Young actors show us real immigrants in the play ‘Common Ground’ at TADA! Theater

Fourteen New Yorkers between the ages of 11 and 18 tackled a topic that often leaves our politicians and journalists handicapped and awkward: immigrants. They did it all the time while entertaining an audience on a dark blue and gray stage with a brick backdrop, in a musical called “Common ground” by the TADA! Youth theatre.

Director Alex Sanchez says the common ground is “a place where people from all over the world can come together over a topic or activity,” which in this play is a teen-run group of English language learners in New York City, attended by four immigrant children from Colombia, Ivory Coast and Nepal, and the two American-born people who run it. The children, too energetic for homework, naturally transform the group into an art club, and art is where they find their common ground.

The story follows two of the immigrants, Ysabella (Gabrielys Rosa-Lozada), a Colombian teenager with hundreds of Instagram followers trying to become an influencer, and her pessimistic but sweet younger brother (Mateo Aponte), as they are rounded up like cows by immigration. , separated and locked up in a detention center. It’s the friends they made at the art club, fueled by love (another common ground), that managed to bring the two back to New York. “I’ve never seen such an ugly place,” says one of the show’s songs about the city.

These kids play real, tough people, they don’t “wallow in their sadness,” as director Sanchez told the actors to avoid; they feel like people you meet on the streets of New York, sometimes unpleasant, often friendly. The reason for the accuracy of the characters is that playwright Lisa Diana Shapiro was inspired by real immigrant teenagers she met while teaching at a summer camp for refugees in 2017, when she pitched the idea for an immigrant musical to TADA! Shapiro has written fairy tale and fiction plays, but never so seriously for the free youth theater, which serves children ages 8 to 18 in New York City. TADA through the years! has taught Jordan Peele and Kerry Washington, among others.

“Common ground” was supposed to be a short piece about refugee children adjusting to New York, until Shapiro said in 2019, when early production began, that there was family separation, all the tragedies at the border, children in cages. and the actors said, “How can you make a show about immigrants and not talk about the things that really happen?” Shapiro was again commissioned to write a play in two acts. She interviewed the immigrant teenagers she knew, children who had been in detention centers, to get the story that is now on stage.

Director Sanchez had the children do their own research into their character’s country of origin, mainly by watching interviews with natives, so they could understand their specific lifestyles, struggles and even mannerisms.

One of the actresses, Mia Sevilla (11), says: “It helps us connect with the characters if we know they are real.”

The ensemble agrees that each character has a little piece of the person playing it. Calvin Lyte Jr. for example, played an Ivorian boy and could understand where his character Abdoulaye was coming from because his family is Guyanese and Caribbean and West Africans share a lot of culture. These children are very different in age and background, but the love for acting is their common ground. If it wasn’t a school night, it seemed like they could have spent the rest of the evening talking about their play.

They will be performing until May 11 at 15 West 28th Street, tickets are available online and at the box office. TADA! also accepts auditions to be part of their ensemble.

Noah Augustin is a student at a public high school in New York City.