. I have no idea if there's an intentional connection. I actually disagree with everyone else, I think, on the panel. I think that calling it the dream act is another cynical act on the part of the government to dress something up that has an ugly name, that's trying to correct an ugly thing and make it sound really lovely and charming. And I think it's great how it has evolved and these people have decided to become, call themselves dreamers, but I think the source of it feels very cynical and sort of not very nice to me. So since that's how I feel, I wouldn't relate that terminology to what Dr. King said at all, although certainly the spirit of the legislation and the spirit of the art that has been inspired by it would feel like it had a lot to do with what Dr. King had to say. Carlo? Yeah, speaking to what Martin just said, I don't necessarily disagree. I think that there's a phrase, the American dream, which we all know very much and I think that that's probably partly what the language is referring to. And the fact is that what a lot of people miss is that a lot of these kids grow up as Americans but they're completely disenfranchised from that dream. And so it is very much something that they're striving. The dream that they're striving for, that they're disenfranchised from and which the passing of this legislation would allow them to achieve in some sense without so much rigmarole. Can I, I wanna add something to what I said because I always had a chance to think. Actually, I think that it relates much more to Dr. King than I originally thought. And the reason I think that is because, and it has to do not with the act or with the legislation or the dry parts of this, but with the art. The thing that drove, the thing that Dr. King was fighting against and the thing that I guess is in the mindset of those who do not want the Dream Act passed is albeit rooted in fear, which is rooted in a lack of understanding, a fear of other cultures, a fear of people who are different, of having something taken away from you by people who seem different from you. And the great power of art and the great power of theater is to expose that fear as fallacious. Because when you, you know, I may have been, had all kinds of abstract opinions about Eastern Europeans. And then I met Saviana, the first live Eastern European I'd really gotten to know well. And whatever preconceptions I may have held, and I don't even know what they were at this point, were changed by the real thing. And that goes with spending time with any group. And I think the power of theater in particular is that, unlike other performance media, you're alive with the folks. You're there in the room with them. It makes, it's a scarier experience. People, you know, I think, worry about going sometimes because you have, you're, as an audience, you're much more exposed than you are when you see a film, for example, because the actors can see you, and you can see them. And, but I think that exchange is so important and that's the way that something, you know, that the attitudes behind the ledges, the attitudes behind what the Dream Act is trying to, that's a terrible sentence, I'll go home and rewrite it later. The attitudes that the Dream Act is trying to erase can only be erased through a meeting and getting experience with other people. And the theater is maybe the best way artistically to do that. I also think it's important to remember that this, at least for now, although you bring up a good point, they're growing up, this is a movement of youth. These are young people. This act affects the young. And one of the reasons I said my daughter, you know, designed the original posters because this means something to her. Her partner is a transgender Mexican young person who actually played Danny when we did it, well they did it, I wasn't even around for, we were asked to participate in an Occupy Wall Street for youth. It was all young people doing one part of Occupy Wall Street theater in the grass sometime last fall. And these kids, the college kids, Ari, my daughter's partner who's undocumented and transgender and cut off from his family and a group of actors went down and they just did it in the grass and all the other kids who were also dreamers were there relating to this on a level. I mean, one of the things that we talk about, there's a cultural difference between you and me and you and me and you and me and there's a gender difference definitely between you and me. I mean, maybe, but I don't know. But we aren't addressing and I don't know if we begin to address people who are actually under 25 in this room, there is a difference between the way somebody older thinks and the way somebody younger thinks about the word dream and about the action that dream has versus the people who are putting that name on an ugly thing. I think what I'm responding to is the youth that we worked with, the youth we tried to represent, we tried to write these young voices and the youth that have responded to the piece and the youth that tend to perform it. And yeah, that's why we did the two readings at Ithaca College and they were really successful and raised awareness and finally Ithaca College kids created a Dream Act group themselves and they got invited to Cornell. So I think things are moving. They can place like Dream Act similar stories can be told in colleges, in universities and of course, hopefully in the professional theater, many stories like that should be there, I feel. I think there's a price for a dream and the prices, you see it in the desert, you see it in the bodies that are found. You see a price for a dream that in the families, like I said, that are being separated and in Operation Streamline, have you guys heard of Operation Streamline? Everybody should know what it is. It is the mass deportation, the federal mass deportations that happen daily. Well, the one I went to in Tucson, 70 to 100 people all being sentenced at once. They don't know what they're saying. They've got headsets on, they're being translated and they're shackled and their sentence, they come and they say, se culpable, I'm guilty. And they didn't even realize really what they're saying or why they're saying it, but it's like a script. It's a theater of humiliation. For anybody who's in the courtroom for the attorneys, it was really shocking to see. Last question, last question, please. Can I say one last thing? Yes, sure. Sorry. Speaking to what was just being talked about. There's an element of idealism to it as well and there's an idealism I think that the young carry with them naturally. I took part in the panel last summer and it was a similar thing, it was after Dream Act and there were a couple of dreamers there and it was the first time in my life that I actually watched in person two kids. It was two kids, right? Testify. And there was nothing more powerful than seeing such beautiful kids. They have this inner light and this belief that we as adults tend to forget. And I think that as theater artists, we retain some of that, you know, or a lot of it. And so, yeah, it's hope, it's hope. And so, I don't know what I'm saying, but I just wanted to put that forth. That's great and indeed so many young people are now coming out as dreamers. That's an amazing sentence to come out. I'm a dreamer. Last question please and then we sum up. If we don't have a last questions, let's have final remarks from all our panelists. Thank you. So the reason why I think this is most important, you know, the issue of immigration is huge and it's a really, really big picture and it's not something that's gonna get solved immediately and it's not just about the dreamers. You know, something has to be done for the other people as well. But the reason why the immediacy of this is because we've been raising generations of kids of quote unquote Americans who are disenfranchised and who they're writing a very fine line and you're raising an entire level of society that could either have a positive impact for everybody. It's a collective thing for everybody or a negative impact. And so it's really important that we take care of the kids and that we let them know that they matter and that they can do something for their society and for you and for me and for their country. Martin, a closing statement. Well, I'd like to just sort of pick up on what you just said, Saviana. Am I working again here? Okay, here we go. Which is that while it's marvelous that work like Dreamax is, I published it, it's being done here and there, but the thing that needs to be fixed and it relates to the immigration issue but it relates to many, many other political and social issues is that the large theaters in New York certainly are not a place where this discussion happens anymore. In the 40s, plays like All My Sons and Home of the Brave after the War were the central place where issues about who we were as a people were presented and then they went to Hollywood and then the stage was the focus for that discussion. I think Angels in America is probably the last time that there was a Broadway play that sort of managed for a while to capture enough attention to focus on discussion nationally on a topic that was 20 years ago. And the theater industry, that's what it is, needs to be changed. That's my mission, but it's part, and I need to hear how we do it. I don't know how to do it, but it's really, really important that these topics, I mean, rather than yet another movie star starring in a revival of yet another old play that even may be a great topical play like Death of a Salesman but relates to an era 50 or 60 years ago, why aren't Saviana's plays and Jessica's plays and Kerry Dad's plays produced in the large regional theaters and in the nonprofit theaters and on Broadway? Yeah, yeah. Thank you, Martin. Micah, last statement. Thank you for having this panel. I think it's really, and thank you all for having me. Thank you, all panelists. Karidad's idea. Yes, Karidad. Thank you. It really is important. One of the things that struck me was I would tell people, even in Arizona, oh, I'm gonna go speak on behalf of the Dreamers, Dream Act. What's that? What's that? You know, in the airport, I said, told somebody, oh, I'm speaking on Dreamers. What's that? You know, not everybody knows. And yeah, we need to talk about it. And I'm gonna quote Lori Ansel, I'll do a change requires more than words on a page. It takes perseverance, creative ingenuity, and acts of love. So share the love. Jessica, fine, I'll take a minute. Oh, for God's sakes, we're in the theater. You know, stand up and do it. I don't care if it's not, you know, to me, it's not an industry. I'm too old to worry about that. I'll, you know, I'm gonna let my dear old friend who used to be a revolutionary, Oscar Eustace, worry about that. And I, and I, I don't care, bring them on. I'm too old to worry about it. I do feel like though you here have to sit up and you have to do, if you're in the theater, you know, especially you young people that can still stand up, do it. And I come back, you know, my daughter, I'm sorry to keep bringing her up, but she's opening a play tonight and I'm here instead of there. And she's directing Marat Saad, which is not a new play, but it is the, you know, it is a play with an old message and it's the message of revolution, which is another word for dreamer. And everyone in this room has the capacity to stand up, to breathe deep and to act. And the song goes, how does it go? Marat, we're poor and the poor stay poor. Marat, don't make us wait anymore. We want our rights and we don't care how. We want our revolution. Now, now, now. So yes, I think that this discussion, of course, doesn't have a period that has only a comma and all I can say is the final line of our play, Good Luck Dreamers. Thank you. So this is gonna be a quick turnaround. We have a performance coming from, straight from London, but what we need to do is clear the space so they can set up. So if you would kindly, you can mingle in the lobby, you can do it in, but it's gonna be a 10 minute turnaround and then you'll have a performance from Sign Dance Collective International. Thank you.