The Courtroom details a hot-button immigration case (photo by Maria Baranova)
The Great Hall at the Cooper Union
7 East Seventh St.
Monday, December 9, free with advance RSVP, 7:00
waterwell.org
cooper.edu
In 2006, Filipino immigrant Elizabeth Keathley, whose husband is an American citizen, voted in Indiana elections. The next year, after a government official learned at a citizenship interview that she had done so despite not being a citizen herself, the Department of Homeland Security demanded her deportation. Her breakthrough legal case is dramatized in Waterwell founder Arian Moayed’s The Courtroom: A Re-enactment of Deportation Proceedings, a traveling free show that comes to the Great Hall at the Cooper Union on December 9. The stellar cast features five-time Obie winner and Tony nominee Kathleen Chalfant (Wit, Angels in America), two-time Obie winner J. Smith-Cameron (As Bees in Honey Drown, Succession), Happy Anderson, Hanna Cheek, Michael Bryan French, Mick Hilgers, Linda Powell, Jason Ralph, and Kristin Villanueva. All of the dialogue is taken verbatim from court transcripts; the ninety-minute play is directed by Waterwell artistic director Lee Sunday Evans (Dance Nation, Intractable Woman). Admission is free with advance RSVP, but it is strongly encouraged that you arrive early to grab a seat, as the civic-minded, socially conscious Waterwell (The Flores Exhibits, Fleet Week Follies) generally overbooks to make sure the house is full.