Focus on Theater

Setting the stage for debate on immigration

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To write Barn Razing, the story of four men affected by illegal immigration, playwright Lou Ramirez, 53, took inspiration from his own experiences.

He used episodes from his family life, like when his father, a Puerto Rican named Felipe, was called Phil or when somebody once referred to Mr. Ramirez himself as “some Pancho guy.” Both of these negative experiences ended up as dialogue in his play.

Mr. Ramirez was also inspired by day laborers that looked for work on Long Island and by the anger he said some of his friends felt toward Hispanic immigrants. But what moved him the most, he said, were stories in the newspapers about “white kids who actually kidnapped Latino workers, brought them to a warehouse and then beat them severely.”

Mr. Ramirez’s play, showing through Saturday, Feb. 12 at Lehman College’s Studio Theatre, tells the story of Felipe Quinonez, a Costa Rican immigrant who is kidnapped and taken into a barn on Long Island.

An Italian-American young man and a land developer later join him as prisoners. And while lines like “why don’t you stay in your own country,” leads the audience to believe the kidnappings are racially motivated, it is later revealed that the true reason for the crimes is personal revenge.

Mr. Ramirez, a man of Puerto Rican descent, was raised in the Marble Hill Houses, moved to Long Island and now lives in Kingsbridge. He said he wanted to show the complexity of issues surrounding illegal immigration by creating a plot in which “everyone is innocent and everyone is guilty at the same time.”

Felipe, said Mr. Ramirez, is guilty of entering the country illegally but the land developer is guilty of abusing migrant workers.

When Mr. Ramirez needed a slogan to advertise the play, he used an excerpt from the play that read: “Illegal Aliens in your backyard.” By doing so, he said, he expected to be controversial. “I want to inflame, I want to instigate, I want people who are for the issue and people who are against the issue to come see it.”

Barn Razing, Lou Ramirez, Lehman College’s Studio Theatre
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