Gary Soto's 'In and Out of Shadows'
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San Francisco: Nov 23rd, 2 & 7 pm
IN AND OUT OF SHADOWS, a musical by famed Chicano writer Gary Soto, is about the lives and experiences of a group of undocumented teenagers. Both funny and poignant, loosely based on the Canterbury Tales, members of San Francisco Youth Theatre's DREAM ensemble not only perform the play, but also gathered the oral histories from around the Bay Area on which it is based, and which Soto has transformed into this vibrant, musical theater production with an exuberant, original musical score.
Directed by Cliff Mayotte with music by SFYT Director Emily Klion and George Brooks, the show opens at Brava Theater in San Francisco and will travel to Soto's alma mater, Fresno City College in Fresno December 6-7.
The teens are preparing their personal statements for an AB 540 conference at UC Berkeley We meet Juan, who arrived in the US alone via a sewer when he was 13. And Alberto who, as a determined six-year-old, refuses to use his cousin's name as his own to use a borrowed ID. We watch a newly urbanized Mexican teen teaching an undocumented Chinese friend how to speak street English.
Running through everything is the fear of deportation. Many families represented in the show have mixed status - undocumented parents whose documented children were born here, for example - who live in constant fear of family separation. In and Out of Shadows' diverse group of actors, many whom are directly affected by the issue, mix English, Spanish, Tagalog, Spanglish and other languages as they unfold the complicated human effects of this charged political issue.
Gary Soto is a nationally acclaimed poet and novelist. Born and raised in the farm community of Fresno, he has a keen personal interest in Latino youth and first-hand knowledge of the challenges facing low-income immigrant populations, from whose lives he draws extensively in his stories. The blend of humor and Spanglish vernacular in his fiction has captured the largest readership of Latino youth in the nation.
$8 students/$12 seniors/$14 general/$25 reserved.
Presented by San Francisco Youth Theatre.