Expand<\/a><\/p>\nThe play centers on two near adults called \u201cG\u201d and \u201cB.\u201d These truncated identities are likely emblematic of their nebulous official status.<\/p>\n
The play begins with a forbidding thumping on a glass window outside a bare bones upstairs apartment where B lives a subsistence-level life with his mother.<\/p>\n
He is startled awake, exhausted bewilderment and even fear on his face. It\u2019s clear the specter of arresting authorities, even in a supposed city of sanctuary, could show anytime to deport them back to the unnamed, unfriendly country they fled.<\/p>\n
Instead, it is his high school friend G who has crept up the fire escape. She also entered the United States with her mother and is also undocumented. They current live in an unsafe situation with an abusive man.<\/p>\n
On this bitter, winter night G is searching for momentary shelter in B\u2019s unheated apartment. This leads to communal warmth under the covers, though not in any romantic way, the sanctuary of companionship is what these two share.<\/p>\n
The first half of the one-act play reveals evolving changes looming around the character\u2019s lives.<\/p>\n
B\u2019s mother feels defeated and plans to return to her unspecified country of origin. This leaves B in limbo, ignoring his studies for a low-end working existence.<\/p>\n
Meantime, we learn that G\u2019s mother achieves citizenhood and G becomes naturalized. Good grades afford her a college opportunity as study in Boston beckons.<\/p>\n
With resources still minimal, their bonds are challenged but remain. However, B and G are on prickly paths, figuring out sustainable lives ahead.<\/p>\n
Ah, prickly.<\/p>\n
Directors and actors undertaking \u201cSanctuary City\u201d face a tricky story-telling structure. Majok sculpts the play\u2019s first half for the director and actors to exist in a start\/stop\/repeat staccato rhythm of conversational interchanges.<\/p>\n
These can last as little as a few seconds before the action on stage picks up only to briefly pause again. This happens repeatedly over the show\u2019s first 45 minutes.<\/p>\n
This microburst pattern often repeats dialogue in slightly shifting variations, the story proceeding along in a choppy cadence.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a storytelling device intended to underscore a thematic point. It reinforces to the audience that the characters\u2019 fragmented path continually exists in a fractured limbo, their institutional non-status stressing the fabrics of their very lives.<\/p>\n
In Chance\u2019s presentation, the actors freeze in place during these intervals as lights briefly blink out, replaced with muted fluorescent-like illumination.<\/p>\n
These are accompanied by jarring, discordant music tone outbursts accented with a vexing metallic buzz.<\/p>\n
Unproductively, in the confines of the smaller-scale Fyda-Mar stage, the discordant sensory barrage director Oanh Nguyen brings to bear landed on at least one theatergoer as an agitated, irritating distraction.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s like some aural and visual fly that needs, but refuses to be, swatted away.<\/p>\n
This doesn\u2019t, however, diminish the impactful presences of the principal actors, Chance newcomers Spike Pulice, as vulnerable B, and Vicky Yvonne as hesitant G.<\/p>\n
They excel at hitting their repeatedly tightly timed marks and conveying their characters\u2019 yearnings and despairs.<\/p>\n
Overall, Nguyen and his actors have developed well thought out characterizations. The actors\u2019 muted facial responses reflect the inner struggles in untenable circumstances of these young lives.<\/p>\n
Another virtue is the work of Fred Kinney and Mio Okada-Nunez, who share the production\u2019s scenic design credit. The bare stage\u2019s back wall, extending overhead to the ceiling, is an effective mosaic of dull brick and sporadic rough-hewn boarding, with occasional \u201cmissing persons\u201d fliers caulking in empty spaces.<\/p>\n
The play\u2019s second part reverts to realistic exposition. Three years have passed. The two characters have kept intermittent contact, but a torturous plan that might lead to citizenship for B has withered due to their separate paths as well as the second life he is secretly undertaking.<\/p>\n
G returns to the Newark apartment to try and reconcile their communal status, but it leads to her confrontation with next choices.<\/p>\n
Entering the picture is a third character named Henry. Played by actor Jonathan Keyes, Henry \u2014 fully named, likely because his citizenship is never at issue \u2014 has goals for B that don\u2019t include G.<\/p>\n
A dilemma takes charge. Emotional complexities well up, and a confrontation ensues. And at play\u2019s end B faces staying marooned in the netherworld of what he wants his life to be versus how his options to pursue possibilities have been thwarted by his non-person status.<\/p>\n
As the play reminds us, finding sanctuaries of many kinds in these times can be very difficult to achieve.<\/p>\n
\u2018Sanctuary City\u2019<\/p>\n
Rating: 3 stars (out of 4 possible)<\/p>\n
When: Through June 7. 8 p.m. Fridays, 3 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays.<\/p>\n
Where: Chance Theater, Fyda-Mar Stage, 5522 E. La Palma Ave., Anaheim<\/p>\n
Tickets: $48<\/p>\n
Information: 888-455-4212; chancetheater.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a script note for her 2018 play \u201cSanctuary City,\u201d Martyna Majok counsels theater companies on how the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":314132,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,5311,420],"class_list":["post-314131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-theater-arts","tag-things-to-do"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314131\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/314132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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