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  • Deferred Action's Visibility for Legal Nonexistence and Legislative Power
  • Shelby-Allison Hibbs (bio)

The demographics in North Texas shift continuously—so much so that rapid growth seems to be the only constant in the region. Since 1950 the population in Dallas County has quadrupled to 2.5 million residents, and that number does not exhibit the exponential rise of the Latinx population. In 1980 Latinx persons only made up 9 percent of the population, but by the 2010 census the number had risen to 39 percent. Even with these increasing numbers, Latinx theatre comprises a small percentage of performing arts in North Texas, with the exception of companies like Cara Mia Theatre or Teatro Dallas. The dearth of Latinx theatre in the region is indicative of a larger trend in which this group lacks the cultural visibility that others receive.

Enter Dallas Theater Center (DTC). Typically, DTC produces an assortment of world premieres, classics, and musicals; however, a majority of these productions are written by white playwrights. For example, previous seasons included the world premieres of Samuel D. Hunter's Clarkston and Douglas Carter Beane's Give It Up and Hood, and rarely showcase writers residing in North Texas. DTC has curated seasons to gain national attention by transferring productions to Broadway or off-Broadway; in 2017 such programming was recognized with the American Theatre Wing's Regional Tony award. The company's more recent inclusion of a few plays written by a Latinx playwright can be seen as one response to the challenge of including local voices.

In 2010 DTC's artistic director Kevin Moriarty invited Cara Mia Theatre's artistic director David Lozano to begin a conversation about a co-production between the two companies. The original play to be developed by them would highlight Latinx experiences in North Texas (Moriarty). Through their discussions, Moriarty and Lozano decided that the piece should focus on young, undocumented immigrants, or DREAMers, living in the region. After a series of interviews and workshops, Lozano developed a script with Lee Trull, director of new play development at DTC. Titled Deferred Action, Lozano directed the world premiere with members of both DTC and Cara Mia at the former's primary performance space, Wyly Theatre.

As a co-production, the audience included patrons and subscribers from both DTC and Cara Mia Theatre. Compromises in storytelling and aesthetic were made to reach both audience groups. Deferred Action's storytelling utilizes forms of Western realism, including primarily English dialogue (with some Spanish) and maintaining the fourth wall through realistic dialogue and character interpretations. The play distances itself from a Chicano performance aesthetic that Cara Mia includes in its productions, such as stylized staging, puppetry, and percussion. The choice of using Western dramaturgical practices suggests that the playwrights aim to communicate the plight of DREAMers to an audience that may not share Latinx cultural heritage. With over thirty scenes that fixate on a DREAMer's quest for citizenship, the rapid pace offers a domino effect of incidents in which young immigrants appear to have little control.

Deferred Action is not a stand-alone play, but the second installment of a trilogy on immigration created and produced by Cara Mia in 2013 titled DREAMERS. DTC was not involved with the first play in the trilogy. The first play, DREAMERS: A Bloodline, follows a group of El Salvadorians [End Page 197] escaping the country's violent civil war during the 1980s and '90s by fleeing to the United States border. As an iconic Cara Mia production, the play utilizes a number of theatricalized storytelling elements, including dancing, choral dialogue, and music. The events of A Bloodline permeate Deferred Action through a series of flashbacks, connecting the physical sacrifices of the past to the gains made in the present. The repetition of these flashbacks, just as the DREAMers are on the cusp of making real progress for reform, suggests that a young immigrant's journey is always clouded by their past heritage.

While A Bloodline chronicles the struggles made by immigrants in the past, Deferred Action picks up the story twenty years later in modern-day North Texas. Two of the characters from the first play, Javi and Abue...

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