There and Back at Ground Floor Theatre

World premiere of There and Back, by Austin playwright Raul Garza. This new work opens up dialogue about the current immigration crisis with an eye towards the fraught history between the US Government and Mexicans seeking that “shining city upon a hill.”

Gloria travels from her native Mexico, to join her husband, Victor, on a migrant farmworkers’ camp. Her arrival on the day of President John F. Kennedy’s inauguration reveals stark contrasts between the American dream and her reality. A series of visits by a liberated, contemporary Virgen de Guadalupe offers Gloria a glimpse of her life and legacy in the context of other presidential eras–Reagan and Trump, and presents a life-altering choice: stay in the United States, and accept her status as a member of the underclass, or abandon the agreed-upon plan and her future family to claim dignity and fulfillment. There and Back defines the tipping-point of injustice to immigrants mandated by the Trump presidency and offers a human voice to narrate the long American journey there.