UTB-TSC students present play depicting migrants attempting to cross border
The topic of the border and the meaning of crossing it may be a familiar theme to Brownsville residents, but late last week CQ UTB-TSC students helped local audiences to think about these concepts in a new way.
In "The Line in the Sand," a dramatic interpretation of interviews from the Arizona-Mexico border collected by members of Catholic Relief Services, students from the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College participated in the school's first full-scale dramatic production.
In the play, which had its final performance Saturday night, students portrayed migrants crossing and attempting to traverse the harsh desert boundary between Arizona and Mexico. They took on the persona of border patrol agents and coroners, of suburban housewives and TV reporters.
By exploring these roles, the performers said they too formed new opinions about the meaning of illegal immigration.
"I disagreed with illegal immigration before," said Henri Gutierrez, who played an intern at Phoenix's Mexican consulate. "I used to say, ‘If you want to come, come legally.' But after learning more about how people struggle to get here, I got a different perspective."
Cristina Caballero, who starred as the struggling migrant, Lucresia, said she was also changed by the production.
"I guess being from the United States, you just look at that kind of immigration as illegal," Caballero said. "Now I see it's something they do to better themselves. It's a struggle and it's not an easy choice to make."
Caballero's character brings her two young sons with her on a trip across the desert in an effort to reach her husband and two other children in Chicago. But the desert proves perilous and Lucresia's story is ultimately a tragic one.
"I think if I were in her situation I would have also tried to go to the U.S., but I wouldn't have taken my children with me," Caballero said.
The performance was hosted by the UTB-TSC communication program through a Difficult Dialogues Initiative grant from the Ford Foundation. The grant is designed to motivate colleges and universities to host public discussions about controversial topics, such as religion, race, sexual orientation and academic freedom.
After the performance, communications professor John Cook encouraged audience members to answer questionnaires about their reaction to the play. Cook also answered audience questions and encouraged the audience to talk with the cast.
The play's director, associate professor Sharaf Rehman, said he related to the piece because of his own experience traveling from Pakistan to India when he was 5 years old. Rehman said the journey took him three weeks and that one of his cousins was murdered along the way.
"I still have nightmares about that walk," Rehman said.
Rehman plans to also direct a play he authored about the displacement of people. He said the play does not depict a single group, but rather talks about many historical instances of forced migration.
"It deals with politics and unrest and war," Rehman said. "And from all that history, we haven't learned a darn thing."
Rehman says that UTB-TSC will have five student plays in the 2009-2010 academic year.
