Martyna Majok puts a personal face on the plight of undocumented Americanized teens in Sanctuary City, a riveting, thought-provoking Los Angeles Premiere at the Pasadena Playhouse.

Majok’s 2021 off-Broadway hit focuses on Newark high schoolers B (Miles Fowler) and G (Ana Nicolle Chavez), whose best friendship stems in large part from the fact that each is the child of an undocumented immigrant (of deliberately unspecified origins), a reality now complicated by B’s announcement that his mother, exploited at work by a boss who might at any time denounce her to immigration, has decided to return to her home country.

G, meanwhile, has problems of her own, chiefly her mother’s physically abusive live-in lover, whose repeated blows have kept G home from school on multiple occasions, each act of violence prompting a different invented excuse, and like her best friend’s mother, G’s too lives in fear of being denounced as undocumented, in this case by a man who uses threats to thwart any attempt at escape.

Sanctuary City’s first half unfolds as a series of rapid-fire snippets of conversation, many of them in B’s room, as G repeatedly climbs her friend’s fire escape to seek refuge from an untenable home environment.

A pair of major events then further complicates B and G’s already chaotic lives.

The first is B’s mother’s sudden departure for her homeland, leaving her son alone, stranded, and fearful that college is now out of his reach.

The second is G’s mom’s new American citizenship, which immediately transforms her not-yet-18-year-old daughter from undocumented teen to full-fledged American, marriage to whom could provide B with a path to a Green Card and beyond.

A three-and-a-half-year flash forward then takes us to B’s apartment, as literal and cluttered as scenic designer Chika Shimizu’s previous set was abstract and bare of furniture or props, where a third character (Kanoa Goo’s Henry) further complicates G’s already problematic return to Newark nearly four years after her high school graduation.

Much has been written and televised and screened about the plight of undocumented teenagers, and though Sanctuary City revolves around these same concerns, it is not the “issue play” a lesser writer than Majok might have constructed.

What makes Majok’s play so compelling and conversation-provoking is its focus, not on headlines, but on three complex individuals, whose motivations the playwright leaves it to us to analyze and dissect, and never more so than in the fiery three-character confrontation that leads to the play’s gut-punching final moments. (It’s worth noting that Sanctuary City’s 2001-2006 timeframe situates it years before DACA and the legalization of same-sex marriage.)

Director Zi Alikhan earns major props for staging what is essentially two very different one-acts, acing the literally hundreds of lickety-split transitions demanded in the play’s first half (aided enormously by lighting designer Solomon Weisbard and sound designer John Nobori) and the escalating dramatic tension of a linear part two, where scenic designer Shimizu gets to show off remarkable versatility.

The phenomenally talented Fowler and Chavez first ace the multiple challenges of Sanctuary City’s first fifty minutes, not only by creating real, believable, three-dimensional teens but by making countless instantaneous transitions from scene to scene, some of them lasting only seconds.

Then, joined by the equally impressive Goo, Sanctuary City’s three rising stars dig deep beneath the surface to probe each character’s complex motivations and repressed rage to stunning, devastating effect.

Jojo Siu’s just-right costumes complete Sanctuary City’s grade-A production design. Amanda Rose Villarreal coordinates scenes of intimacy between the two leads.

Jenny Slattery is associate producer. Brandon Hong Cheng is stage manager and Lydia Runge is assistant stage manager. Casting is by The Telsey Office, Ryan Bernard Tymensky, CSA, and Rose Bochner, CSA. Davidson & Choi Publicity are publicists.

Sanctuary City is the third Martyna Majok play I’ve had the pleasure of reviewing, and though all three have shared the same New Jersey setting and featured characters not born in the States, each has had a decidedly different story to tell. The one Majok now recounts in Sanctuary City held me gripped from the moment G first climbed B’s fire escape to its final, shattering fade to black.

Pasadena Playhouse, 39 South El Molino Ave., Pasadena.
www.pasadenaplayhouse.org

–Steven Stanley
September 18, 2022
Photos: Jeff Lorch

Tags: Los Angeles Theater Review, Martyna Majok, Pasadena Playhouse