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Debate Over Immigration in Arizona Inspires Playwright

Posted August 16, 2010 by Leslie Josephs

Politicians sparring over Arizona’s controversial immigration law SB 1070 can sometimes sound dramatic, but for the Tuscon-based immigration lawyer Kara Hartzler, the debate around the law provided an opportunity for an actual theater production, minus the usual political rhetoric.

Hartzler, legal director of Arizona’s Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, an Arizona-based non-profit, says she was tasked with examining the “multifarious natures of Arizona legislators and immigrants alike” when she wrote her play “Arizona: No Roosters in the Desert.” The play, the story of four women who cross the border from Mexico to the United States, was translated into Spanish and premiered in Mexico City earlier this month, and will open in Tuscon in October.

Hartzler, who also holds an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa Playwrights Workshop, wrote in a recent blog post in The New York Times that she was forced to put her politics aside to write the play:

If you have strong feelings on the new Arizona immigration law, it’s likely you fall into one of two camps. Camp No. 1 denounces the fascist Arizona legislators who want to drive out those humble, oppressed dishwashers and gardeners and turn the country into a white-power police state. Camp No. 2 bemoans the current state of lawlessness in which Mexican drug lords terrorize the border while their illegal minions suck jobs and social services from hard-working Americans.

As a lawyer at a nonprofit immigrant-rights organization in Arizona, I’ve long since thrown my lot in with Camp No. 1. But as a playwright, here’s the dark secret I won’t be yelling into a megaphone at an immigrant-rights rally anytime soon:

Both camps kind of bore me.

Their rhetoric is simplistic and unoriginal. Their characters are one-dimensional. Their tone is always the same shrill pitch. It’s just so predictable and clichéd.

The play is based on interviews with women who were deported as they tried to cross the perilous desert into the United States. Despite the gripping and often heartbreaking material, Hartzler says: ...As a playwright, I feel a gnawing responsibility to examine the multifarious natures of Arizona legislators and immigrants alike. To make the humble gardener racist. To make the white supremacist noble. To shake up our expectations about the characters in this national play.”


Here’s a clip of the production:

Tags : arizona, sb 1070, theater

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