La Frontera/The Border
A music-driven, multi-media, verbatim-text docudrama bearing witness to the impact of Zero Tolerance immigration policy on communities and individuals on the US-Mexico border.
The project launched in September 2018 with a team of theatre and film students, from Dixie State University in Southwest Utah, traveling by van to the San Ysidro border to conduct field research in Tijuana and San Diego. Our work culminated in October with two performances at Dixie State University, followed by intense talk-backs with audience.
La Frontera is part of “Classrooms Without Borders,” a university-based project that aims to engage students and community, across state, regional, and cultural lines, in meaningful civic discourse - through the study, witness, and making of theatre.
Researching
We investigated several border sites: The Trump Administration’s Border Wall “Prototypes”, Friendship Park, Otay Mesa Prison, and both ports of entry at San Ysidro. We met with researchers, lawyers, and immigration rights activists at UC San Diego and San Diego State University. We recieved the gift of access to a collection of letters from asylum seekers incarcerated at Otay Mesa, and the mandate to include some of those letters in our performance. We explored border-themed artwork along the Mexican side of the Wall and in galleries in San Diego and Tijuana. In Tijuana, we participated in “Tierra y Libertad,” an arts-activist event led by Pepe Rojo and Grant Leuning, and spent an afternoon improvising with dance students at the Centro Estatal de las Artes Tijuana (CEART) on themes of Resistence, Crossing, and Compassion.
For four days we interviewed, read, looked, touched, danced, painted, tasted, sang, walked, took notes, photographed, recorded, talked, thought, felt.
Making
Then we went home to collectively create a performance rooted in both what we had learned and what we had experienced.
Sharing
Director’s Statement
The event you will see tonight is
part ORAL HISTORY
part DOCUMENTARY
part THEATRE
La Frontera / The Border explores the impact of "Zero-Tolerance" immigration policy
on individuals and communities on both sides US-Mexico border.
It draws directly upon field research conducted by our creative team
at the San Diego/Tijuana border.
All text is "verbatim" – real people’s real words.
The stories you will here tonight are personal
- the experiences of activists, writers, lawyers,
- asylum seekers incarcerated in San Diego's Otay Mesa Prison
- our own DSU students grappling with their own tales of immigration
With songs by
Joan Baez, Woody Guthrie, Holly Near, Anna Tijoux, and Rupa & the April Fishes
performed by Rachael Merlot, Liza Teo, Armando Serrano, Sydney Adams, Cassandra Smith, Chris Oram, Coby Oram, Joshua France & Abby Taylor
collectively researched, designed, devised, filmed, photographed, sung, danced, translated, accompanied, arranged, built, painted & generally performed by
Sydney Adams
Donovan Diggs
Joshua France
Tanner Gilman
Kat Hunsaker
Sean Jordan
Parker Mayberry
Precious McKinney
Rachael Merlot
Maddy Newby
Chris Oram
Coby Oram
Isabel Esperanza Rodriguez
Cassandra Smith
Armando Serrano
Abby Taylor
Liza Teo
- Kathryn Mederos Syssoyeva