RSS
Home
Seeking Refuge and Finding Oneself in the Touching "Refugees"
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
Stephanie Satie in "Refugees." Photo by Rick Friesen.
Using her experiences as an English teacher to immigrants, Stephanie Satie has written a moving piece about why an assorted group of adults ended up in Los Angeles. Entitled "Refugees," this one-person one-act piece is performed by Satie under the sensitive direction of Anita Khanzadian at the Fremont Centre Theatre in South Pasadena.
Taking place in the mid-1990s, we have the hesitant Jilla from Iran who always wears sunglasses, the angry, bigoted Boris from Uzbekistan who wants to be in a class with only other Russians, Ninel from Ukraine, Rima from Latvia, Larissa who came from Moscow to be the bride of one man, but ends up living with another, Manushak from Armenia and Farideh from Iran.
There's also an appearance from Jilla's belligerent and abusive husband, Daryush, and Mahmoud, the school's director who is from Iran.
As one would expect, the teacher has a daunting task of explaining America to her students, including the usage of one particular curse word. She also pushes her own beliefs about women and their rights that contrasts greatly with the experiences, both in the home countries and here in the U.S. of her students.
Yet the teacher also has her own baggage: She knows so little about her own past. Both of her parents now dead, she has no one to ask and ends up knowing more about the families of her students than of her own. Her lessons are about the usage of wish and hope and the difference between the two. She begins to wish she knew more about her own past. Yet her students have more to teach her. When she tells Rima, "my mother gave me migraines, fear and shame," Rima asks, "Why are you so ashamed of your mother?"
We all go through phases when we are ashamed of our parents, usually we learn after our teenage years that our parents were right at least some of the time and they were people, individuals like ourselves, and thus imperfect. In this case, the teacher must also deal with her shame about her ethnicity and identity.
Some of the transitions between the characters were muddled, but this is a minor point. This is a moving piece that reminds us why some people came to Los Angeles, and the U.S. and in most cases, how we also ended up in the U.S.
Satie compiled the many stories from her own students over a five-year period. "Refugees" is the first part of the Fremont Centre Theatre's "Stripped Bare" series which is a collection of solo shows billed as: one stage, one actor, one story.
"Refugees," Fremont Centre Theatre, 1000 Fremont Ave. (at El Centro), South Pasadena. Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 3 p.m. $20-$25. Ends April 5.
Other articles by Jana J. Monji:
Frost/Nixon: The Original Watergate Interviews
Related Articles:
Add a Comment
