Playwright Andrea Thome writes in her statement that she “didn’t write this play alone,” but with help from people she interviewed, “the voices of my own migrant parents…relatives forced into exile…the voices of my collaborators sharing their own immigrant stories.” What she’s made with all that material is more painting than play, more portrait than story — a portrait that seeks to capture the interior life of the migrant through a smattering of exterior details.

The setting is the preparation for a dance party at a Chula Vista church, a sanctuary space where La Migra cannot collect you —provided you make it inside. The attendees are mostly young folks — definitely no old-timers or children —young folks of a remarkably poetic bent. Our first speaker has just gotten off the train, on which “the noise swallows you,” a noise in which “you hear the whole world, the heartbeat of the people, the pulse of your own blood.” (Then he notes that he’s speaking Spanish, and if you look at the subtitles on the screen, you see he’s right.) Later, the migrant experience is compared to that of the caterpillar —“losing who you are, not knowing what you’ll become” —and the spider, who sends out a thread and has faith that she will not fall, especially if her thread finds those of others.

There is some immigrant-related drama: one fellow is looking for love even though he has a family back home, and also wondering if he could have done more for his daughter by staying. Another is anxious for the arrival of his recently arrived cousin. Another admires her father the cop, an attitude that causes some concern. But a lot of the time, they sound like kids who have moved to the big city to get away from home: a little bit homesick, but mostly chasing opportunity: to work, go to school, love who they want, live how they want, and make something of themselves.