Ground

by Lisa Dillman

3 male, 3 female Simple Set Zelda Preston inherits her father's pecan farm located just steps from the U.S. border with Mexico and struggles to maintain it without help from undocumented workers. Ines Sandoval, a dangerously ill young mother-to-be, and her sister Angie lobby for the return of their recently deported family member Tia Rosita. Angie's husband, Carlos, defends to his community and family his choice to work for the Border Patrol. And Cooper Daniels, an industrial pecan grower and head of the civilian border surveillance group, Citizens United, forges ahead with the building of a volunteer fence. These forces collide in Ground , which examines the very human costs of our immigration issues, and the strength of personal beliefs about family, home, and civil human rights in the face of our shifting political and social landscape. Two acts."Breathtaking in every way." -- Charles Whaley, TotalTheater.com "...Tackles the hot-button issue of illegal immigration." -- David Shreward, Back Stage

Genres: Plays, Theatre

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1964

About the author

Lisa Dillman has translated a number of Spanish and Latin American writers. Some of her recent translations include Rain Over Madrid, Such Small Hands and The Right Intention by Andrés Barba and Yuri Herrera’s three novels. She won the 2016 Best Translated Book Award for Herrera’s Signs Preceding the End of the World. She teaches in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.

Reviews

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nobel prize winner Luigi Pirandello is an incredibly modernist playwright, and this collection is an interesting collection of his work. All one act plays, they in general focus on the paradox of man and his existence, and his inescapable destruction. Pirandello is also frequently concerned with morality, and the question of whether there is an a priori morality or whether the question of good and evil depends on perspective. The plays themselves are incredibly well written and entertaining, but somehow feel incomplete to me. They do not, at first, feel resolved, but rather scenes within a larger play that is left unwritten. This may have been Pirandello’s intent. One line from “The License”, purely Pirandello, rings as great summary of the collection: “Because evil, my dear child, can be done to anyone and by everyone, but good can only be done to those who need it.”

[Ryan Mishap · Rating 2 out of 5]

Recommended by a fellow student--who desired to be a playwright--on the assumption that I would enjoy them. Lucky me, I found this at the local used bookstore the very same week. Isn't it weird how stuff like that happens? Like when you hear a word for the very first time--say, jocular--and then you start seeing it everywhere? "davis, a jocual man in his forties..." says the NPR reporter. "School sports are Jockular." goes the ehadline. Okay, I made those up, but do you know what I mean?
At any rate, there's a couple good plays in this book.