Sanctuary City;
a love letter to immigrants dreaming
Sanctuary City, by Martyna Majok, is a love letter to all the immigrants everywhere stuck in impossible situations. However, rather than describing the immigrant experience, she allows the audience to peer behind these characters' closed doors. Taking place in Newark, New Jersey, Sanctuary City, follows the story of B and G experiencing life as young adolescents. These experiences project into how people care about one another and how that same care also strains those bonds. Martyna sculpts a play utilizing the innocence of B and G discovering themselves in high school, simply trying to find sanctuary in a world that does not want to see them thrive.
Character G initiates the play by climbing the fire escape outside B's apartment, seeking sanctuary from the world outside B's window. When the play begins, we find B living in the Ironbound regions of New Jersey as a sixteen-year-old. Martyna never encloses each character's race or country of origin. Not disclosing the races permits a universal narrative for many races encountering the same fate. However, we know B arrived in the United States with his mother on a visa and overstayed his visa, now living in fear of being undocumented and forced to work under-the-table jobs. B's home life may not be picture-perfect, but they're much safer than G's. Like B, G and their mother live undocumented. G's mother's abusive partner financially supports them. Through conversations, it's clear the boyfriend often beats both G and the mother. This abuse goes unreported out of fear of deportation, so instead, G seeks shelter in her friendship with B.
The fun thing about the first half of the play, much like other plays of Martyna's, is the unsophistication of the characters attempting to navigate life as teenagers. These bleed between beautiful vignettes of poetic dialogue, fantasizing about their futures and the world caught in subtle glimpses of love. Because it's not a didactic play trying to lecture on politics, we watch these two hormonal teenagers uncovering what they want out of life. She tackles this idea behind immigration and who's allowed to dream. Especially in this period, after September 11th, when suddenly all immigrants were being watched under a microscope, documented or not. These two people being self-aware yet dreamers in how they communicate with one another lure you in.
But what each character wants was the question I found myself straining to answer. The repeating action in the play becomes the knock at the window, followed by an excuse G uses to miss school and hide the bruises from the abuse. Within this action, we subtly break into smaller sections that pan back and forth to build the characters' backgrounds. Within that, we learn B's mom plans on returning to her place of origin. B faces the dilemma of accompanying her and leaving behind Newark or staying to endeavor a life of underpaying jobs and hiding. Again, Martyna intelligently captures the naïveté of these kids. G suggested they could rent out the mother's room for extra cash; staying could also mean potentially going to college. Easier said than done; we know as adults. But each idea glimmers with promise and possibility.
The action gets faster and faster, symbolizing how much time passes within the number of excuses, equating to the amount of trust. Until one day, Martyna breaks the pattern. G arrives glowing with some news. Secretly, G's mother had been earning her citizenship and planning to leave her abuser. So, by age default, G gets granted citizenship as well. But, again, Martyna uses the naive imagination of teenagers. Suddenly the success of G becomes the answer to B's problem. If they get married, G can bestow B citizenship in the hope they repay B for the sanctuary.
The whimsical part of their youth becomes shaded by their new commitment. Hence, the repetition of questions and answers they repeat, knowing immigration, will test them. Between these recurrences are intervals of laughing, dancing, birthdays, and chicken parm. Finally, Martyna offers us the ultimate solace when prom approaches. Although nonconforming to all the stereotypical high school norms, B excitedly convinces G to join him. While this short bit may be the comedic relief of the play, what became clear to me finally were the wants. Both characters were in this difficult situation, dealing with the outside world's confinements, desperately wanting to belong, not in high school primarily, but to the world.
Let's face it, G's problems were not magically solved when she acquired lawful status. The trauma of being undocumented does not just go away. The fear is instilled in you, and the want was never legal citizenship; it was to alleviate that fear. They became each other's family, reliant upon each other's survival to feed their own. Martyna captures the beauty in constant instability from the rest of the world. She builds on this idea in the second half of the play. But, unfortunately, even now that G is a legal citizen with a lawful place of residency, it still does not fix those internalized fears. So, while I will not get into the details of the second act, the overarching theme was the multigenerational trauma of all immigrant families.
All the principles of Sanctuary City are rooted in family separation, and what better way to capture that than by separating the only family we have come to know? B and G found a sanctuary within each other, but their fears stop them from obtaining their wants. They aren't just seeking basic human life; they're craving freedom from the mental and emotional prison immigration keeps them in. Martyna captures the cycles of hope and hopelessness we go through in life. But especially the humanity and profound nature of simply wanting to belong.
