Streams November 10th - November 15th

Performed by Working Theater (NYC) in association with Marin Theater Company.

What better way to choose which foreigners are allowed to become citizens of the USA than a game show? Transfer all those officers currently employed by the US Department of Immigration, over to work for Rent a Psychopath and let the people choose. After all, we’re good at it… aren’t we…?

Quarantine has stretched the creativity of playwrights now, probably more than at any other time in history since, well… the last pandemic. The creators of American Dreams have pitted their wits against the significant obstacles of lockdown and a White House administration whose immigration laws are eh hem, questionable, and come up with a thought provoking and engaging, interactive live performance that still manages to maintain social distancing. 

Three potential immigrants are competing to be a citizen of the United States, with a cash bonus for the winner. Audience vote decides the outcome. Contestants are put through a series of rounds of increasingly personal cross examination, including questions from audience members, then we get to vote for who we think is the most worthy applicant. 

Before entering the virtual theater, we’re asked to fill out a questionnaire about our geographical origins among other things. OK, so I’m a part of this live performance, and as the show opens and progresses, and as I get to vote, I’m feeling like a willing participant in an unethical human experiment. The hosts tell us we’ve been given top government clearance in order to perform our selection process.

As a naturalized immigrant to the United States of ten years, myself, I can vouch that the questions about government asked in the first round are the same ones whose answers I had to learn from an Immigration Department booklet. Watching this round in American Dreams, I was amazed to learn that I’d clean forgotten most of the answers and would now fail the Immigration Office naturalization interview, in which I was required to get 6 out of ten answers correct in order to qualify for citizenship. I know for a fact many of my American friends couldn’t get 6 out of 10 on a random test either.

The pressure mounts as we learn the skills and personal histories of our contestants who are all men, and from Israel, Pakistan and Mexico respectively. Random members of the audience are elected to ask a question of each potential immigrant. As someone who definitely prefers to be in the audience and not on a stage, I admit I quailed at the thought I may be singled out, but fortunately I wasn’t. It might be nice to give shy audience members like me the opportunity to opt out of participation on the original entry questionnaire. My husband was too alarmed by the idea of audience participation to watch the show with me. So if I could have reassured him he wouldn’t be singled out to ask a question, or that he could have had his screen off, he would have been a more willing participant. However, apart from this, I can vouch, as a retiring person, that the process didn’t demand too much extroversion. It was also interesting and novel to catch glimpses of my fellow audience members face on, as we all got to put our thumbs up or down at the answers our contestants gave, under our hosts increasingly hostile cross examination. 

In our new role of ‘Immigration Officer Overlord’, our opinions around borders and who can and can’t cross them, are pushed up against Trump’s proverbial wall. We’re forced to confront our own privilege, and our own racial and religious biases. Questions of ethics around privacy laws and racial profiling are raised, as we get to reject two candidates and select one.

During my own application process, I can tell you that a visit to the Immigration Office, usually hours long, and over some minor but critical technicality, always left me thinking their HR department DEFINITELY needed to do an overhaul, and SOON. Kids separated from their parents at the US border and thrown into cages, type soon. The great tragic irony being of course, that these same immigration officials are highly likely to be descended from immigrants themselves.

The final part of the play mentions the original Indigenous people from whom America was taken, which begs the question who are we to decide who we can and can’t let into this country anyway? This is an issue I’d like to see integrated further into the central body of the play. It’s an important question, and one I’d like to see reflected back onto our avuncular hosts, along with their personal histories of immigration. Also, many Americans born in the US are unaware of the steps involved in the naturalization process, and I’d like to see more clarity over how closely the game show format paralleled this. It would also be interesting to know what legal parameters immigration officers must adhere to in their naturalization interviews. (Both for the ‘alien’ and the interviewer)!

Performances were all great. It takes a certain amount of guts and preparation to face an audience and be ready to answer random questions with an undecided outcome. Our hosts were friendly with underlying hints of aggression which added to the unpredictability of the performance. Design was believably ‘trashy Fox Gameshow’.

Overall, this performance, with it’s built in rising dynamic, and audience interaction, had all the absorbing compulsion of reality TV, and with a menacing undertone to boot. The occasional and quickly resolved technical hitch added to the thrills and spills of live television as theater. 

Theater companies have never needed our support more than during this pandemic. They’ve taken a massive and sustained hit. However this fast moving performance testifies that creativity is thriving and new ways of telling stories are emerging with impressive effect. See it, and don’t forget to vote!

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Review by Hannah Yurke.