A pivotal episode in the sci-fi series The X-Files that may or may not have actually aired in the mid-1990s becomes a metaphor for childhood trauma in Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas’s Recent Alien Abductions, a West Coast Premiere that sets a high bar for Sacred Fools Theatre’s 30th season.

30something Puerto Rican protagonist Álvaro (Peter Pasco) spends the first third of Recent Alien Abduction’s 90-minute running time alone on stage recollecting The X-Files’ 25th episode, one in which Fox Mulder finds himself on the island Álvaro once called home.

In it (according to Álvaro at least), Mulder encounters a youth coincidentally (or not) named Álvaro, and before you can say Mexico and Puerto Rico aren’t the same country (something the X-Files producers don’t seem to realize), the twosome find themselves taking shelter from a hurricane/hailstorm before Álvaro vanishes into the night (or into the hands of alien abductors?) never to be seen again.

Flash forward twenty-four years to Puerto Rico circa 2017 where Álvaro’s cognitively declining mother Olga (Erica Ortega) is being cared for by his older brother Néstor’s (Alexis DeLa Rosa) wife Ana (Thais Menendez), and by Beba (Crystal Diaz), who grew up alongside both brothers and still calls the neighborhood home.

And if life has been going on pretty much as it’s been since Álvaro set off for the big city 1600 miles north of PR, all that is about to change with the arrival of Patria (Lynn Adrianna Freedman), who’s shown up on a mission to obtain signed permission for a collection of friend’s autobiographical stories to be published per Álvaro’s wishes, a task more easily said than done given the dirty laundry about to be aired.

As to what Cortiñas’s play’s third act has in store for audiences, well I’ll leave that for you to discover as you piece together how the alien abduction that brings The X-Files’ 25th episode to a dramatic cliffhanger connects with Álvaro’s own traumatic childhood.

Suffice it to say that Álvaro’s obsession with looking for hidden messages within an X-Files episode only slightly similar to the one that actually aired on the Fox network September 16, 1994 just might be a metaphor for a survivor’s attempt to reconstruct a child’s shattered past.

Still, as powerful as Cortiñas’s play comes across on paper, written words alone can’t compete with director Jaime Robledo’s masterful staging at the Broadwater, beginning with an Act One scenic design by Colin Lawrence that conceals the second act’s more realistic walls, doors, furniture, and set pieces under a bunch of metallic, light-fracturing space blankets and transports us to an otherworldly limbo.

Add to that the ingenious way Robledo and lighting designer Brandon Baruch illuminate the stage with a cold, phosphorescent glow during scene changes as actors move robotically off and back onto the stage like the alien abductors or abductees they just might be, and the result is positively inspired.

So is Pasco’s most impressive performance to date, the L.A. stage vet not only mastering the 30-minute monolog that opens Recent Alien Abductions but digging deep into the childhood wounds that still scar Álvaro, even in an alien version of the world that grew up in.

Supporting performances are uniformly splendid, from DeLa Rosa’s brutal, volatile Néstor to Freedman’s fierce, tenacious Patria to Ortega’s frail but still cantankerous Olga to Diaz’s guardedly cheery Beba to Menendez’s astute but subjugated Ana, and costume designer Mylette Nora gives each of them precisely the the right outfits to wear.

Add to that Joyce Hutter’s pitch-perfect props, Robledo’s dramatic-effects-spiced sound design, and autodealer’s sci-fi-ready original music and you’ve got an all-around Grade A production design, with additional snaps due Jo Ann Mendleson, whose dual roles as fight choreographer and intimacy coordinator are put to shattering use.

Recent Alien Abductions is produced for Sacred Fools by Sidney Edwards and Scott Leggett. Jonathan Stebe is stage manager.

There are plays you see and enjoy and that’s about it, but few stick with you so deeply that you find yourself thinking about them hours and even days after they’re over. Recent Alien Abductions falls smack dab into category number two.

The Broadwater Mainstage, 1076 Lillian Way., Hollywood. Through November 22. Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00. Sundays at 3:00.
www.sacredfools.org

–Steven Stanley
November 1, 2026
Photos: Jamie Robledo

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