Young Actors Show Us Real Immigrants in Play “Common Ground” at TADA! Theater

Fourteen New Yorkers between the ages of 11 and 18 took on a topic that often leaves our politicians and journalists disabled and bumbling: immigrants. They took it on all the while entertaining an audience on a dark blue and gray stage with a brick background, in a musical called “Common Ground” by the TADA! Youth Theater.

Director Alex Sanchez says common ground is “a place where people from all over can come together thanks to a subject or activity”, which in this play is a teen-run English language learners group in New York City, attended by four immigrant kids from Colombia, Ivory Coast, and Nepal, and the two American-born that run it. The kids, too energetic for homework, naturally transform the group into an art club, and art is where they find their common ground.

The story follows two of the immigrants, Ysabella (Gabrielys Rosa-Lozada) a Colombian teenager with several hundred Instagram followers working to become an influencer, and her pessimistic but sweet younger brother (Mateo Aponte), as they get rounded up like cows by immigration, separated, and locked into a detention center. It’s the friends they made at the art club, fueled by love (another common ground), that managed to bring the two back to New York. “I’ve never seen an ugly place so pretty.”, one of the show’s songs says about the city.

These kids are playing real, tough, human beings, they are not “wallowing in their sorrow,” as director Sanchez told the actors to avoid; they feel like people you would encounter on the streets of New York, sometimes obnoxious, often friendly. The reason for the characters’ accuracy is that playwright Lisa Diana Shapiro was inspired by real immigrant teenagers that she got to know while teaching at a refugee summer camp in 2017, which is when she pitched the idea for a migrant musical to TADA! Shapiro has written fairy tale and fiction plays, but never one this serious for the free youth theater, that serves kids 8-18 in New York City. Over the years TADA! has taught Jordan Peele and Kerry Washington among others.

“Common Ground” was supposed to be a short piece about refugee kids adapting to New York, until in 2019 as the early process of production began, Shapiro says “family separation was happening, all the tragedy at the border, kids in cages.” and the actors said “How can you do a show about immigrants without talking about those things that are really happening?” Shapiro was recommissioned to write a two act play. She interviewed the immigrant teens she knew, kids who had been in detention centers, to get the story which is now on stage.

Director Sanchez made the kids do research themselves, on their character’s country of origin, mainly by watching interviews with natives, for them to understand their particular lifestyles, struggles and even mannerisms.

One of the actresses, Mia Sevilla (11), says “It helps us connect with the characters to know that they were real.”

The ensemble agrees that every character has a little piece of the person playing it. For example Calvin Lyte Jr. playing an Ivorian boy, was able to understand where his character Abdoulaye was coming from because his family is Guyanese, and Caribbeans and West Africans share a lot of culture. These kids are very different in age and background but the love of acting is their common ground. If it weren’t a school night, it seemed as if they could’ve spoken about their play for the rest of the evening.

They will be performing until May 11th on 15 West 28th Street, the tickets are available on line and at the box office. TADA! is also accepting auditions to become a part of their ensemble.

Noah Augustin is a student at a New York City public high school.