The News Site of Fresno City College

The Rampage Online

The News Site of Fresno City College

The Rampage Online

The News Site of Fresno City College

The Rampage Online

Soto’s “In and Out of Shadows” Shows Complexities of Immigration Issue

Soto’s “In and Out of Shadows” Shows Complexities of Immigration Issue

Award winning author, Gary Soto, is presenting his second play at Fresno City College, where he was once a student, on Saturday and Sunday.

The play, “In and Out of Shadows” is a musical about the lives and experiences of a group of undocumented teenagers from Richmond and Pinole, California. It was originally produced in San Francisco at the Brava Theatre, and the cast is drawn from the San Francisco Youth Theatre’s professional ensemble.

When asked about his writing process for the play he talked about the difference in telling the stories of the characters. “I asked myself, ‘How can I tell these stories? Because it isn’t just one story; there are many stories. Not simply Mexican stories, or El  Salvadorians or from Guatemala but there are people from Indonesia, China, Korea. The whole gamut appear here, not at their will, but at the will of their parents.’”

The underlying theme in the play is the fear of deportation. The families depicted in the show are of mixed citizenship – undocumented parents and their children who are born in America and have citizenship. It is that which creates the constant anxiety of having the family separated and torn apart.

Soto said that the material for the play came from oral history gathered from the Bay Area by members of the youth theatre’s ensemble.  Soto  based the play on these real life experiences, which he transforms into his first lively musical theater production, with a completely original and  high-spirited musical score. Soto wishes to present a truly exciting time to his audience, most of whom have never been to a play.

“I wasn’t going to make [the characters] pitiful. I was going to give them life, and courage, and honor and conviction. One way to have them do that is to sing or dance their stories and from that I felt that there could be a very heartfelt emotion between the actors and even the theatregoers,” Soto said when asked why he decided to make this show a musical.

The play introduces a slew of characters who are preparing their personal statements for an AB 540 conference at UC Berkeley. The story introduces Juan who, reached the U.S. alone through a sewer at 13 years old. Then there’s Alberto who is six years old when he crosses the U.S. border and refuses to use his cousin’s identity and is dosed with cough syrup before crossing. The audience is led to a freshly” urbanized gangster or “vato loco” teaching street Spanish to an undocumented Chinese friend.

However under AB 540 and President Obama’s two-year deportation deferral for certain undocumented youth (DACA), young people may suddenly be separated from their parents and caretakers.

The timing for “In and Out of Shadows” is perfect.  In its concoction of English, Spanish, Tagalog, Spanglish and other languages, the play uncovers the complexities of this highly charged political issue.

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