It’s tricky to judge an event like Nation-State: A Live Experiment, the new immersive testimony play now running at Dupont Underground in a production by La Pluma Theatre. Conceived and directed by Gabriel de la Cruz Soler and performed by Victor Salinas and a rotating cast of guest artists, the piece is different every time it’s performed. Each guest artist (presumably) brings their own suitcase of belongings to unpack and story to tell, and each audience has a chance to participate in the action. The only constant is Salinas, alternating between playing himself and playing a caricature of a government officer seeking to devise the smallest country in the world.
What sustains this experiment is the two worlds that de la Cruz Soler and Salinas are trying to hold in tension. In one world is “Officer” Salinas, a one-man state department shouting demands that echo along the long arc of the Underground and playing rigged games with would-be entrants to his new nation. In another, Salinas is himself, engaging in a staged but unrehearsed exchange with the guest artist (Kit Krull on opening night). Intermingled with the guest artist’s testimonial and a few satirical barbs is Salinas’s own testimonial, which takes him from breaking out as a young actor in his native Mexico to constantly “auditioning” for the love of other men to living his dream in DC while missing his beloved mother back home.
To his credit, Salinas stands tall in both roles. For all his bravado, Officer Salinas has an impishness that suggests even he realizes he’s just play-acting at nationhood (then again, isn’t all that pomp and circumstance that accompanies affairs of state a kind of play-acting?). “The passport gives you an opportunity to enter,” he says of the red passports-turned-programs in our hands with a smirk, “but it does not guarantee your entrance.” As himself, Salinas is sensitive to his guest artist and vulnerable with the audience; the ode to his mother, especially, is rich in the way only true love can be.
Through no fault of their own, Krull (and most likely most of the guest artists who come after them) is less adept at shifting from one world to the other. When the spotlight is on them, they are perfectly personable, and the show’s unrehearsed conceit makes for a pleasantly raw encounter. But as soon as Salinas conscripts them into his own story or into a comic bit, that same lack of rehearsal only highlights the awkward dramaturgical shift between the two modes.
Indeed, the show ends up being more of a vehicle for Salinas than anything else, which leaves the possibilities of the work he and de la Cruz Soler created together unfulfilled. To my mind, the tension between achingly personal testimony and the very impersonal nature of nation-making cries out for a starker contrast to drive home how dehumanizing borders can be, especially when those who draw them often have so little interest in the lives lived either side of the line.
Like I said, it’s hard to judge a play that’s new every night, and perhaps what I’m doing now is judging it against what I want it to be rather than what it is. In a way, that’s my right as an audience member in a performance that invites participation: I bring with me my hopes, my expectations, and even my prejudice. Perhaps you should exercise your own right and take de la Cruz Soler and Salinas up on their experiment. That way you can judge for yourself.
Running Time: Approximately 75 minutes, no intermission.
Nation-State: A Live Experiment plays through September 13, 2026, presented by La Pluma Theatre, performing in Dupont Underground, 19 Dupont Circle NW, Washington, DC, where La Pluma is in residence. All seats are general admission, and tickets ($25–$40) may be purchased online.
Nation-State
Written, created, and directed by Gabriel de la Cruz Soler
Developed through collective dramaturgy with Victor Salinas
THE PLAYERS
Victor Salinas and Guest Artists, including:
Kit Krull (9/2)
Gabriel Alejandro (9/3)
Hillary Jones (9/4)
Raghad Makhlouf (9/5)
Catherine Nuñez (9/6)
Luz Nicolas (9/7)
Mari con Carne (9/9)
Erick Acuña (9/10)
Fabiolla da Silva (9/11)
Clara Navarro (9/12)
Petrona Xemi Tapepechul (9/13)
THE CREATIVE TEAM
Assistant Producer: Patricia Meneses
Stage Manager: Jamie Dinorma
Graphic Design: Tony Cavero
Lighting Design: Alana Isaac
Construction: Roberto Cuyutan
