Juan José Alfonso

Two professional football players compete for a place on the starting lineup. One is tall, handsome, young, and born to do this job. The other, a slightly overweight Mexican man, speaks in broken English and doesn't quite understand the game, but possesses almost supernatural abilities. At the pinnacle of American sports, these two find themselves at the bottom of the heap— they are the kickers.

After a long work day in midtown Manhattan, an African-American man steps into an Uber car service.  He’s an investment banker for Goldman Sachs, at the top of his game, on the verge of closing the biggest deal of his life.  It all takes a sharp turn as he gets deeper into conversation with the car driver.  Turns out she’s far more interesting than the usual person who takes you from point A to point B.  She is from South America. She studied in Chicago, just like he did. She has a doctorate in economics. She used to be someone important. Upper management.  “Were you the president of a company?” he asks her. “No. I was the president of Ecuador.”
 
Middle of The World centers around the relationship between Glenn and Victoria. He is a man who grew up in the projects and now has everything he ever wanted. Yet somehow, he feels deeply unfulfilled. Conversely, Victoria was the leader of a nation, democratically elected as the one who would turn the country around. She now lives exiled in disgrace, with her assets frozen, her family estranged and her pride preventing her from moving on.
 
In flashbacks interspersed throughout the play, we visit the presidential palace in Quito, where we will get to know how Victoria was forced out of power and expelled from her own country.  In present day, we will witness her unwavering determination to clear her name and return home.  Through the two protagonists, we delve into conversations about social injustice, personal sacrifice and an unfettered love for country that supersedes morality. 
 

Developed over ten years and first read in 2018 at Steppenwolf's 1600 Theater in Chicago, AN EDUCATED GUESS tells a comprehensive story of immigration from a seldom-heard point of view:  the bureaucrat.
        
Picture a mid-level government worker — a person deeply entrenched in a mundane bureaucracy.  This person, instead of handing out driver licenses or building permits, has the God-like power to drastically and irrevocably change the direction of people’s lives.
        
This is exactly what you find every day, at dozens of federal immigration offices across this country.  People from every nationality sit in front of case officers conducting the final interview before getting a green card. One person passes scrutiny and receives permission to stay.  The next one doesn’t fill out the paperwork correctly; or doesn’t fulfill a certain requirement; or comes from a country that's on the outs with the current administration.  For that person, it’s back to the place they came from.
        
When the play opens, it’s been four years since the September 11th attacks on New York City, but the wounds are far from healed.  The country is divided straight down the middle.  Half liberal, half conservative.  Half for the war in Iraq, half against.  Half pro-immigration, half anti.
        
In the middle of this polarity, Alba Guerrero works as an associate director at the office of Immigration and Naturalization in Manhattan.  An immigrant herself, she arrived from the Dominican Republic as a child with her family.  Alba is a quick study of people, beloved by her employees and a leading candidate to become the new district director.  Her strong personality and decisive nature stand out in the sea of blandness and insecurity in this quintessential government office.
        
We find Alba starting a typical day, with her irascible co-workers buzzing about impending legislative changes.  As the day progresses, Alba begins to suspect that a case she handled years ago has gone terribly wrong. After digging around, she discovers a file that confirms her worst fear: an immigrant she admitted into the country has committed an atrocious act of mass murder.
 
Alba’s personal and professional life begins to quickly unravel and we explore themes of identity, forgiveness and fallibility of our government systems.  At the core of the rigid bureaucratic structure is the soft underbelly of human error and arbitrary decision making. 
        
Interspersed through the play are eight short monologues from immigrants telling their own stories about making a new home in this country.  Among them, a Ghanan woman, who feels nervous every time she passes the immigration line at the airport, even though she’s never committed a crime in her life.  A Korean man, who after living 21 years in bureaucratic transit, still doesn’t have his citizenship.  A rich Australian banker, who can’t figure out the mind-boggling INS paperwork.  And a Brazilian dog-walker, who genuinely, and perhaps naively, still sees this as the land of opportunity. 
        
This is a story about the inflexibility of bureaucracy, about the nature of self-doubt and the power of human interaction.  It centers around the notion of how person’s entire life can hinge on someone else’s judgment —an educated guess, based on a few pages of paperwork and a ten minute interview.