In the Summer of 2025 I wrote my first play Sisyphus, which draws deeply from my own lived experience as an immigrant.
Sisyphus follows the story of Alien — a character named after the term that USCIS (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services) uses to label immigrants: “alien” or “resident alien.”
Alien is trying to sort out their immigration status and make sure they can continue living legally in the United States. They are married to an American citizen, and in order to stay here legally they must prove that their marriage is bona fide (real). The entire set is filled with endless paperwork, boxes of documents, and folders stuffed with evidence of their relationship ready to ship to USCIS.
They are caught in a never-ending battle of following USCIS instructions, supplying more and more evidence, and applying for countless green card extensions. Meanwhile, their marriage is falling apart. They are trapped in a Kafkaesque maze of bureaucracy, forced to gather increasingly absurd proof that they and their partner truly love each other, even as they drift farther and farther apart.
This is the Sisyphean task that so many immigrants in the United States are forced to take on — on top of being “perfect” citizens, keeping their relationships intact, and enduring separation from their families, their culture, and their roots back home.
This piece is deeply personal. It’s the first project I’ve worked on that connects directly to my own lived experience, and it meant so much to share it with my community in September 2025 at CoHo Theatre in Portland OR.
Below you can find a link to a short work-in-progress version of Sisyphus