“Mother of Exiles”: A Melting Pot Imperiled—at Berkeley Rep
Michele Selene Ang. Photos by Kevin Berne
Jessica Huang Foresees Cruel Comforts & Climate Catastrophe
by Mary Lou Herlihy
“Mother of Exiles” by Jessica Huang reveals cruelties that our modern life delivers. Abuse of immigrants and neglect of environmental perils accumulate in her sweeping epic—until catastrophe becomes reality.
Urgent issues resonate: How will Trump’s brutal immigration actions plague future generations? How do environmental policies crafted by oil companies and climate change deniers imperil our future?
Huang explores these urgent questions by going back in time and moving forward generations into the future. Over a sweeping 165 years, we meet descendants of an immigrant farmer and an Angel Island detainee.
Ricardo Vázquez and Michele Selene Ang
Projected titles announce the three distinct movements of Huang’s play:
1898 Angel Island: where we meet Eddie Loi (powerful Michele Selene Ang), a Chinese woman facing imminent deportation, even as she is about to give birth.
1999 Miami Port: where we meet Eddie’s great grandson, Braulio (Ricardo Vásquez), a Border Patrol agent, comically searching for his life’s purpose.
2063 At Sea: on a boat in the future, we meet Braulio and Claudio’s daughter Karina (Monica Orozco) fleeing from a drowned Miami. She’s a grandmother looking for land and begging for help from the “authorities” at sea.
Biblical storms, created with stunning projections and thunderous claps, suggest the passage of time, generational change, and impending climate disaster.
Camila Moreno and Michele Selene Ang
The most compelling story begins the play, with Eddie Loi disguised as a man. In flashbacks from stark quarters on Angel Island, she falls in love with a Hispanic farmworker named Modesto who impregnates her. Against all odds, a shining plum sprouts from a tree and life begins again.
Eddie tries to conceal her pregnancy. The hostile guard (David Mason) insists she swap her mannish Chinese garb for a dress. She gets help from a Spanish-speaking cook (passionate Camila Moreno) who takes pity. In Eddie’s harrowing childbirth scene, we feel her physical and emotional pain. We detest the missionary (Emma Kikue) who ‘reassures’ Eddie that fifty per cent of babies in her orphanage will survive!
Generations of characters make heroic choices that result in a baby’s survival—a future guaranteed. Through the three stories, we struggle to connect the dots linking Chinese, Hispanic, and other unknown ethnicities back to Eddie Loi.
Ancestors serve as guardians and guards. In corporeal and projected form, we hear and see their talking heads and figures. Bathed in lush watery blues and greens, the stark stage often feels like an underwater prison. Ancestors watch from above, waiting for their progeny to remember lessons taught but forgotten.
(front) Monica Orozco, David Mason, and Emma Kikue (back) Ricardo Vázquez and Michele Selene Ang
Braulio, Eddie Loi’s great-grandson, a Border Guard in Miami, cannot figure out what he did to summon Eddie, who appears on the catwalk above. Braulio looks for meaning in his Border Patrol job, while his feckless, cartoonish coworkers lack his imagination and courage.
In Huang’s vision, courage, compassion, and perseverance connect generation after generation. But what will happen to these forsaken environmental refugees, and are we destined to become them?
Huang’s drama and prophecy, sprinkled with oddly comedic moments, form a grand multi-generational melting pot of American exiles. I am still figuring it out—puzzled by some choices, struck by moments of poetic beauty, and pondering questions of survival.
“Mother of Exiles” by Jessica Huang, directed by Jaki Bradley, scenic design by Riw Rakkulchon, costumes by Haydee Zelideth, lighting by Reza Behjat, sound & original music by Jake Rodriguez, at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Berkeley, California.
Info: berkeleyrep.org - to December 21, 2025.
Cast: Michele Selene Ang, Kina Kantor, Emma Kikue, Amy Lizardo, David Mason, Camila Moreno, Monica Orozco, Ricardo Vasquez, and Wayne Dexter Wong.