There’s a moment in “The American Dream,” a play written by Juan Ramirez, when the coyote, or smuggler, played by Ramirez, tells the woman he is smuggling that she has no idea of the state she is in. He has told her to remain standing on a flattened cardboard box while he waits for a second payment. She is, in a sense, a hostage of the smuggler , someone whose fate is in another person's hands, a commodity, a person caught in the terrible limbo of human trafficking.
Libe Barer, playing Corina, replies with poise that she knows exactly where she is: In a state of confusion. The play, part of a double bill at Urban Stages that could be dubbed “Power Plays," shows us two roughly hour-long one acts with very distinct power dynamics. In one, an auditor who served in the military audits a hippie, while in the other, a coyote or smuggler holds a would be immigrant hostage until and unless he gets the second payment. They both show us strangers, one with power and one at risk, engaged in a struggle. When in "The Audit" the subject of the audit complains the situation isn't fair, the auditor reminds us that nothing is fair. People who seek things to be fair forget the reality of the world is anything but that. The second show also presents a world where the rules are not designed to produce winners, but to dispense of losers. And together, this truly dynamic duo of plays present an interesting, even intriguing dissection of the dynamics of power, and powerlessness, and how they can fuel strong theater, good acting and how power, in the end, is the essence of so much emotion and theater.
In both, to an extent, the tables turn as we see the scales tip as the one with the power is revealed as more vulnerable than he or she might appear. Together, they provide a good night of two handers with good actors, writing and story. And they provide an anatomy of the dynamics of power, how people who have power over us can, in turn, be overpowered and how we can see the balances shift. Both plays, really, are about power between strangers or rather how authority goes awry. And together they make for an interesting night of theater that touches on politics without being overpowered by it. At a time when musicals rule the roost, it’s nice to see emotion and action, as well as dialogue written to serve story, and great acting create drama of the highest order. Both plays are highly theatrical, rather than purely realistic, but they show us rather than ordinary settings two cases where the situation is strong and the drama develops.
The evening opens with "The Audit," by Lynn Crawford directed by Leigh Selting, in which a Black female former soldier turned auditor played by Disnie Sebastian arrives to audit a musician and composer played by Joel Ripka. The accounting, however, soon shifts beyond taxes to truth and the way each person has been takn advantage of by society. The musician is a somewhat disorganized, but creative person who sees the world through song and is more at home with a guitar than with a calculator. We watch him hunt for receipts, without mush success. He might as well be a dog digging in hopes of finding diamonds. He needs money to pay the veterinarian even as the IRS goes after what little money he has. What percent can he deduct? It seems like an exercise in futility as a big agency deploys assets to go after someone with little money. We gradually find out about the humanity and tragedy of each from the Holocaust to recent wars and deaths as we see that the two, despite apparent differences, have more in common than one might think.
Leigh Selting shows us a world where an artist is audited, as the auditor remains largely glued to her chair, powerful but not fully human until she emerges from her chair, drawn into the malestrom of emotion. She is an invader, in this home, there to exact a price, a soldier not here to protect, but to attack. The auditor eventually becomes frustrated and threatens the liberal client, treating her subject as an enemy, losing her cool and threatening to destroy a valuable baseball card before being offered a plant at the end, as a peace offering. These two different people learn to like each other and recognize the value of their different experiences in this play about the two political poles. The man being audited has virtually no records except for a stray receipt, while the former member of the military is all order. The two clash and eventually commiserate and make peace. We learn each has experienced loss. And the initial questions as to what percent of the apartment can be deducted for business drifts into the background, as these people go from numbers to humans, connecting through conflict before the auditor exits, having learned about herself and her subject. It might as well have been called "American Audit," because it feels particularly American as the government arrives, after having altered both of these people's lives already. America is being audited, in this play, as well as the character whose books are in question.
In "The American Dream," Libe Barer plays a charismatic Guatemalan woman, really a girl, smuggled stateside, only to be held prisoner unless and until the second $3,000 payment is made, ideally by her boyfriend. Juan Ramirez Jr, who wrote the piece, brings just the right amount of male menace to the coyote, while Barer plays the captive with charm and humanity. He paces with a gun, remining us by the way he brandishes it of the Chekhov aphorism that a gun in a play must go off. He brags about how his brutality has come through in the past, even as she shows him a sonogram that she says, at first, is hers. It’s all a scam, it turns out, as she tries to get to the United Staes, living her American dream without paying the price. What feels like an episode from “Breaking Bad” develops a life of its own as we watch Corina seek to survive, showing a sonogram and pleading for mercy. Meanwhile, Ramirez tries to show that he is tough and inhumane, while we suspect that a heart beats beneath his tough exterior.
Maria Mileaf directs this two-hander with intensity, creating a true sense of menace in a largely stark space except for a chair that Ramirez eventually kicks. This is a world where the coyote roams and the characters are alone and apart from society in a kind of no man's land between nations. There are no dreams here, only dead ends and human trafficking. Ramirez says she can take a taxi in reverse to hell, as we see that those seeking their American dream can find the reverse of their fantasy. And that gun, by the way, is a reminder that this is more nightmare than fantasy. Ramirez tells Barer she won’t have to worry about leaving her boyfriend, because he left her. The stakes are so high from the start in this duo of plays, this double bill, about men, women and power. Is it entirely believable? Probably not although the coyote toward the end says it’s unlikely she’d be killed. Instead, she’d have to work her way out of this servitude, possibly as a prostitute. Suddenly, it seems like this is really a play about slavery as well as smuggling, a story about the relationship and humanity of these two people who, rather than an American dream, find themselves dissecting an American nightmare. It really did feel like a moment from "Breaking Bad," but in a good sense, since this was on stage. And the acting was so good.
"The American Dream" is not really about America or about a dream, but is rather an intense boxing match of a play where the hunter becomes the hunted. It’s not entirely realistic, but is always dramatic. And at a time when immigrants and immigration are under fire from the U.S. government, it shows us the way immigrants can be taken advantage of. A brutal male, with a heart hidden somewhere, faces a woman who is cheating the system, not paying as planned. Who is wrong? Everyone, in a way. Theater of brutality has its place. "The American Dream" is at once a play about people who will do anything to reach America, and what happens when they break the rules. It’s also, like "The Audit," about power. Together the two pieces show us that plays about power can make powerful theater. And in this second play we see how an empty space can be the perfect setting for theater where feelings furnish the stage and fear fills the room in a way that an elaborate set never can.
Great acting, intense.