It is striking how few book-length studies there are on the relationship between theatre and undocumented immigration. The act of crossing an international border, particularly for undocumented people, generates a number of high-stakes performances involving interactions with border patrol agents and immigration officials as well as fellow migrants and possibly smugglers—all of which require the construction of specific narratives and embodied performances of identity. Undocumented immigration has long been one of the most divisive topics in the public arena, sparking such nativist legislation as California's Prop 187 (1994) and Arizona's SB 1070 (2010) as well as other forms of control at the federal level such as the Immigration Reform and Control Act (1986) and Barack Obama's recent executive order on immigration (2014). And, as Gad Guterman shows in his compelling book Performance, Identity, and Immigration Law: A Theatre of Undocumentedness, there is no shortage of theatre productions that dramatize undocumented border crossings and their effects on individuals and families. This book seeks to contribute to the void of critical studies on this topic, and it does so with abundance and precision. It is at once encyclopedic in the number of plays it cites—this alone makes it a valuable work of scholarship—and simultaneously nuanced and richly detailed in its analyses of those plays. This is a vital book for anyone interested in the relationships among theatre, American legal history, and immigration.

Guterman examines how undocumented immigrants to the United States have been represented through American theatre in plays produced from the early 1970s to the present day. Each chapter focuses on one of four broad themes: border crossings, labor, family life, and criminalization. While the book mostly considers undocumented immigration from south of the US border, it also provides sustained analyses of theatrical representations of undocumented immigrants from Asia, Africa, and Europe.

Each chapter offers analysis of three plays. The chapter on border crossings, for example, considers Genny Lim's Paper Angels (1980), a play set in 1915 depicting would-be Chinese immigrants as they await entry to the United States from the Angel Island Immigration Station in San Francisco Bay; Culture Clash's Bordertown (1998), an interview-inspired comedy exploring race, class, and immigration in the San Diego–Tijuana area; and Josefina López's Real Women Have Curves (1990) about five women working in an East Los Angeles sewing factory. The chapter on labor and class looks at Milcha Sánchez-Scott's Latina (1980), which dramatizes a day in the life of migrant women working through an employment agency; Lisa Loomer's Living Out (2003) on the relationship between a Salvadoran nanny and her Anglo employer; and Octavio Solis's Lydia (2008), an explosive play about an immigrant family that hires an undocumented worker to assist with the care of their teenage daughter, who has suffered brain damage from a car accident. The chapter on family includes Teatro de la Esperanza's La víctima (1989), a Brechtian-inspired production in which an INS officer is forced to deport his own mother; Janet Noble's Away Alone (1989) about Irish undocumented immigration to New York in the 1980s; and Guillermo Reyes's Deporting the Divas (1996), which explores undocumented queer identity. Finally, the chapter on criminalization examines Michael Garcés's Los Illegals (2007), a dramatization of the tensions among day laborers, protestors, and the management of a Home Depot–like store; Ntare Mwine's Biro (2003), a one-man documentary play based on a relative of the playwright who, as a former Ugandan rebel soldier, came to the United States for HIV treatment; and Yussef El Guindi's Back of the Throat (2005), an interrogation play between government officials and an Arab/Muslim American writer. In the book's final chapter, Guterman moves beyond narrative theatre to consider the everyday performances of Mickey Mouse in Times Square, often enacted by undocumented individuals in costume. The themes of visibility and invisibility—central to the undocumented experience—are made particularly complex here, as the undocumented person is on full display, though in the guise of a Disney character.

The analyses of the plays, while incredibly full in themselves, are framed by significant moments in the history of immigration law, such as California's Prop 187, the Immigration and Nationality Act (1965), the relocation of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (1933–2003) from the Department of Labor to the Department of Homeland Security, the quota laws (1921, 1924), the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), and Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (1996). Additionally, Guterman advances a number of theoretical concepts at the intersection of immigration and performance: the notion of “border scenario” (34), which he uses to describe the interaction between border crosser and border monitor—an interaction that may take place well after the border crosser has entered the host country; “undocumentedface” (68), which refers to documented actors playing undocumented characters; and the construction of nation-state borders as Foucauldian panopticons.

Undocumented individuals, as diverse as they may be from each other, are some of the most universally marginalized people in the United States. Without access to the same legal and human rights protections available to citizens and documented residents, many undocumented people are relegated to civic and legal invisibility. Theatre has the power to make the undocumented experience visible and to counter clichéd or broadly negative portrayals of undocumented migrants, thus, garnering empathy for the sometimes arduous experiences they endure. But there is danger in rendering visibility, even if driven by noble intentions, because theatre may unwittingly reaffirm master narratives of identity that have been used to wound and disempower. Particularly, if these theatre productions are made without the input of undocumented communities, they can misrepresent an already marginalized population. Guterman's book offers one of the finest articulations I have read of theatre's oscillation between its progressive and regressive impulses. Given the importance of undocumentedness as both a performative construct and a lived reality, as well as the sheer number of theatrical productions dramatizing the experiences of the nearly twelve million undocumented people living in the United States, one wishes there were more books like this one.