BRIDGEPORT – Amelia Burgos, a 14-year-old who is Dominican, said she understands what’s at stake for families living under the constant fear of deportation.
As a student performer with the nonprofit Creative Youth Productions, she will bring those real emotions to CYP’s latest production, “Behind Closed Doors,” which was inspired by a real deportation case in Bridgeport some years back. CYP staff have updated the original 2019 show’s story, music and choreography to reflect today’s immigration climate.
“I feel like it’s a very painful subject to talk about just because a lot of us sitting here are minorities,” Burgos said. “We have talked about these subjects before … I remember when I first learned about it, I was scared because I didn’t want to lose any fraction of my family.”
The show will be performed at 1 p.m. on May 20 at Bassick High School and May 27 at Harding High School and at 3 p.m. on May 30 at the United Congregational Church. All of the shows are open to the community.
The May 20 and May 27 performances are free, while the May 30 performance costs $25 for adults and $10 for youths and includes dinner.
“Behind Closed Doors” is an original show about a family threatened with the immediate deportation of their father and their struggle to survive and bring him home, said Donna Sue Deguzman, CYP’s executive director.
LaRay Sheffield-Rice, CYP’s program coordinator, said the issues of the show and those that minorities face is especially prevalent given the number of children being pulled out of school due to fears of ICE or separated from their families.
“My kids are Dominican and Mexican,” Sheffield-Rice said. “So every day, I’m scared when they’re with their other side of the family, anything can happen at any point, and I’m always like, ‘You have to have their birth certificates, you have to have this, you have to have that’ … So every time I send my kids off, that’s what I’m scared of – my kids being taken.”
Deguzman said the original play was based on a true story of a Bridgeport family impacted by deportation but could not disclose the family’s identity.
She said the play was performed at Housatonic Performing Arts Center in 2019 before going on a small tour of the Bridgeport area. When the theater shut down due to COVID, the production was adapted into a three-part episode series on YouTube.
Deguzman said the CYP staff wanted to do “Behind Closed Door” again due to their own experiences in seeing peers being taken off the streets and out of school.
Mariah Cotto, the show’s dance instructor and a former member of the 2019 production, said she suggested they do “Behind Closed Doors” again when the CYP staff met to talk about shows they wanted to present.
“I’ve had friends that have been deported,” Cotto said. “We have so many things going on and I think that’s when everybody was like ‘Bingo.’ … And I think everyone just rolled with it.”
Though he didn’t see the original 2018 script, director Keith Shaw Jr. said he and Josh Deguzman, Donna Sue Deguzman’s son, collaborated to update the script by adding characters from past CYP shows, “making connections we didn’t know were there” and “building upon what we already had.”
“It turned our theme of ‘How does a family feel behind closed doors when a family member is taken away?’ to ‘What actions do they take behind closed doors?’” Shaw said.
Cotto said she believes the new script is stronger and “more realistic” than its original text, adding that as local minorities, “it’s easier for us to create that home in that story.”
Yet there were some concerns about presenting the new play in Bridgeport, including whether the schools would want it and whether they could say the word “ICE.”
“My biggest fear is no matter how loud our voices are, we still can’t be heard,” Sheffield-Rice said. “When it’s from the mouths of babes, people will want to hear it. You need to hear it from these kids what it really looks like, get people inspired and figure out ways to make actual change.”
Deguzman said CYP held a preview showcase featuring four scenes and two songs from the new play in February to get the community’s feedback.
“At the end, people were crying and so moved, and that’s when they said, ‘We need to do a community show,’” she said.
Deguzman said state Sen. Sujata Gladkar-Wilcox, D-Trumbull, also requested a performance of “Behind Closed Doors” with a community discussion on July 18 at the Bridgeport Islamic Community Center.
“I am proud of our brave youth for using the performing arts to show how tragic and emotionally devastating it is to lose a parent to immigration and deportation,” Deguzman said. “Since the first day of rehearsals, I am moved by their tenacity to find a way and never giving up.”
At a recent rehearsal, Burgos ran through her monologue as the daughter of the seized father, shifting the tone of the scene from upbeat to solemn and bringing the audience back to the reality of the narrative they were portraying on stage.
In her role as the daughter, Amelia said she feels “a lot of mixed anger and sadness” given the current social climate, but she’s looking forward to bringing the topic to light.
Meanwhile, Lattrell Smith, a CYP staff member who described himself as half Hispanic, said he is playing three roles in the play, including the role of the ICE agent.
“It’s very interesting to play this character and represent something you don’t like at all because this character brings a lot of aggression to these people,” he said. “The other side of this is I’ve also enjoyed this role because I’ve only played light roles, but the ICE agent itself is very tough to play because you have to come from a standpoint you don’t believe in.”
As the father, Shaw said he feels the character’s helplessness and “the fact that if I try to be good in the world, I can be taken, even if I’ve done nothing wrong.”
“What I want people to come away with is not to feel the helplessness that everyone feels but redirect your anger into a different form,” Shaw Jr. said. “If we can come together and make our voices heard, then we can make a difference.
Tickets for the May 30 show can be purchased through the CYP website. Tickets for May 20 and May 27 can arranged by calling LaRay Sheffield-Rice at 203-290-7206.
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