“We have people coming into the country, or trying to come in … you wouldn’t believe how bad these people are,” ranted Donald Trump in his anti-immigrant fever in 2018. “These aren’t people. These are animals.” Those hate-fueled words are heard in a newscast early in The Lady Bird of Saint John, a tender and tragic drama about two sisters, both born and raised in Mexico, who now seek a life in the U.S. They are bonded by blood but torn asunder by immigration policies: One of them, Verónica, the elder, has come here, as she says, “the right way”— student visa on scholarship, then a good job and a work visa, all in hopes of a green card — and the other, Rosa, was brought here undocumented by a shady smuggler, “a coyote.”
Rosa (played solidly and groundedly by Ixchel) has come from Houston to Chicago to visit Verónica (played loftily and preemptively by Cristina Sánchez) in her high-rise apartment. At the top of the show, the two sisters are seated impassively on a sofa, and downstage there are two puzzling pairs of shoes, which turn out to be Verónica’s stylish heels and Rosa’s scuffed boots. Sánchez and Ixchel put on their respective footwear and get into character. What follows unfolds emotionally from contentious to sentimental to all-out gut-wrenching.
Co-authored by Victor Salinas and Sergio Guezzi and directed with exceeding sensitivity by Salinas, The Lady Bird of Saint John (onstage only through Sunday in Dupont Underground) is a touching and timely play whose dramaturgical context is federal headlines but whose heart is pure dramatist’s art.
We learn details of Rosa and Verónica’s lives back in Mexico with intensifying attention. Verónica was the praised firstborn, counted on to succeed and support the family; Rosa, “an accident,” was, by contrast, basically ignored. Their mother is now in poor health, living with Verónica’s daughter, Natalia, whose father was, in Verónica’s words, “a piece of shit” and has custody. Verónica sends money home in support of both mother and daughter and wants to put mom in a home and bring Natalia to live with her in the States — a near insurmountable challenge given the risk that the girl would be caged. Back when Rosa and Verónica’s beloved grandmother died, Verónica dared not attend the funeral for fear of being deported. At every turn, Rosa and Verónica are torn by the consequences of gringo supremacy, and the sorrow in their story is deeply affecting.
Ixchel’s performance in particular is mesmerizing, her face a seeming map of all the play’s interior pain.
The title The Lady Bird of Saint John comes from a childhood memory Verónica and Rosa share about a visit to Saint John’s Market, where atop a church steeple sits a statue of a bird holding a golden egg that could drop at any moment, bringing sudden wealth to those in watch. Verónica remembers the mythic scene fondly. Rosa, however, was traumatized by it; she remembers only fearing abandonment. The evocative vignette functions in the play as a powerful image of a sisterhood tragically shattered by unjust disparate circumstances.
The acclaimed acoustics of Dupont Underground serve the performance well, and the audience’s seating on three sides of the stage lends a specific intimacy to what feels so personally real. Lighting by Alana Isaac shifts moods subtly from warm to cool, and David Cave’s newscast voiceover delivers the chilling anti-immigrant soundbite — the bigotry and brutality in which have only burgeoned since.
One need not look far to find wrenching human-interest narratives about family-separation fallout from Trump’s immigration reign of terror; the stories are everywhere. But I doubt you will find one as beautifully and lovingly told as the one La Pluma Theatre now offers.
Running Time: Approximately 50 minutes with no intermission.
The Lady Bird of Saint John plays through April 12, 2026, presented by La Pluma Theatre, performing in Dupont Underground, 19 Dupont Circle NW, Washington, DC, where La Pluma is in residence. Tickets ($50 plus fee) are available online.
The Lady Bird of Saint John is performed in English with occasional lines in Spanish.
The Lady Bird of Saint John (La Pájara de San Juan)
By Víctor Salinas and Sergio Guezzi
Directed by Víctor Salinas
Cast: Cristina Sánchez (Verónica) & Ixchel (Rosa)
Creative Director & Producer: Gabriel de la Cruz Soler
Lightning Designer: Alana Isaac
Graphic Designer: Isabel Canino
Build Crew: Alex Maradiaga
Voiceover: David Cave
Audience Engagement: Diana Jiménez Trejo
Graphic Designer: Isabel Canino
