From left, Melanie Wehrmacher, Yolanda Cotterall, Mahmoud Hakima. / Photo by Kate Elise

by JOHN TOWNSEND

Call Dominic Orlando's plays polemical, but his sharp insights into authoritarianism are significant. Two of his one-acts crackle in Series B of Teatro del Pueblo's 9th Annual Political Theatre Festival, dubbed Across the Divide, at St. Paul's Gremlin Theatre.

In "Embassy of the Americas," directed by Matt Sciple, a Latino (Carlos Vargas) seeking an entrance visa at a U.S. Embassy is thwarted by an American immigration official (Tina Fredrickson). Shaming him for his clothing and exploiting her superior English, she falsely accuses him of violence. But in fact, it's she who indulges her sadistic tendency.

Fredrickson electrifies as the face of government-sanctioned humiliation. Vargas is poignant as a decent man degraded by forces more bent on obliterating personality than enacting fair policy. A marvelous stage metaphor has a custodian (Paulino Brener) build a wall around the visa-seeker as he tries to speak his case.

Brian Balcom has directed riveting performances in Orlando's "The Free Market." Wade A. Vaughn plays a suburbanite visited in his front yard late one night by an undocumented worker (Laura Garcia) with whom he shares sexual secrets.

In" Sarita, The Frowning Immigrant," a disjointed comedy by Guillermo Reyes, meant to counterbalance Orlando's heaviness, director Harry Waters Jr. gets delightful portrayals from Ernest Briggs as a computer nerd and Carra Martinez as a woman with body image issues.

Teatro Del Pueblo's Ninth Annual Political Theatre Festival: Across the Divide
Series A through Mar. 7. Series B through Mar.6 at Gremlin Theatre, 2400 University Ave., St. Paul.
Series C in conjunction with Pangea World Theatre, Mar 11, 12, 13 at Intermedia Arts, 2822 Lyndale Ave. So., Minneapolis.
Various dates and times.
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