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Jorge Huerta: Let's start out with a brief plot outline for the reader. Tiffany, how would you describe what this play was about?
Tiffany Ana López: Lopez's play is about two people detained in the desert, how they got there, and the impact the experience has on their thinking about immigration and the role they play in the political landscape.
While Sandi and her Canadian boyfriend Matt drive across the country, they are stopped in Arizona by a police officer that because of their immediate proximity to the U.S.-Mexico border, suspects Sandi is paying with sexual services for transport across the border. Outraged at being profiled, Sandi refuses to provide documentation and is consequently sent to a detention facility to await deportation. Meanwhile, Lou Becker, a shock-jock radio host, is kidnapped by a group of Chicano siblings out to avenge their brother's murder by a group of white teenagers on a rampage against immigrants. After he is beaten and brownbasted with bar-b-que sauce, Becker flees into the desert. When her assigned bus to Nogales mysteriously crashes, Sandi also escapes into the desert. They cross paths and must help one another survive. After they encounter a dead body and agree to return the remains to the man's family, border activist Ernesto Martinez finds Sandi and Becker as he makes his daily rounds leaving water. Becker and Sandi return to their lives changed in significant ways.
JH: Carlos, what do you think of the play's structure?
Carlos Morton: I think this is one of Josefina' s best plays in years, getting away from a singular focus on comedie style as represented by, for example, the Pinche Mentirosa Sisters (PMS.) show. It's certainly one of her more passionate plays.
TAL: I agree, however I think Lopez's comedie performance work is also passionate and political. Detained in the Desert shows the evolution of her playwriting towards work that is both politically driven and aesthetically rich. López refuses to subsume one aspect of the work under another. It's a huge contribution to the tradition of Chicana/o teatro and feminist theater as well as contemporary American drama.
JH: What did either of you find most socially timely or critically urgent about this work?
TAL: This play clearly speaks to the tradition...