“Refuge” a gripping border story at Curious Theatre Company
In “Refuge,” the haunting and grounded new play at Curious Theatre Company, someone we care about will die. That is not a spoiler so much as an acknowledgment that the territory on which the work unfolds can be unforgiving and hungry.
Set in the fictional border town of Desolation, Texas, “Refuge” tells the story of the wary meeting of a Honduran migrant trying to get to her mother in the United States and the rancher whose land she wanders onto. With the evocative music of Mari Meza-burgos, beguiling animal puppets and some poignant-prickly performances, “Refuge” carves out a space to feel anew the aches and challenges of characters whose faceoffs have become the stuff of politics and policymaking.
The play began its sojourn in earnest back in 2018 when Curious commissioned playwright Andre Rosendorf. In 2019, an early draft was workshopped at the annual Colorado New Play Festival in Steamboat Springs. At the time, the nascent work was still finding its shape as it wrestled with immigration along the U.s-mexico border.
Now, on the first stop of its rolling world premiere, “Refuge” arrives billed as the co-creation of Rosendorf and Satya Jnani Chávez. It is a beguiling communal endeavor that embraces the woes and wounds of all the creatures it places onstage — be they wolf or dog, kangaroo rat or rattler, Rancher or Girl, those living, those dying, those dead.
A migrant is drinking brackish water at a cattle trough when Rancher (Erik Sandvold) comes upon her, shotgun at the ready. A pregnant border patrol agent tracking the migrant Girl (played by Chávez) finds the decomposing bodies of a woman and her infant. The Wolf (Sam Gilstrap, in a dual role) had already begun the work of sating his hunger.
Loss abounds here. In addition to this sad mother-and-child discovery, there is another discovery of a different, tragic end: Steph, a dog puppet (Lisa Hori-garcia) finds a toppled