Up Next, IFOYE Festival

I am participating in the In Front of Your Eyes (IFYOE) Festival in August.

I'm returning to The Marsh this summer for the second IFOYE Festival, and I am eager to share what I've been working on.

Two years ago, I was part of the Festival's inaugural showing as an Opening Act, presenting a fifteen-minute excerpt of Class Migrant: de Aquí y de Allá, a one-person show that I was developing at the time. That work is currently on hold, and this year, I'm back — with an excerpt of the new work that's been the focus of my attention for the past year: The ICEmen Cometh.

It will be the fifteen-minute Opening Act for headliner Yvonne Martínez, who will perform her one-woman show, Someday, Mija, You'll Know the Difference Between a Whore and a Working Woman. I love the title. I'm genuinely excited about this pairing. I know that our material will complement each other in ways that resonate deeply with the audience — two stories, told back-to-back, that both push against what we're told about who we're allowed to be.

I'm looking forward to meeting Yvonne for the first time later this week. Here is a piece she wrote about her experiences with sexual harassment within the labor movement, inspired to write it by the painful and heartbreaking revelations of Cesar Chavez' abuse and rape of women and girls in the farmworker rights movement.

IFOYE describes itself as a festival of new performance featuring 36 new works by women and nonbinary creators, including 18 full-length shows. It's a rare, generous platform, and I'm grateful to participate again this go-round.

The details: The festival runs across two cities and two weekends:

• San Francisco: August 12–16, 2026

• Berkeley: August 19–23 & August 27–30, 2026
  

And these shows will be livestreamed, so no matter where you live, you can watch the performances. Yvonne and I are performing on Saturday, August 29th at 5:30 pm and Sunday, August 30th at 1 pm. These are in the Pacific Time Zone.

I started writing The ICEmen Cometh last year, in response to the brutal tactics of ICE and the outright cruelty of the Trump administration toward immigrant communities across this country. Like much of my work, this play returns to a question I can't stop asking: who gets to belong in the United States? What message does a country send about who is welcome? The shifts in public discourse should alarm all of us, as white ethno-nationalism goes from being discounted as fringe elements to openly promoted at the highest levels of government.

We've watched entire communities — Haitians, Syrians, Venezuelans, Mexicans — branded as subhuman. And that branding doesn't stop at the border of documentation status. It attaches to us regardless of our citizenship. If you're from one of these communities, you can find yourself on the receiving end of prejudice and hatred. In a social media post, I was recently called an America-hater and told I should go back to Mexico. That my family has been here for generations is irrelevant to many. To some, my very physical appearance tells them that I don't belong, that I can't possibly be a real American. I write and talk about all this in the hope that more people understand what is at stake for our nation.

So please, join me. Come catch a show. Be part of the conversation and the resistance. We — the people — still have the power to change the world. Secure your tickets at the link below! https://themarsh.org/in-front-of-your-eyes-2026/yvonne-martinez/