Native Gardens premiered last night at FUSION (700 First St. NW) and the play cooked up a lot of laughter from audiences. Director Laurie Thomas said crowds really connected with the piece, perhaps because it provided relief from the collective “gut punch” the country seems to get every day lately. With Native Gardens, award-winning playwright Karen Zacarias has created a microcosm of metropolitan life where invisible borders and a physical wall between neighbors become symbols of immigration, assimilation, prejudice and finally, inclusion. If you’re tough enough to take a breath of fresh air during this allergy season, or if you’re allergic to all the fighting and division you see in the world every time you glance at your device, laugh till you’re dizzy Thursdays through Sundays from tonight, March 28 until April 6.
“[Zacarias] is holding up a mirror to human nature and showing us where we fall and where we rise as people living in this country, which is both inspiring and thought-provoking,” Thomas says. “It makes you reflect, but it doesn’t make you panic.”
Ashley Deleona cracks up crowds at FUSION as Tania, a woman from a working-class family in Albuquerque who’s been given quite a change of scenery by moving to the big city. Daniel Zuniga plays her entitled husband Pablo, an up-and-coming lawyer who originally traveled to the U.S. from Chile to attend an elite boarding school. They have just purchased a home next to Frank (William R. Stafford) and Virginia (Wendy Scott), a conservative, well-established D.C. couple who might care just a tad too much about their beloved English Garden. At the same time, the older couple are grappling with progressive thinking and coming to terms with their gay son’s sexuality. A dispute over a fence line turns ugly, socioeconomic differences boil into an all-out turf war, and a special guest appears to instigate communication between the pairs.
Thomas says Zacarias creates worlds within worlds through these two feuding couples from very different backgrounds who hold “biases on both sides of the fence” — all puns intended. But Zacarias’ worlds contain hope for the characters who live in them. And watching them struggle is hilarious.
“She does it in a gentle way — and I don’t mean to diminish the power of the ideas that she’s dealing with — but she’s dealing with it in a way where we can breathe with it, we can laugh with it, we can see our own frailties within it,” Thomas says.
Karen Zacarias pens plays that rack up awards and sell out venues across the country. Her comedy The Book Club Play, the drama Just Like Us (which was adapted from the book by Helen Thorpe), Legacy of Light (which won a Steinberg Award), Francesca Primus Award-winner Mariela in the Desert and the Helen Hayes Award-winning play The Sins of Sor Juana are just a few names and accolades in her large body of work. Her musical Chasing George Washington premiered at The Kennedy Center for Performing Arts and was adapted into a book with a foreword by First Lady Michelle Obama.
“When we can’t share in the human experience everything goes to hell in a handbasket,” Thomas says. “But when we can come together in a common understanding of what makes us tick, those borders, those fences, and the need to insulate and isolate breaks down.”
You can grab tickets to Native Gardens or two-show EZ passes which include tickets to FUSION’s 19th Annual Short Works Fest The Seven here.
Native Gardens
March 28 – April 6
FUSION | The Cell
700 First St. NW
$40 general admission, $35 for seniors, $20 for students
$75 Two-show EZ Pass