Clockwise from top left: Tania Chairez, Cristian Solano-Córdova, Reydesel Salvidrez-Rodriguez and Alejandro Fuentes-Mena read from their 'UndocuAmerica Monologues' at the Buell Public Media Center in June.
It’s pretty much a foregone conclusion that deportation protections afforded to Dreamers for the past decade will not survive an expected U.S. Supreme Court challenge. To illustrate the potential consequences, Boulder’s singular Motus Theater used monologues and murals to humanize one of the most demonizing issues of our time.
“UndocuAmerica Monologues” is an ongoing storytelling project that puts local undocumented community leaders through a 17-week writing workshop to turn their personal narratives into performance pieces. One participant was Alejandro Fuentes-Mena, founder of a K-8 charter school called Radical Arts Academy and a singer in the Denver band Pink Hawks. Fuentes-Mena, who was born in Cuba and has lived in this country since age 4, was one of the first two DACA recipients to become a certified teacher in the country. DACA is Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.
So, what is to become of the 712,610 approved DACA recipients living in the U.S.? Fuentes-Mena speaks for all when he says the U.S. would be foolish to lose them.
“If this country continues to deport the undocumented community,” he said, “it is missing out on courageous, strong, intelligent, family-loving, hard-working people of great value.”
Kirsten Wilson founded Motus Theater at about the same time DACA was being signed into law in 2012.
It was impossible not to be moved by the fear, anger and common sense expressed in the “UndocuAmerica Monologues,” one of many signature programs developed by Motus Theater, which is celebrating its 10th year in 2022. Motus also tackles racial justice, judicial bias, incarceration and other issues in its programs. “Rocks Karma Arrows” explored the Sand Creek Massacre and how its history is woven into the founding of Boulder.
DACA at 10: 'The closest distance between two people is a story'
Founder Kirsten Wilson started her insistently political company just as DACA was signed into law. Since 2012, an estimated 300,000 have heard Motus’ stories of people who historically live in the shadows.
A key component in the multimedia “UndocuAmerica” project is a series of 12 huge murals created by Edica Pacha that have been placed throughout Denver and Boulder, each featuring a different Motus monologist.
These stories are medicine, Wilson says, medicine for those sharing them, and for anyone willing to hear them.
“When you start to listen closely to a person on the front lines of the immigration issue, you also learn about the other threats that are lurking about and will ultimately threaten you and yours,” she said. “These people are on the front lines of our failure as a country. And their fight is ultimately our fight.”
Note: The True West Awards, now in their 22nd year, began as the Denver Post Ovation Awards in 2001. Denver Gazette Senior Arts Journalist John Moore celebrates the Colorado theater community by revisiting 30 of the best stories from the past year without categories or nominations.
Tania Chairez's contribution to Motus Theater's 'UndocuMonologues: 10 Years of DACA in Story & Song,' recorded at the Buell Media Center in collaboration with Rocky Mountain PBS.