Ofrenda Play Summary

On May 2nd, I attended the theater performance entitled Ofrenda. It was presented by Albany Park Theater Project, a multiethnic youth theater located in the neighborhood of Albany Park. The play featured 33 young performers, whose ages ranged from 13 to 18 years old. The actors are second-generation immigrants from families that have come from all over the world, including the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Latin America. They dramatized a collection of stories that revolved around the theme of home and its meaning in the midst of political, social, and personal commotions. The play was presented in a small trust stage, which created a type of intimacy between the performers and the audience.
The play started with the actors showing the audience
Family and coming of age are the themes of the story of the Ecuadorian girl. Besides struggling to call the man she met in Chicago her father and to decide which country was her real home, the story is narrated with several actresses who represent different stages of her life. Whereas as child she was extremely excited to meet her father in Chicago, as she starts to get old she realizes that having the same blood is not enough to feel close to a family member. As a child she also thought that home was being close to family, but her older version reconsiders the meaning of home as the place where she has spent most of her life. The themes for the story of the Syrian girl are violence, love, and coming of age. In the midst of bombs falling in the city, after her safe arrival to Chicago she accomplished that she had “killed the girls she was.” At this point she’s shown to be mature enough to not even want to celebrate her upcoming birthday, since there are still so many families and children who are dying in the Middle East and will not get to celebrate their birthdays. For the story of the Filipina girl, hatred is the main theme because of the hateful rejection of her trans brother, which ended up in a tragedy. The stories of the student from the University of Chicago and the activist group relate to the theme of courage and justice because of their advocacy for undocumented residents and the importance of keeping hard-working families together in the