Waiting for Godinez

By the author of Chicano Frankenstein, this is "Waiting for Godot" in a modern retelling with Borderlands immigration and ICE in the mix. Waiting for Godinez has been workshopped in Los Angeles and New York, had a world premiere in Sacramento, California, and is being shopped to Los Angeles, Arizona, and New Mexico stages. Olivas's extraordinary reimagining of a classic play lays bare the destructive and brutalizing effects of the United States' anti-immigration policy on undocumented immigrants and their families. In Waiting for Godinez, the forever-waiting characters of Estragon and Vladimir are embodied in Jesus and Isabel, two Mexican friends living in the States. Each night Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents kidnap Jesus and throw him into a cage intending to deport him. But the agents forget to lock the cage, so Jesus escapes and makes his way back to Isabel as they wait for the mysterious Godinez in a city park. At one point Isabel looks upon her exhausted friend and laments, "What harm have you done to them? You are as much of this country as you are of Mexico. But you are not home in either place. Ni de aqui, ni de alla." Waiting for Godinez humanizes the plight undocumented people face in a country that both needs and disdains them. Through a darkly comic absurdist lens, it implores us to reconsider this country's policies in light of the fact that we are all human and deserve respect and dignity as we each try to make our way in a confusing and often indifferent world.